I recognise the benefits the EGF has given in the past, and I really find the idea of leaving the EGF distasteful; however, to convince people not to vote to leave, you need reasons. When Ireland recently increased its membership fee we lost nearly half our members, this is the kind of economic issue we are concerned with. I spend over 200 euro on Go a year, but why should I buy my own personal EGF membership? An organisation has to be self sustaining. Look at the UK, they lost 300 members over 5 years - as the economy tightens people reassess what they buy. The BGA membership is not disimiliar to Ireland`s, it should not surprise us that we can look and see a budgetary black hole when we quadruple a fee. If the EGF really wants and needs the money, then why do they avoid, AGGRESSIVELY avoid, the question. If 10 euro per member is nothing, why doesn`t everyone pay this?

I don`t understand the point about EGF congress giving financial benefit to member nations. Given 1 or 2 people from Ireland will attend, this will not influence the event`s budget.

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North Lecale

Well, I think one of the reasons you can give them is that Ireland and other small countries get more back from EGF membership than they pay for.

As I said in an earlier message, my estimate is that the invitations to WPGC alone is worth 600 euro per year, give or take. What would be your estimate? You wouldn't get any invitations if you were to leave the EGF. The possibility to borrow equipment to organise big events, how much is that worth you think? 100 per year, something like that, on average? When I look at the 2010 EGF financial statement I see that there were contributions to the European pairgo, youth, students and womens championships totalling 6370 euro, I won't go back and check the details, but usually in these cases the benefits have been distributed by country, at least partly, if all was it would be worth some 200 per country. So even if you insist on telling your members that the EGF membership has nothing to do with the invitations to far East ( A dubious position IMO. How does the fee EGF pays to the IGF fit with that separation for example? ), for sure you get back more than you pay for, and you would be doing your members a disservice if you leave the EGF. Beyond that consumers' perspective you could add that the support to the EGF is for developing European go and suggest that this might be a good thing.

Some might argue that the benefits from membership go just to the individuals who participate in sponsored events, not to all your members. But that's a matter of organisation and something you can arrange as you see fit. The Swedish association for example gets most of its income from fees that we agreed on for participation in the tournaments where one can qualify for WAGC, KPMC, WPGC and other invitation events. Those who are invited to big events also pay a modest fee to the association. This system may not be perfect for you, but it can be a way for a small association to handle the costs and distribute the benefits from international support not only among a few individuals, but also a bit to all.

The point about the EGC support was of a slightly different kind. You can argue that the EGC is open to all anyway, so your members can participate without paying an EGF fee, and enjoy the 20 euro per participant or so international support that the EGC gets thanks to the efforts from the EGF and its officials. Likewise your members can have use for the EGF website, the rating system and various other items that the EGF pays for, even if you don't want to contribute anything yourselves. Not to mention that there wouldn't even be an EGC etc if it weren't for the EGF. But another way of looking at it is that the irish who participate in the EGC do get something back from their contribution to the EGF, and that this needs to be taken into account. Actually it is also possible that in the future the EGF might not allow participants at the EGC who are not associated with members of the EGF, or not admit players into the rating system who are not in an EGF member - both things have been suggested now and then, but fortunately haven't had any support.

What do you think about your IGF fee btw, that fee doesn't go to zero when your number of players goes to zero either, there is a minimum fee per country in the IGF too?

Regardless of all this, it is of course important that the available resources are used well and efficiently.

best regards,
Henric

Yes, more or less, you can check ING grants on the EGF web site.
There was also sponsorship from other sources than ING in the past. And the EGCC with full time working employees.
I would estimate at least 1.000.000/1.500.000 US$ in about 15 years.
Add to this the WAGC, KPMC and Pair Go sponsorship (by the way I heard also Pair Go sponsorship has been cut from this year and part of the flight costs will no more be covered).

My feeling is that even if a huge amount of money has been available for many years to the EGF, the Go population in Europe did not grow much. And things don't look so good now, expecially with tournament circuits. I think that the way this money has been spent doesn't seem to have promoted enough the spreading of Go in Europe in the last decade.
I don't know if it's possible to find out how much of the sponsorship money has reached the single national associations, in which proportion among bigger and smaller EGF members, and in general if all money has been spent or if there's still some available. Understanding what has gone wrong in the past could be useful to EGF members for future decisions.
It's a pity I could not find the EGF financial reports on the web site, perhaps they are not public.

The Ing grants were 40-80 k$ per year, I think including the yearly deliveries of go equipment. A lot, but no need to exaggerate. You exaggerate the EGCC resourses too, there was an exhaustive discussion of those last year. Still, I agree that one might have expected more in terms of results. It would be nice to see some ideas about how money would be best spent to develop go, but such thoughts are much more rare than unfocussed complaints. Last year there were several calls for a more coherent strategy for how to develop go in Europe, as a prerequisite for getting more suport from China and Korea. Plenty for the EGF and its members to think about.
The financial reports are not public but distributed to the EGF members, I don't see any reason for any secretiveness in the EGF myself, I think full transparency is the most healthy.The habits in this respect may not have been fully satisfactory, but it's also a matter of the EGF members taking active interest.

cheers,
Henric

Javaness:
i know a little about how EGF and even our national association financially work, so just for an idea - how much were Irish member fees before and how much are they now (i mean how much has a person pay to be a member of Irish go association)? i realise that economic situation differs from country to country, but this discussion is interesting for me and i lack a good comparison

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Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

To me the logic would be that the fee would depend solely on the number of members of an organisation. You could argue that poorer countries should pay less per member, but we'll leave that discussion for another thread.

On the other hand it doesn't seem wholly fair to only look at the monetary costs. If costs are spread proportionally so should voting rights (and other rights) be distibuted according to how big an organisation is. If it is unfair (and I agree) that a small countries fee is higher per member, then by the same logic it seems unfair to me that Germany has the same number of votes then Ireland or Belgium, despite having a lot more members. Why should the vote of an Belgian member be worth 10 German menbers?

We are not the first organisation to have problems like this. The EU has a pretty complicated system in place to compromise between having bigger states not be outvoted by a coalition of little states and not having the Germans and the French decide things on their own. It doesn't have to be as simple as one vote per member, but one vote per country seems a bit simplistic to me.

For a while we put up our fee to 20 euro a year, but that seemed not a good move at all, because we went down to 13 members at one point. So we switched back to 10 euros, and now more people join. For comparison, the UK membership fee is about 20 euro.

You might argue that 10 euro is nothing, but, from observation raising it much above 10 euro puts people off joining. 20 euro is obviously above the market value the casual player expects to pay, from my calculations we would need to go back to 20 euro to raise enough cash to stay in the EGF.

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North Lecale

Well, the Pair Go invitation is probably the only benefit I can argue exists. 600 euro a year might be a reasonable guess, but then since Ireland cannot qualify more than perhaps 1 in every 5 years (should we manage to get a female player who wants to go to the European Pair Go), I think we're still struggling a bit with that financial argument.

The EGF gives a subsidy to those who organise EGF events, 500 euro I think? I don't think that would be enough to break even given the average venue price in Ireland. (The IGA fee goes towards sponsoring most of the events in Ireland.) I have asked for a copy of the latest budget to see how the EGF is actually spending its money. Probably, next year I will try to propose some motions based around this, if, like the year before, they are giving out money to officers who appear to do nothing.

The IGF membership is something we all agreed that we valued, and we wouldn't mind paying more for it.

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North Lecale

I have to admit I have not been following this argument very closely, I get lost in the legalese and formality most of the time half-way through the post. From what I understand, the small(er) associations are getting the short end of the stick because they feel they do not get enough value for what they pay.

However, it seems to me that the situation should be self-regulating, no?
If there is an association which does not see a positive value in being an EGF member, such association can certainly withdraw from EGF and not pay the fees. If enough associations follow this path, EGF will be forced to adjust and entice and lower its fees, provide more benefits, whatever. it should be like anything we buy - we think it is worth the money, and we pay, or we think it is not and we walk away.

Is there a rule that an association cannot withdraw from EGF?

Or am I seeing the whole situation wrong?
Another interpretaion is that the small(er) associations still think its worth the money, but would like to pay even less for the same or more benefit? It seems like because of the lower cap of 200 euro the small(er) associations pay more per member than the large(r) ones, with the break-even point being 200 members. I can see where this can appear unjustified. But cannot this be easily fixed by simply stating that each association has to pay flat fee of 200 (or whatever) plus a certain amount per member? Many services do similar things (cabs charging more for the first mile, movers having a minimum charge, etc.)

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

For comparisons, the national fee per year in germany is 78 Euro (39 for students, 15 for children). (Members get reduced entrance fees for tournaments, a roughly monthly go magazine and membership is a must for participating in tournaments over titles (national/regional/...).

What quite a few people seem to be missing is, that javaness argues that they simply can not afford the membership because of their low membership. Any I have yet to see a reasonable argument against regulating the EGF-Membership-fees so that every country can afford to get it.

It would be interesting to know how much it costs to produce and distribute the
german go journal. I believe the journal is a major factor for recruiting members in Germany.
As far as I know it's just Germany, France, the Netherlands and Britain who have high
quality printed journals. This is not an option with too few players in a language region.
But it's an interesting question what the value (cost vs benefit) is of a printed journal,
in the age of electronic media. There have been many good online go journals in the last
10-20 years, but they don't seem to last very long, I wonder why that is?

If, as I definitely claim, the small countries get more back from their EGF membership
than they pay for, there is no need to discuss if they can afford it, any claim
that they can't is simply wrong.

At the risk of repeating myself, here are some suggestions of how to cope with the costs
in a small association:

* Don't take all the money as a flat rate membrship fee in the national association,
find ways to make those players pay more who actually are in a position where they are able to enjoy the benefits. One possibility is to collect dedicated fees from players who
participate in championships and tournaments that are used for selection for the sponsored
events. Those who are selected for those events could pay some fee to the national
organisation, or they could be persuaded to do something extra for the players who can't
be selected (teaching, write interesting travel reports, paricipate in PR events for go
etc), which in turn can make it more attractive to become a member of the national organisation. Making membership compulsory for participation in championships and other
tournaments may also be thought of as belonging to this class.

* Inform the members of what they actually get from the membership, avoid one sided
complaints about the membership fees, like this one.

* Be sure to make your members understand that they are part of a democratic organisation,
tyhey should take part in deciding how the common resources should be used, both at the
national and at the European level. Obviously transparency is necessary for this to work,
everybody should be able to see how resources are being used.

* Encourage your members to participate in European events (EGC, European pairs,
European students' European Team, European Youth, European Women) where they will
get benefits back from what they pay. Btw Javaness, when I mentioned the 6 keuro
EGF support for European championships I assume that it's the participants who are
at the receiving end, not the organisers.

* Where it's possible to do something valuable for everyone with a large number of
players but not with too small numbers (like a national go journal), try to establish
collaboration with other national go organisations to make it work. E.g. couldn't the
Irish collaborate with the BGA around the British Go Journal, so that the Irish could
get that as a membership benefit, presumably at small marginal cost?

* Most importantly, do whatever you can to make the numbers grow, so that the costs can
be shared between more people.

In my opinion it is ridiculous to claim that people in a European country can't afford to pay 20 euro per year to the national association that takes care of their hobby. Of course they can, if they don't want to there must be something wrong with the management and organisation. It really doesn't take much to make it worth it. Practically all efforts to
do anything, like organising tournaments and championships is work that some individuals
do for free, but which is for sure worth a lot more than say 20 euro per player and year. Whether at the national or at the European level, a common organisation is necessary to
have any championships and many other activities, it provides the necessary structure.

Finally, from an ethical point of view I find it curious if there haven't been any thoughts
at all in the smallest national go organisations around the fact that they have been invited
to send players every year to heavily sponsored international events over the past 20-30 years or so, on par with big associations such as the German go associations or AGA, even though they have remained stuck at 20 active players or whatever. Don't you think that this has been a raw deal for the players in Germany and elsewhere, Javaness? If you really insist on discussing the matter at the level of market value and profit for individual players,
the sponsored events could be seen as an incentive not to grow: with few players you have
larger benefit per capita. The 200 membership fee on the other hand goes a little bit in the
opposite direction - with larger numbers it's cheaper per capita, so it's an incentive to
grow, at least to 200 members. The sensible and responsible way to use sponsorship is of course to channel it in the direction of making go grow, that's what it's for. No offence intended, obviously - we have probably all been uderachieving in making go grow.

best regards,
Henric

P.S. There is nothing for the ratings or rules commissions in the EGF budgets for 2011 and
2012, but I think its clearly wrong to say that the ratings commission, Ales and Aldo et al. in particular haven't been doing anything. When the rating system was managed manually by Ales there must have been a tremendous effort going into keeping it updated. There is still a lot of work with it I think, like correcting for people who have been entered as sepasrate players with different spellings of their names and things like that. In terms of efforts and working hours I can't believe that any EGF officials have received undue gratifications, on the contrary - maybe it should be like that in an organisation like ours, but the rating system and other facilities have to be continued, one way or another. Anyone who finds that someone is working on something at inappropriately good conditions should step forward and offer to do it himself, no?

That does not seem entirely logic to me. As stated in this thread, paying the membership fee is not a realistic option since it would take 90% of the whole budget, leaving little to cultivate go in Ireland. Even if the value of the membership highly exceeds the payed fee, it simply can't be afforded.

If the value highly exceeds the paid fee one can design (if necessary) means to collect money (or other contributions aiming at cultivating go) from the people who benefit from that value, as I suggested above.

cheers,
H.

True, but this would be a high risk undertaking. You're putting 90% of the budget for the whole year on the line. And the merits might be plausible but uncertain.

edit: typo

Sorry to insist, but I don't se what's uncertain about it.
As I already said somehere, the Swedish association collects most of its revenue
from tournament fees on tournaments that are used for national selections.
I don't think there is anything uncertain about that, the money starts to roll
in at the first tournament in the year. In our experience it has been more uncertain
to collect individual membership fees. Likewise the people who go to fully
sponsored events pay a modest contribution to the association, if they don't they
won't go, there isn't any uncertainty about that. This system has drawbacks too of
course, e.g. one doesn't really want to penalize in any way participation in tournaments,
since it might entail fewer participants. But it is a way for a small association to
cope with the costs and to distribute the benefits from international sponsorship
slightly more evenly (compared to asking the 20k:s to pay for the membership in international organisations without much hope of getting anything back). And it's been
decided pretty much in consensus in our case.

Also, your 90% presupposes 11 members in the national go association, who pay 20 euro each, or what? One doesn't need to shift all the 200 euro to being paid by a few stronger players (= more frequent tournament players) then, one can choose anything between 0 and 200 euro.
Moreover, is 11 members a reasonable number for a national organisation of any kind, isn't it more like a small club?

There are many related issues having to do with fairness and e.g. whether to spend the common
resources mainly on beginners, on the majority of average players or on the strongest players. For instance, the Swedish association now contributes about 500 euro every year towards the travel expenses of the player who is selected to go to the WAGC. Much of this money clearly comes from many weak players, who are not likely to ever be selected. Is that fair? I don't think there is any way to say with certainty. All that one can do is to discuss such things and decide democratically what to do. There isn't much of market thinking and cost vs benefit calculations for the individual player in there.

cheers,
H.

I think you have a good point there. I agree.

Increasing tournament entry fees is one approach to getting more members. We come back to the basic question though: If we start adding to the entry fee, are people still going to play? Will the IGA in fact decimate its player base because of the desire to retain the supposed benefits of the EGF? We don't have a player population that likes to travel around the country to play in tournaments. We don't have many people taking part in the Irish Championship at all. There is actually no prize for the Irish Championship, because we don't have the budget for one. So while Henric's idea might work, it also might not work

The IGA is certainly a small organisation, and there are smaller organisations in Europe who will be hit harder. There are no large organisations in Europe, all our countries have a pathetically small player base compared to places where the game is popular. Some EGF members have claimed that any association who doesn't have 200 euro to spare doesn't deserve to be in the EGF, personally, I like to like at the membership issue from the reverse angle.

We do try to expand here in Ireland. For instance, this year we took out an advert in a local chinese paper, we got quite a few new members from that, but it cost 150 euro for the publicity. I think the benefit was greater to the organisation than the EGF membership over the past 3 years. The EGF membership has brought us exactly 0 new members over that time.

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North Lecale

I think the IGA's newsletter is better than the BGA's journal, but I might be a bit biased there. If we do start encouraging people to join by saying "Heh guys, join us! because other associations give us stuff for free", well then we're a bit of a fraud really. I do think about collaboration though, for instance, should the 'minor' nations organise their own events?

That the claim that 20 euro seems like nothing to you is understandable to me, but as you are a scientist, I am sure you can understand what I relate about observational evidence. The world events only exist to promote Go in small weak countries (Sweden, just like Ireland, can still be placed into this category) It would be just irrational for Ireland to feel ashamed that we were invited to these events, whose sole purpose is to promote the game. Ireland is steadily growing it's membership, strength, and activity, and that is something we can be proud of. We can look across the sea to the UK, who have lost 33% of their membership in the same period of time, and feel that we are not doing too badly. Obviously we don't jump for joy either :p

The ratings commission is one point that interests me. I completely agree with paying people to maintain the ratings. But I have absolutely no idea what Ales does these days (obviously he did a tremendous amount of work in the past). Any queries always seem to come to Aldo, so I was surprised that Ales was still being payed a few years ago. If each committee had to report what it did every year, then I wouldn't be surprised. I think it is a basic and important requirement in terms of accountability within an organisation for each committee/commission to do this. If expenses are going to be paid to committee members who simply turn up and do nothing each year, I cannot be happy. So this sort of motion is one I will definitely table next year, if I can. I am also interested in the figure quoted for the website, I presume that this includes an administration fee, but again there is no evidence of that.

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North Lecale

Frankly, I doubt most of the smaller nations would want to withdraw. What they all do want is a fair membership fee.

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North Lecale

I agree with it.

EGF is not a charity, true. But it recieves funding for other organizations who wish to introduce Go to more people around the world. So I think EGF has a duty to help on achieving this goal. So it should not work in a way like 'if you can't afford it, just withdraw'.

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求而不得
舍而不能