The New USCF Clubs Committee

Chess Clubs
1

Hello Forum Readers. I wanted to announce the new USCF Clubs Committee:

Allen Priest - Co-EB Liaison
Chuck Unruh - Co-EB Liaison

Sevan A. Muradian - Chair

Tony Rich
Tom Magar
Rob Jones
Thad Rogers
Eric Johnson
Sara Walsh
Mark Kaprelian
Joshua Anderson
Allen Rodenstein
Frank Johnson
Luke Harmon-Vellotti
Ted Castro

Our first task is to establish an ‘About Us’ (what we are about) and the objectives for the committee. Once we’ve done this I will post it out to the Forums but of course feel free to provide commentary even before that. I will periodically update via the Forums what we’re up to as there will be some activities where crowd sourcing with the chess community will help us achieve our goals.

2

Sevan, something the USCF office should ask all committee chairs to do is to give some thought to what role the USCF’s IT facilities should play in both in their committee’s internal workings and in reporting to the USCF EB, Delegates and membership. I’m sure the Website Advisory Committee would appreciate some suggestions, and I know I would.

3

Hi Mike - thanks for the comment. Yes we will consider this as well because leveraging the website will be key in order to make information easily available (and of course reduce any print type costs).

4

Fantastic!! Having this committee chaired by a person who is already active on the Forums, and who cares deeply about the committee’s reason for existence, will go a long way toward reversing the long-standing morbundity of this committee.

Bill Smythe

5

But it will reduce opportunities to use the word moribund.

6

I suspect people will manage to find ways to use it anyway.

7

To let forums readers know where we’re at to a degree. We are finalizing our About Us and Objectives. Here is our current draft we are discussing:

About the USCF Clubs Committee

The committee is dedicated to facilitating the creation, growth and support of chess clubs of all types.

Objectives:

Creation and maintenance of:

– ‘Why Affiliate’ promotional material
– affiliate documentation (signup, welcome package, how-to package)
– outreach templates (press release, flyers, etc)

Outreach to:

– identify, document and list on the USCF website all types of clubs
– understand, analyze and address the challenges of existing clubs
– entities that can become affiliates on a larger scale (boys/girls clubs, libraries, YMCA’s, etc)

8

nwchess.com has a list of clubs in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Not sure if it’s fully up to date but it’s a good start. nwchess.com/clubs/index.htm