Heresy

[BobC]

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'.

If anyone knows... why isn't the EGF a charity? If the Ing corporation did make a large donation then unless the EGF was a charity it would be taxed. (well it would under UK law).

OK I dug.. it's an NPO

[gofr]

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.

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.

I checked and these ING Grants sums are stated directly on the EGF website:

2000-2001: $80000 + equipment
2001-2002: $80000 + equipment
2002-2003: $80000 + equipment
2003-2004: $60000 + equipment
2004-2005: $60000 + equipment
2005-2006: $80000 + equipment
2006-2007: $80000
2007-2008: $80000
2008-2009: $40000

That is to say 640.000 US$ in 9 years + equipment.
I was once told that equipment was worth about 20.000 US$/year but I'm not sure about this.
On the Ing Foundation web site it's stated that financial support to the EGF (and AGA) started in 1993 so we have 7 more years of support not present in the above scheme. Maybe I didn't exaggerate too much with my 15 year estimate that included also other EGF sponsors .

Anyway, even 640.000 in 9 years + a lot of equipment, about which we are certain, seems to me a huge amount of resources. More than 70.000 US$/year available for Go promotion in Europe.
If there are small members that today are not happy with membership fee I believe something somewhere went wrong because with such investments the number of players in all EGF countries should have raised a lot more during past years. With time EGF members should have become bigger and well organized associations.

Can you tell me where I can find the discussion about EGCC? That was opened around 1992 and seems to me it's hard to see any results after 19 years of Go promotion by full time staff. It looks as if they started to do something just a couple of years ago, since they put up the new web site.

[HermanHiddema]

Can you tell me where I can find the discussion about EGCC? That was opened around 1992 and seems to me it's hard to see any results after 19 years of Go promotion by full time staff. It looks as if they started to do something just a couple of years ago, since they put up the new web site.

I think most people will agree that this is exactly backwards. I think there is a general feeling that the EGCC, and in particular Erik Puyt, did huge amounts of good work towards promoting go and supporting national associations in its first 10-15 years, but in recent years, after Erik left, it seems to have entered a bit of a slump. At that point, many people started questioning the status of the EGCC, and there was some feeling that its time could be better spent or managed. Recently, with the part-time hiring of Harry v/d Krogt, and with a more active role by Peter Zandveld, they seem to me to be leaving their slump a bit.

[Bantari]

In this case, what EGF should do is to declare the fee to be 200 euro processing fee plus whatever per member.
This would be fair, I assume?

As a matter of fact, this is exactly how it already works. Only:
1. Large(r) associations get the processing fee waved as a reward for growing their membership so big, and
2. Small(er) associations get the per-member fee waved as an incentive to grow larger.
So not only is it fair and everybody plays by the same rules - but everybody gets a discount as well!!!

You might disagree, but it seems fairer to me that what you are talking about.

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

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.)

[Psychee]

How about...

charge the fee per member to every association and then if you have more than certain amount of members, you pay less % for the excess part, the more members you have, the less you'll need to pay by headcount. Something similiar to how the government collect tax but in a reverse way.

[jts]

If we compare the wealth of the United Netherlands with that of Russia or Germany, or even France, and if we at the same time compare the total value of the lands and the aggregate population of the immense regions of either of these kingdoms, we shall at once discover that there is no comparison between the proportion of either of these two objects and that of the relative wealth of those nations...

The attempt, therefore, to regulate the contributions of the members of a confederacy by any such rule cannot fail to be productive of glaring inequality and extreme oppression.

[henric]

I checked and these ING Grants sums are stated directly on the EGF website:

2000-2001: $80000 + equipment

(...)

Can you tell me where I can find the discussion about EGCC? That was opened around 1992 and seems to me it's hard to see any results after 19 years of Go promotion by full time staff. It looks as if they started to do something just a couple of years ago, since they put up the new web site.

I still have the impression that the numbers you quote are including equipment,
but it's not trivial ( it should be!) to extract that piece of info from the
EGF financial statements. There is also the dollar exchange rate to keep in mind, so I
leave it for someone who knows better. Anyway, the big expenses in the last years were for
the European Youth Championship ( about 20 keuro), for Ing cup and the associated
elite tournament and for the EGC (10 keuro). There were a number of smaller Ing grants to
various projects here and there. I think the emphasis on youth and Ing rules were more or
less stipulated by the donor. The most interesting thing to discuss then I think is
if those priorities were wise or not, do you have any ideas for how to spend the money
more efficiently next time?

As for the EGCC, one online source is Peter Zandvelds explanation at:
http://www.go-centre.nl/tikiwiki/egcc_for_dummies

There were also discussions at a pre-AGM meeting at EGC 2010 and at the AGM itself,
the whole meeting is available online, there is a link in a thread at this forum about AGM 2010. Additionally Peter Zandveld sent a letter to the EGF members last year, addressing more
directly the specific points of concern that had been brought up then, I can post the letter
here if you are interested.

The main point is that the EGCC doesn't have any money really, except free use of the
building, and resources have been used for some years on maintenance of that building.
So I think it's a mistake to believe that the EGCC has been as rich as some seem to think.

At this year's EGF AGM there was a report from the EGCC. The Iwamoto award is going to get going again (I think that is a very reasonable and well motivated project) there is work on 1 minute PR films for go for internet use, 2 have been produced so far. There is a European go manga project. Other plans include a professional go workshop and youth training.

Another statement at this year's EGF AGM was a statement in a strategy paragraph from the EGF Executive, where they are talking about starting up a second go cultural centre in Bucharest and later a third one in "central Europe", such as Austria, Czechia or Germany. In my opinion it would be good to discuss such strategic issues in a wider circle at an early stage, so that a well considered and optimized solution can be found.

As a curiosity, Iwamoto himself in his last years was interested in starting a go centre in a Nordic country. If Europe is to be uniformly covered withy go centres, south of Europe might also be an option I guess.

best regards,
Henric

[pwaldron]

So what happened at this year's AGM? Anything on this topic, or any other topics of relevance (or at least interest)?

[Javaness2]

So what happened at this year's AGM? Anything on this topic, or any other topics of relevance (or at least interest)?

You can watch all of the AGM on eurogotv.
I noticed that it was said a few associations were close to defaulting their membership, but I didn't hear which ones they were.
It looks like over 1000 euro will be spent funding a new tournament to see who goes to a WMSA tournament as EGF representatives.

Most of what I watched seemed very boring, I haven't listened to everything yet though, particularly it was quite hard to hear some of the speakers.

[richardamullens]

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.

Javaness,
Can you share this advertisement with me/us ?
I have been thinking about such an advert for a long time. We got a couple of Chinese coming to the St Albans club when I placed an advert in a newsagent near Asda in Hatfield (there are lots of Chinese students at the University in Hatfield).

I also have Chinese, Korean & Japanese invitations at http://www.rhodamine.eu/~sagc/ but it is hard to assess if they are of any use as the invitation is to visit the BGA website rather than the clubs I frequent.

It seems to me that in the UK we ignore this resource of Asian players - worse in fact - the EGF alienates them by the policy of excluding them from ECup prizes.

[Javaness2]

I could, but most of the advert was for the Irish Open, and I'm not sure that would directly applicable

[richardamullens]

I could, but most of the advert was for the Irish Open, and I'm not sure that would directly applicable

Well, we have the London Open coming up soon - so that is similar.
For the first time, thanks to a new person designing the flyer, we have Igo, Baduk & Weiqi in the appropriate languages on the flyer too.

Unfortunately we surcharge players who are not in their National Organisation. I don't think that is helpful.

Was your advert in Mandarin or English. I assume it was not Gaelic. And did €150 give you something eyecatching or just a tiny ad ?

[Javaness2]

I could, but most of the advert was for the Irish Open, and I'm not sure that would directly applicable

Well, we have the London Open coming up soon - so that is similar.
For the first time, thanks to a new person designing the flyer, we have Igo, Baduk & Weiqi in the appropriate languages on the flyer too.

Unfortunately we surcharge players who are not in their National Organisation. I don't think that is helpful.

Was your advert in Mandarin or English. I assume it was not Gaelic. And did €150 give you something eyecatching or just a tiny ad ?

We had a third page as i remember, in Mandarin. We also added some pages that were written in Mandarin to the website.

[richardamullens]

We had a third page as i remember, in Mandarin. We also added some pages that were written in Mandarin to the website.

The ad is impressive. I like it, thanks for sharing.