[AGA Chapters] a membership perspective on "them damn kids"

[Alan Wadja]

So much to say and nobody's uttered a peep here for a year!

>The cost to send EJournal:  $ 12,622

How much could this be reduced by e-mailing it one time per week instead of 
two? Maybe the money could be used to promote Go in ways that provide a 
bigger payback?

>Our sense is that perhaps the full members get 100% voting rights, youth 
>and limited gets 50%.

You did not read Rick Mott carefully enough. Members have no voting rights 
except for a couple very circumscribed instances.

>no ratings 696 full...The remaining 2247 member group is admittedly 
>somewhat arbitrary, but it serves as a place to start. There are 1228 full, 
>352 youth, 514 limited and 153 other (life, sustaining, etc.)....

So those ~700 full memberships represent what, contributions to support the 
AGA or people who think the e-Journal is worth the price?

How do the statistics for affiliated/unaffiliated members? How many 
affiliated vs. unaffiliated?

>That goes double if you're a foreign exchange student who has to deal with 
>crappy exchange rates.

My impression was that exchange rates have been devaluing the US$ for a 
number of years (a part of the increase in oil and gold prices).

>If you can afford membership, you get a vote, and if you cannot, then you 
>do not get a vote.  At least it is exclusive that way.  There really should 
>not be a half-membership
deserving of a half-vote.  That just sounds a tad ludicrous.

This seems to be a comment on the chapter voting scxheme, although I don't 
know if it was intended as such.

>You raise some points regarding the meaning of chapter affiliation for 
>voting purposes that the officers, board and national assembly have 
>examined at great length.

Examined at great length by a limited number of people, sharing largely the 
same perspectives on the organization, I daresay, and done not at all in a 
truly public forum that reveals the processes, attitudes, opinions and ideas 
to all members. Rick Mott points out that this "is not a democracy" and 
others complain that no one is really interested in doing anything anyways; 
you seem to forget you are harvesting the sort of apathetic and ambivalent 
response that a system which defines people out, rather than in, is designed 
to sow.

>the AGA should consider expending some of its substantial resources on an 
>executive secretary whose job would be to grow the organization.

Interesting idea, who's been lined up for the job?

>This was thoroughly hashed out (presumeably by chapter representatives and 
>others who all think the same way) over a number of years, and was 
>finalized (for the year 2005) by a vote of the membership for the 2005 
>revision of the By-Laws (indeed, I must have missed this, when and where, 
>did I miss something in my mailbox perhaps?).

>That's why the issue here is not the "rights" or lack thereof for limited 
>members

Gee, you missed it the second time around: I was referring to full members; 
perhaps your lapse reveals an attitude that unaffiliated members are not 
full members after all? 

>Keep the per-tournament non-member Rating Fee, but raise it to $10

Does everyone know the breakdown od revenues fron such sources, or have any 
idea as to elasticity of demand?

>Folks who are interested in AGA politics and spreading Go should affiliate 
>themselves with a Chapter

Why should an interest in spreading Go necessitate an an interest in AGA 
politics?

>we should have reduced rates for seniors and college students or college 
>age people.

>We need to provide a little incentives for the parents so they can buy in.

These "reduced rate" deals should be means tested or not exist at all; 
otherwise they turn out to be nothing more that subsidies for those who can 
well afford to pay full freight but will almost take advantage of a free 
ride when possible.

>A "senior discount" indeed! How "chintzy"! ... and it's
the sort of gesture that implies maturity (and dignity) of an organization, 
at almost most no cost. (Sure, I can afford to pay, but it's the principle 
that's at
issue here.)

Let's institute a free membership for everyone who feels insufficiently 
appreciated! That way, I can get one too.

----Original Message Follows----
From: Rick Mott <rickmott at alumni.princeton.edu>
To: agachapters at lists.lists.usgo.org
CC: agachapters at lists.usgo.org
Subject: Re: [AGA Chapters] a membership perspective on "them damn kids"
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 21:22:31 -0400

Andrew J wrote:
 >
 > Executive summary:
 >
 > -- The AGA can be very patient about collecting dues.
 > -- Repeated experiences of this writer have shown that LM's are
 > instrumental in getting people to their first tournament.
 > -- Experience has also shown that even LM's can be too much, when
 > combined with tournament fees and other costs.
 > -- Propose some combination of eliminating all fees for first-time
 > players, "trial" memberships, or post-year billing.
 > -- Set the hook and the AGA can collect for the rest of a players
 > life.  We lose if they swim away.
 > -- Don't drive people away by making them pay up front for services
 > they don't know they want or need.
 >

Hi, Andrew --

Thanks for the thoughtful response.  The Princeton club has done this in
an ad hoc way for many years at the New Jersey Open by making it free
for Princeton University students, and throwing in a year's membership
(used to be limited, but now that youth has been extended to age 22 we
do that).  Fortunately, the tournament is big enough (and unfortunately,
the student turnout is small enough :) that taking this out of the
tournament revenues hasn't been a problem.

However, before everybody gets too excited about cutting dues and giving
away memberships for all kinds of noble reasons, remember that the AGA
still has to come up with an operating budget from somewhere.  This is
from treasurer Ulo Tamm:


AGA revenue by membership type for the last year (June '05 through May
'06):

Full:           $ 41,325
Youth              4,990
Chapters           4,760
Limited            3,985  ( approx  290 )
Play fee             605  ($5 tournament fee, 121 total)
Internat.            205
Journal only         100
BGA                    4

                ----------
                 $ 55,974

The cost to send EJournal:  $ 12,622
The cost of year book        14,040
                           ---------
                            $ 26,662


About half of everything we get from the membership goes into the
E-Journal and Yearbook (which is not unreasonable, since that's a major
portion of the value we provide to our members).  The problem is, that's
almost a fixed cost.  It doesn't go down much by sending out fewer
copies of the yearbook.  Generating the material and printing the first
copy accounts for most of it.  Both the quality and the quantity of
material published by the AGA has increased dramatically in recent
years, but it's not cheap.

Then once you take out the adminstrative costs of running the
organization, there's just not a whole lot left for doing the promotion
we need to grow, even at the current level of dues.  Our dues, for
comparison, are about 35% lower than those of the US Chess Federation.

The main issue in growing membership IMO is promotion, not membership
costs or voting policies. In reality, we don't do much of it.  Even the
free publicity, like getting stories in the media for tournaments, isn't
a high priority for harried volunteer TDs who are just trying to get the
event to come off at all.

A quarter-page ad in Chess Life for Kids would cost us maybe $800-1000
to reach 15,000 kids.  If we got a 0.5% response, the ad would almost
pay for itself
in one year, even with youth memberships at $10.

An ad in the main Chess Life would reach 80,000 players for not much
more  money; put a 2-year promo rate of $40 there and see what happens.
The same 0.5% response would be 400 new members.  Direct-mail campaigns
regard 0.5% as typical for general mass mailings; targeted (and
chessplayers would be very targeted) are often more like 1-2%.  With a
little luck, we could get over a thousand new members.  That would have
a real impact on the budget.


	Rick Mott, Princeton Go Club

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