Imagine an online player who decides that he would like to try an over-the-board USCF tournament. He pays dues to become a USCF member online, then shows up at a tournament which requires that he pay state affiliate dues. He pays that and now let’s assume that club dues are required. Frustrated, he pays that too, only to hear, “Now we just need your entry fee for the tournament.”
When I moved to Phoenix in 1997 there was a club with $100 annual dues. The club is still there; I don’t know how high the dues are now. I soon tired of paying the non-member entry fees, and there was never enough value to join. I my case dues discouraged chess activity.
While my personal perception of dues is negative, Ron reports that requiring dues resulted in increased participation. I am curious as to whether others have also found that they are more successful with dues instead of covering expenses from entry fees. I am interested in local clubs, not state affiliates.
I don’t believe that Ron is thinking $100 for dues. I think that he is thinking more along the lines of 10 or 15 dollars a year. So maybe the real question here is what are Optimal Dues?
I’ve seen some clubs have a 1 or 2 dollar a night fee instead of annual dues. Which could work out to $100 dollars of year if you went once a week. Personally I think those players should be rewarded instead of charged so much more than the occasional player.
Our Club in Peoria has had free membership for the last 2 or 3 years. You become a member simply by showing up and participating. If your name shows up on our Local Ladder then you are a member. That membership even gets you a small discount on our weekend tournaments.
But we are not a new club. Membership for years was $12 per year. With this you got to play in League and at one time we mailed a club newsletter out.
The decision to have free membership as an experiment to see if it brought in more players was partially because the club didn’t need the revenue. Our meeting site is basically free. (In exchange for giving chess lessons at the museum we meet at. So not quite a free lunch)
The results so far with free is basically same as it ever was. (no more, no less)
but again the club has been established since the sixtys at least. (maybe back to 1945 in some form or other)
I think the point of having a member pay something is to have them become vested in the club.
Perhaps instead of club membership you could simply require membership in the USCF after a certain amount of visits or time. That way they are vested and will need the club to have USCF rated events.
You might not even need to require it, except by running USCF rated events occasionally along with unrated events.
Yes, I believe there is a price for membership that is too high, and would inhibit membership not promote it.
I don’t know if I am even correct about this, but I am starting to feel I am. If I knew all along that having membership dues would help increase and maintain a membership, I would have charged dues with the last club I started 4 years ago. It’s in retrospect that I am wondering about the free membership thing, especially for new clubs.
Established clubs have established memberships. In Peoria we do have free membership for the last few years. As Wayne said it hasn’t affected the membership attendance one way or the other.
In a newer club, I have the idea of membership dues being $12 or under annually. That’s not a lot of money, but it does put a value on the club for the member, that’s all.
What we have done in exchange for the dues is to give a discount on the entry fee for our weekend tournaments. We don’t charge entry fees for our club night tournaments at all.
We have also addressed what used to be the high cost of trying out tournament chess for the novice. You’re right Eric. It used to be about a $64 investment for a person to play their first tournament with the USCF and state dues, along with the entry fee. We’ve cut that down, locally, a large amount. Now there is the $12 tournament membership for the USCF, which can be applied to an annual membership if desired. There is no longer a state membership requirement to play, so that’s zero. The entry fees haven’t gone up in over 10 years. So if someone wants to try out tournament chess in Peoria, Illinois and came one club night, a weekend tournament total would be $27. If they come on a club night when we have rated tournaments/games it would only be $12. That’s doable.
My opinion is that a club should charge dues if it has expenses, and the dues should be set equal to Total Expenses/Total Membership, as closely as that can be estimated. People will decide whether membership in the club is worth the dues. That might drive the number of members down, which will in turn drive the dues up. If that is a death spiral, ending with nobody willing to pay the dues, so be it. If there aren’t any expenses, there shouldn’t be any dues. Clubs shouldn’t charge dues which they don’t need merely to convince prospective members that the club has value.
Some clubs have other reasons to charge dues. My club A6002200 meets in a community center and does not have to pay any rental as long is it: (A) pays its own liability insurance; and (B) charges dues.
Our annual dues are:
$12 - Adult
$6 - Senior (65 or over) or Junior (under 18)
$15 - Family in one residence
$3 - Summer (for college students)
Prior to the part district dues and insurance requirements (which started in the mid-'80s) we didn’t charge any dues.
A club that owns or rents its own space will necessarily charge dues that are much higher than those of a club that uses public or donated space. Of course, it’s to be hoped that a club with its own space will have enough going on to justify the higher dues in the minds of the members.
Optimal dues vary according to the wealth of the community (as do optimal entry fees). Ours are very low. If our club were in a major city, all other things being equal, they might be twice as high.
That being said, we don’t require club membership for anything. We do give entry fee discounts to our members, and since we’re a formal organization with regular meetings and make decisions according to the rules of order, only our members have voting rights. But anyone can come to our meetings and play in our tournaments.
As someone who has worked with, directed for, or has been an officer of a
number of affiliates, I think he answer as to whether to charge dues falls
into two key questions: A. the availability of the venue, and the rental
cost thereof, and B. the funds necessary to meet the overall goals of the
affiliate.
Our club worked very effectively for over two and a half years and did not charge dues. We grew from an initial dozen members to over 80. We were sited at a Borders Books and gave the public a very good view of chess. We treated our club more as a place to socialize, have fun, and teach rather than be involved too heavily in tournament play. We were also a USCF affiliate and showed off our magazines to the public. It was unfortunate that Borders closed so many stores in April and ours was one of them. That meant that our club has been on hiatus for the last couple of months.
But we’re back. Once I work out the final details with a restaurant/banquet business, we will be up and running again. E-mail blasts to our membership are being prepared. Once again we will charge no dues. We have 30 chess sets and boards, digital clocks and a few analog clocks. We have a solid core of individuals who have special skills and who help to run things. We do not have a formal constitution, an often boring document that often leads clubs to become too rigid and inflexible. People get too involved with titles and power. We use the Harness’s old Blue Book and the Official Chess Handbook as some of our many sources for ideas. We have an amiable semi-dictatorship but, like Cincinnatus I will happily hand over the reigns. I expect that we will make money, just like all of the other clubs I have been involved with over the years. Our goal is to have over a hundred members. Then we might branch out and get involved in charitable activities and running bigger tournaments with sponsors. The next few months are going to be fun.
Just saw another business update on Borders Books. The potential deals fell through and the whole chain will be liquidated with the loss of 11,000+ jobs around the country. So sad. I know a few people in other states who set up chess clubs in Borders stores. A great loss for the chess community.
A good bookstore isn’t just a 3-D catalog; it’s the home of a scene, which is what allows it to survive against competition from outfits like Amazon that have no physical presence. I strongly encourage everyone to visit the IndieBound website, locate an independently owned bookstore, coffeehouse or other business in your area, contact the owner, and ask whether there’s room for you to come in and set up a few boards. Those indies that survived the big-box/online onslaught are tough little mammals, and they deserve your support and encouragement as the dinosaurs die off.
Our club in Monroeville, Pa is up and running again. We are at the Papa Rocks Pizza Pub in Haymaker Village Shopping Center. We meet on Wed. from 6:30 to 10 pm. At our first meeting on Aug. 3 we had 43 people show up.
We will charge no dues and will rely on member donations to help support our club. Their generosity has been tremendous. After several sign ups last Wed., we are now up to 86 members and expect to add more in the coming months.
Every situation is different. We have found that a no dues club works for us. So does an organization which is more horizontal than vertical. We have fun and consider chess to be a game which has greater social values to promote beyond competition. Players in the Western Pa. area are welcome to join us. You can PM me for details.
An update concerning the Monroeville Chess Club. We moved again after being at the pizza restaurant for a couple of months. Now we are at a church in Monroeville. Membership is still free. We have about 30 sets and boards, and 10 digital clocks for the members to use. In the last couple of months we set up a new website for the club: mchess.freehostia.com . On this website are details about the club, directions to the club, a list of events, news, and links to other clubs. If you are a club in the tri-state area (PA, OH, WV) or even from western NY and wish to link with our club to advertise your events, let us know.
We have found that the free membership feature has helped our club to grow. Our membership list as of July 1, 2013 is up to 134.
Kevin, we would lose some members if we charged to belong to the club. Probably not too many, but some. More importantly, we would lose our site, which is free. That is one of the conditions we negotiated when we obtained the site. We do give a donation to the church around Christmas each year. Our funding comes from donations and the surplus from the tournaments (rated and unrated) that we run. The club ledger is open for any member to see. We are more about having fun than making money. There is a small cadre of folks who are dedicated to making the club work. We do not have a constitution or formal hierarchy; the organization structure is horizontal. We do have a calendar and a series of events that we run every year. Plus, we belong to a chess league. It works. Things work on a shoestring, but it works and is growing.
As of August 14, 2013, our membership list has grown to 142. The split between adults and kids is about 40%-60%. Our youngest member is closing in on 20 months old. He sets up and knocks down the pieces.
Completely agree on the free aspect in particular. I’ve shared in the past the idea of college clubs providing students with free club/USCF membership in exchange for a site.
You get what you pay for. There are a lot of members that have willingly been paying quite a bit to belong to the St. Louis chess club (double my USCF dues is “quite a bit” to me).
With no dues being charged, what we “pay for” is complete peace of mind. Some of the other clubs I have been involved with or established have had the same basic philosophy and had large growth spurts and stable membership rolls. When I passed off each one to new leadership they were financially secure.
Granted, our club does not sponsor international tournaments, have fancy big screen monitors, or wooden chess tables. We do not have a sponsor/benefactor who can foot the bill for high end amenities. Our site is air conditioned, free, plenty of parking, and easy to find. Our club has twenty sets and boards as well as a dozen clocks available for use by the members. We have impromptu parties to celebrate just about anything. Kids get to play adults; that is strongly encouraged. We hold analytical sessions. No one complains about noise because that is what we are, a noisy bunch of chess players. For zero dollars, you get quite a lot. Which is why the members are inclined to make donations.
We hold 4 USCF rated tournaments per year. The club sponsors non-rated chess activities and a large unrated club championship. We participate with two teams in a chess league; team members plus club subsidy pay for the entry fees. We help to organize a trip to the state scholastic championship. The USCF as an organization is not the focus of the club. We do not discuss it very much. People are too busy playing chess.
The big screen monitors are just a fancy decoration, to me. But I like that the chess club is open each day, with a paid staff person there every day. A player can go by on any day they’re open and discuss chess, have a game, watch chess, attend classes, etc. It’s a dedicated location that’s not used for anything else but chess. All that stuff costs money – you get what you pay for.
A free club doesn’t get all those things that cost money. That would make the club more attractive to a lot of players. But the St. Louis club seems to attract even more players than most free clubs by having those extra $$ amenities. There’s more than one way to do things. I’m sure a free club will attract players that would never pay $80 a year, but the reverse is also true. The amenities from an $80/yr. chess club will attract a lot of players that would be regular attendees at a free chess club. And there are all sorts of price points in between that will attract other players.
I think one could make the argument that, “Where one’s treasure is, there one’s heart will be also.” Charging a reasonable dues amount can spur a person to make the best use of the money that has been paid. But a definition of “reasonable” would be very much in the eye of the beholder. And that’s not a preference personally - that there must be dues. Just an observation.
Our club has gone back and forth on dues. The whole reason I re-engaged in chess is because these days it can be a completely no-cost hobby, and when my wife and I got married neither of us were in any kind of position to pursue hobbies that cost anything. Each addition I’ve made over time in chess (plastic set / board, USCF membership, ICA membership, wood set/board, books, Chess Today, etc.) has been done when we could afford it (or almost afford it at the time with an idea of how we’d pay for it.)
Now I’m at the point where we can afford a small budget for fun stuff, and I wonder if I were paying dues if some nights I’d head off to club instead of feeling too tired to go. (I know if I were in St. Louis I’d get a CCSCSL membership and use it regularly… I’ve really enjoyed my visits there.)
I’d much rather pay another $3-$4 in USCF dues if there was some return back to the club for it (i.e. a club forum, or website, or custom content, or something for the investment directly benefiting clubs that the national level could fulfill.) I won’t say there is “nothing,” as our club is listed in the directory. Anyway, I wouldn’t mind a requirement in our club that persons that want to be continuing members purchase a USCF membership. But I’d like them to have a tangible positive value for it beyond what there currently is. At the moment, the time to advise purchasing a USCF membership is if one wants to be involved in rated chess.