Henric, I don't doubt that in the past this has been the case, that the EGF helped develop Go in smaller nations. (As, of course, has the IGF) I certainly have had first hand experience of this, and it is something I am grateful for. That leaves me quite sad that the EGF is now taking the opposite approach now in order to maintain a budget. It is not a question of cynically looking around one day and saying, "heh Mr EGF, you're not giving us value for money anymore, we're leaving." It's a question of having told the EGF that we can't afford to be a member, having that listened to but rejected at an AGM because of the reasons I've outlined. Hearing it incorrectly stated that you MUST be in the EGF to be in IGF is not helpful.
Irish Go does try to get more members, and we are growing. Sadly we don't experience fast growth. Old members drop out, new members come in, we have a net balance. With internet Go, it gets harder to push the value of your national association, but I think we've coped with that battle very well. Here, like in the UK, we have fewer members than players. (Actually, I don't know of any European country where this isn't the case) The more the membership fee is, the worse that ratio has been. The IGA, being so small to start off with, cannot offer a huge plethora of benefits to its members. So it's only natural that when you ask people to give more, they start to think twice about it. If we cannot afford to run our own tournaments, to attract and retain members, I don't see how we are going to grow as an organisation. It's just childish to say "Get more members", I mean, as if we aren't trying that already.
Furthermore, in my experience, most new players don't know that there is a European Go Association, and most Go players don't know what the EGF actually does. Frankly, when you break down the figures and say "This 5 goes to Ireland, this 5 goes to the IGF (That's toward your chance to play in the World Championships every year), this 10 goes to the EGF (...insert benefits here...), At that point I now start to think, do we really need that. 2 or 3 years ago, that thought never crossed by mind. After some research, I know how much of my fee goes to Congress, how much goes to committee expenses, how much goes to the website, and how much goes to specialist tournaments. The new players have no idea of that of course; they probably have their own image of what the EGF is, and what it does. What I'm being asked, in the "Go get more members vein" is to positively shape that image.
I am seriously annoyed the EGF blatantly ignored its own rules to pass a motion that all the small nations, when they actually got to hear about it, disagreed with, What happened next year annoyed me more. It might be an idea to radically reshape our funding. Anyone who goes to the WAGC right now has to basically pay for it (plane tickets cost money, but it's worth it). Maybe we should implement a policy along the lines of "Anyone who wants to play in the World Pair Go can pay the EGF membership fee". I don't know how that would work out. I don't believe Ireland has ever had a pair entered into the European Pair Go Championships, so it might be a dangerous move. When I think about what the EGF fee should be used for, I believe that I should be thinking to myself "Yes sir, this fee is worth it, I am promoting Go not just in Europe, but in my own country too with this fee." That's why I think another idea might be for the EGF to rethink its financial structure. I'm not trying to be cynical or mean with that thought, at least not to my own mind.
henric wrote:Javaness, you say that the invitations to WAGC and KPMC have absolutely
nothing to do with EGF membership. This may be true in a formal sense,
but in fact EGF membership has been the way into IGF membership and participation
in WAGC and similar, and this has been the major incentive for new/small national
association to join the EGF, or don't you agree with this description?
This being the case, I find it slightly sophistic to deny the connection.
The international sponsorship passing through EGF is perhaps not so impressive
at the moment, maybe it's just the EGC, the European team championship and the
European participation in WPGC that fall in that category at the moment?
But I think it's unfair to look just at this moment, it's natural if there are
ups and downs and historically a lot of sponsoring has been channelled through the
EGF. Benefits countrywise to EGF members have been things like support for
participation in European championships (youth-, team-, pair-, ladies-), in Ing cup, European Oza, in the sponsored tournament circuits, in training courses, instruction material, Ing grants etc. Now and then the EGF gets invitations to send players to events in the far East, and it is then often up to the EGF how to make the internal selection. Even if sponsoring is not directly channelled through the EGF, it
is the EGF that confers the championship prestige to such events, and EGF members
have had pretty equal opportunities to arrange them. I think one could easily argue that it's the small countries that have most to gain from sponsored events like
the EGC, with the many professionals and other valuable resources, since they have
less opportunity than the big countries to do things like that.
Sure, you could cynically argue that an EGF member like Ireland has got into the
IGF through EGF membership at some point, has enjoyed invitations for decades
to WAGC and similar, to be shared between 10-15 active players, while in case of Germany for example the same benefit had to be shared between 100 times more players, similar for various European sponsored championshiops etc, but now that
the sponsoring has dropped and Ireland could perhaps leave the EGF and still keep
its place in some international events, it's more profitable to leave the EGF now.
But it could easily be a mistake, sponsoring may rise again. And ethically I don't
see much merit in that course, to be honest. It doesn't make much sense to invite
a go association with 10-15 members to international events year after year on the same level as countries with thousands or hundreds of thousands of go players EXCEPT as a stimulus to make go grow.
I see now that the number of active players in Ireland has grown significantly since about 2005, it looks like it's going to be at least 50 in 2011, doesn't it? Many
countries have larger numbers of mmbers than tournament active players. Ireland is
is actually paying 50 euro per year in EGF fee, you are talking about an increase to
200 per years a couple of years ahead, I think? But when you use the term bancrupcy, aren't you exagerating quite a bit? An increase from 1 to 4 euro per year and member, it might be the equivalent of a pint of beer per year or something, do you
really not believe that it is worth it, or affordable? What do you do with the IGF fee, do you divide that expense equally between your members? One solution for small go associations could be like they have done in Norway for many yearst now, to let the participant at WAGC or equivalent pay a fee to the association to cover the
IGF membership, that way you get more money left for the EGF fee and the 30k players don't need to pay all the time for the international participation of the stronger players. We do something vaguely similar in Sweden.
And what's childish in suggesting to the small go countries to get more members, that way the expense per capita is less and surely getting more members and active players is the substantial purpose of the international invitations and sponsoring?
As a thought experiment, do you think it would be an attractive option for small national associations to merge in order to save money on membership fees? The Irish might merge with BGA for example, the Balkan countries could merge, the Nordic countries could merge etc. My guess is that it is not and that the small countries are quite happy to be separate. all things considered.
cheers,
Henric
If I wanted to use that to my countries advantage I could suggest that Ireland assume the role of one of the committees, thus giving us free membership.