I really think deep down you really understand why it is wrong to charge only $15 to scholastic members who want a magazine and $13 to those who don’t want a magazine when it costs $6 to send a magazine out the 6 issues USCF provides. The sad fact is the market is telling you people don’t want the magazine. You can’t sell it without giving it away with a membership which in most cases children will buy when they want to play chess!!!
Don’t get me wrong, I personally like the magazine and read it. It just doesn’t have any value to the thousands of K-5 graders we want to get started playing chess. $13 is even sort of expensive when you consider that many scholastic players are playing only 5 or 6 tournament a year. If you really do want these kids to play chess, provide an affordable membership with nothing but a rating service or in America, someone will.
My experience with running Michigan Chess Association scholastic team events, where we deal mainly with the coaches, has been that they go straight for the cheapest option available. I don’t think many coaches explain to students or parents what their options are.
When I have run my own scholastic events and work directly with the parents, I go through their options. The parents are much more likely to go with an option that includes a magazine.
This arguement reminds me of one that we had here in Oklahoma a couple of years ago about what we should charge junior members of the OCA. Previously they were charged their carrying cost (I think $10) but two new factions emerged. One wanted to charge them $1, but another held that even charging them that much would keep them away from OCA (and the OCA-required state scholastic championship) in droves. I found it hard to believe then, and still find it hard to believe now, that anyone would make an economic decision not to play tournament chess for $1 (or $6 for that matter).
Maybe we should focus more on how to make Chess Life more relevant to these kids (and especially their parents) rather than figure out how to get them to stay members without keeping in touch with them.
I think I could go for that if the magazine that is offered for scholastic memberships were a serious kids magazine that primarily offered content that they would be waiting to get each month the same way they do their school magazines or “Sports Illistrated for Kids” It has to be something the want. It should not be something that keeps anyone from playing chess.
What I don’t understand is why it is OK to compensate affiliates for selling all other types of memberships than the economy scholastic. If you want them to go through the work of entering membership online because you do not want them to do it in the office, then pay them for it. It takes me the same amount of time to enter the regular or the economy membership. Let the kids and there parents decide if they want to pay the extra for the magazine or not. I guess its kind of like taxes. Do we want the USCF telling us what to spend our money on or do we want to decide for ourselves.
Have found that is a problem. Coaches are on a very tight budget, most have a limited amount of time with a limited budget. With some scholastic teams, the school or the coach will pay for the membership. If its’ from the parents themselves, one team mate will have a economy scholastic and the other a youth membership, or a few with scholastic membership.
There are two reasons why coaches like the economy memberships then the others. If the school is going to pay for the membership, its’ a limited budget and they will always go as cheap as they can. If the parents play for the teams membership, it can cause conflict with some, with a economy membership for some and others with the scholastic and youth membership.
It would be best for only having one type of membership for one type of age group. Having a team, with different memberships only makes conflit with team mates. As a coach does not want any conflict, they will pick the economy scholastic as the mode.
There are a lot of affiliates that pass on the savings of the affiliate discount. With it being online you save $2.00, if its a affiliate you save $2.00, so if the the affiliate sends it in online the membership will cost $4.00 less. The goal of the affiliate discount, it would pay for the affiliate with 20 memberships. Now with a online membership discount of $2.00 and a affiliate discount of $2.00, the affiliate only needs to sell 10 memberships to pay for the affiliate.
In all the years with selling memberships, only sold myself a membership outside the the bounds of a tournament. If the person came to my door and wanted a new or renewal for their membership, and not be in my tournament it has never happened.
If someone wanted a economy membership, it will cost them $13.00. With a junior membership, will pass on the savings to the parent of the $2.00 online discount and $2.00 affiliate discount. A parent will have a choice, have a membership with no ‘Chess Life’ for $13, or six issues of ‘Chess Life’ for $15.00 as a scholastic member. That will give the scholastic player and the parents 6 issues of ‘Chess Life’ for $2.00.
True, the organizer can pocket the profit of the online membership discount and the affiliate discount. Have found as a organizer its very foolish to do so. If someone wanted or needs to re-newal their membership. If someone can save $4.00 from their membership renewal, it would give them a reason to drive to a tournament to get the discount.
Even that the ‘Grand Rapids Area Chess Club’ does not need to re-newal the affiliate till August 05. The profit of the ‘Western Michigan Open II’ on 2.5.05 will pay for the early re-newal of the affiliate. It should be the profits of the events that pay for the affiliate, not the selling of USCF memberships.
I think doing as much online makes the only sense for the USCF.
I want to support the USCF in every way that I can, including processing memberships online. It should cost the USCF less to process memberships online.
If online discounts and affiliate commissions make sense for any type membership, they make sense for all type memberships. The make sense from the standpoint of reducing costs of the USCF operation. Period!!!
If the membership for an economy membership costs the USCF $6 less to offer without a magazine, it costs $6 less to offer without a magazine.
If you offer a discount in order to encourage the taking of a magazine, in effect you are reducing receipts from the very people who would most likely join the USCF if it cost more. From what I can tell, either the USCF is losing a significant source of revenue by offering discounts and commissions, or they would benefit even more by passing the same discounts and commissions on to all memberships that are being processed online.
The mere observance of the fact that people who take the full membership renew more often than those who do not does not mean that giving a magazine away will encourage those who do not renew to renew. They don’t renew because they find out they don’t like to play chess as much as they like doing other things.
If the USCF does not want childeren to play chess as part of the USCF unless they take a magazine subscription, they should be prepared for a margin of childeren to not join because of the additonal cost or for chess organizations to move to rating services that are less expensive than the USCF.
Ask yourselves the question, do you really believe that USCF Chess Life causes any significant number of players to continue playing chess? Or do significant numbers of childeren who don’t even read begin playing chess because someone takes the time to teach them to play, tournaments are held and the kids like to get trophies. Then some children really develop an interest and take the game seriously. They gladly take out a more expensive subscription and travel distances to play in non-scholastic tournaments and become players for life. What do you really think??
Selling the economy membership with a online discount and affiliate discount would be $7.00. Even with a economy membership with no online discount and no affiliate discount is $13. If the parent called up for a membership, it would be $13 economy scholastic, $19 scholastic and $25 youth. It its online membership, $13 economy scholastic, $17 scholastic and $23 youth.
If a child is at a very young age, would sell a economy scholastic. During the year the scholastic player is a member, its’ not the issue to get only the scholastic player into chess. Any director or organizer has to work with the parents and the scholastic player as equals. There is not that many scholastic players with a credit card, go online and order their own membership, then pay their credit card bill with their checking account.
Having a economy scholastic never gives any feedback to the parents. If someone can look into the records, could say the average rating of a economy scholastic is lower then a scholastic rating. Would even say there is more provisional rated economy scholastic then provisional scholastic. Scholastic tournaments just at the school level are so uncommon, they only happen once a year. Scholastic tournaments do happen, if they are organized outside the school building or accept scholastic players outside that one school.
Having scholastic tournament can find the next Grand Master, or the next Bobby Fischer. It does leave a train wreck of lost dreams. Children perform a number of skills to see if they want to perform them in life. They play baseball, football, choir, music, ect… Some will perform these tasks in adult life, the majority that performed these tasks in childhood have learned something, even if they never perform the same tasks in adult life.
I think you’re right in some respects. Those who are interested are going to begin looking at going further, and if this means getting a membership that also gets the magazine this is what they are going to do. And then there are those who don’t care about the magazine but still want to do what their freinds are doing. Some of my students will play in non-scholastic tournaments but never pick up the magazine they get bimonthly.
I do think coaches have a responsibility to show parents and students what’s available beyond unrated scholastic tournaments, and that includes showing what the magazine has to offer. I would think the best way to do this is to offer a discount membership to students who sign up through their coaches who have paid for a school affiliate. Thay way the school gets the magazine, the USCF gets an affiliate, and the students get exposure to the magazine and may then decide to join.
But the idea of the Family membership still seems unrealistic. How many families have more than one child interested in being a USCF member? And even if there is, it would take 3 economy scholastic memberships to make it more costly than the family plan.
BTW, does anyone ever think School Mates will ever reappear?
It seems to me that if we were to offer a $2 commission and a $2 online discount that would net out to $9 not $7, Doug.
However, based on current membership numbers that could also lead to as much as a $80,000 reduction in USCF membership revenue if all economy scholastic memberships were submitted online by affiliates, though with some offsetting reduction in costs. It’s also worth noting again that about half of the economy scholastic memberships being sold now are being submitted online, even without a financial incentive to do so.
As a scholastic person, what scholastic-oriented services are you willing to cut in order to compensate for the resulting reduction in membership revenue? That’s what the policy maker have to do when considering the impact of a policy change. Surely you don’t expect other membership categories to subsidize this?
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It seems to me that if we were to offer a $2 commission and a $2 online discount that would net out to $9 not $7, Doug.
However, based on current membership numbers that could also lead to as much as a $80,000 reduction in USCF membership revenue if all economy scholastic memberships were submitted online by affiliates, though with some offsetting reduction in costs. It’s also worth noting again that about half of the economy scholastic memberships being sold now are being submitted online, even without a financial incentive to do so.
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What are the losses of all the other categories based on a $2 commission and a $2 discount? I guess I could see how a smaller discount might be somewhat appropriate based on the margin being smaller for economy scholastic. But the $80,000 arguement doesn’t hold water. You lose $4 each for most other types of membership which offer $2 commission and $2 discounts. On the other hand, affiliates save USCF the same amount of labor by doing an economy membership online as we save them by doing a regular membership online.
If someone sends in a paper membership, the printing of the name, the mailing address, the email address, could be so hard to read … it could be a error on how the person place the data into the computer. It takes someone in the office to read and try to understand. If the mailing address is right, the name could be wrong. The person has to call or email the office, then get a new membership card. If the mailing address is wrong, the member could take months before they call or email to find the problem. Would find it cost more then the online cost of $2.00 or with the affiliate discount, just to take care of human error at both ends.
If the online membership is done at the tournament for a new member. The new member gets a USCF ID number within minutes. Will have a printable tempory USCF ID card. The affiliate will have a returned email stating the information placed into the records. If there is a error in the records, then a simple email could take care of the problem.
If the affiliate takes care of a USCF membership, its’ a win win for both the office staff and the member. If its’ sent on paper, there are a number of people that have horror stories too tell.
Since in most membership categories we were previously offering a $4 affiliate commission, changing that to a $2 commission and a $2 online discount has probably not had a significant impact on net revenue in those categories.
We used to offer a $1 affiliate commission on economy scholastic memberships, increasing that to a total of $4 in available discounts and commissions would almost certainly have an impact on net revenue from that category.
As I recall, the Delegate motion passed in August set the economy scholastic rate at $13 per year but eliminated both the affiliate commission and the multi-year discounts. The Board/office has the discretion to offer an online discount, but if my understanding of the current wording of the Bylaws is correct (and I’m co-chair of Bylaws), then they cannot offer an affiliate commission without Delegate authorization again.
I would personally be opposed to offering an affiliate commission again, but I could probably support an online discount of $1. That would pretty much be status quo ante.
Please don’t get me wrong. All along what I have been questioning is why it makes sense to give the commission and discount for other types of membership and not for economy scholastic. I can see the point of a lower of no commission for a low cost membership. I don’t quite see how it makes business sense to give a $4 commisson and discount if the cost of the magazine is $6. but oh well!!
I definately think it would make sense to give the online discount of $1 for having someone enter it online and not have the paper sent in to the office. I think that would be better than nothing and might get a few more people to do them online.
The concept of the affiliate commission goes back many years, though it was dropped for a few years in what was in retrospect a VERY poor bit of public relations by the USCF.
It really has nothing to do with the cost of the services being provided, and never did.