Don Locke, BOF Secretary General, came to the last EAOA committee meeting. I have a lot of time for Don - since he has been at BOF we have had really helpful and informative comments in the BOF Bulletin, and his comments at the meeting were similarly informative. I remember the time when I was railing against the fragmentation of the old Sports Council into UK, English, Scottish etc., and Don wrote in the BOF Bulletin that if we didn't like it we should complain to our MPs (which I did not!) and not to him or BOF. Later on when BOF received hefty UK Sports Council Lottery funding for the GB orienteers, Don pointed out that nothing comes free, as the money came with a requirement for considerable improvement in the BOF infrastructure. These chickens are now coming home to roost.
I quote from the Minutes: "Overall BOF expenditure is now £1.2m with £0.75m coming in grants from Lottery Funding."
Question: The shortfall is £450,000 - what is that huge sum needed for?
Answer: Presumably for the improving BOF infrastructure, which is still being put in place, so the shortfall can only increase. We had been warned but we did not heed the warning.
"BOF office has introduced a number of full time professional posts, with UK Sports Council _aid_. The post of Marketing Manager is to be advertised and to be _50%_funded_ by the Sports Council." (my underlining)
So BOF has had to set about raising much more money from a steadily declining membership. It has 2 sources, just as EAOA has - membership fees and event levies. The first assault came this year on event levies, and you may have heard the cries of pain from the clubs. Instead of being able to subtract the total cost of land access, loos and bussing, as had previously been the case, only 50% was deductible and the remainder of event takings has been taxed at roughly one third. The effect has been felt most at Badge and National Event level, where high map production and printing costs have to be covered and clubs have found themselves making a loss because of the high, and % BOF levy. The % levy has been unpopular at club level as well, as any thought of increasing event fees to cover increasing costs or, in the case of EA clubs, to pay Association subs has been tempered by the thought that one third of this increase will go in BOF levy. BOF's new proposal seems to be no more popular:
"Initial proposal, to come into effect from April 2000 is £1 senior, £0.50 junior with the first £25 returned to the club." (Note that this applies to all events, with zero deductions for land access etc..)
Obviously we can adjust the fine tuning, but most alternative proposals are simply not going to raise enough for a professionally run BOF.
There is, of course, another source of funding for BOF and that is through membership fees. I understand that BOF, which at the moment has a 3-tier structure (club, Association and BOF) is aiming for a 1?/2-tier structure (everyone a BOF member, with clubs responsible for the BOF sub). By removing Associations from the membership fee structure, and incorporating current club-only members as BOF members, BOF expects to be able substantially to increase its income from this source as well.
BOF, I gather, anticipates the continuation of the English regional associations, but not as part of the BOF structure. Rather they are to affiliate to a new English Orienteering Association - and who is going to fund that? - which will be on a par with the Scottish OA, Welsh OA etc. (Q. How can an association of associations be on a par with associations of clubs? A. Anything is possible in the Age of Devolution, particularly when the Scots are pushing for Home Rule and we have an English Sports Council - sorry, Sport England (sic(k))) Just at the time that BOF is planning to raise more and yet more per head from active orienteers, it is seeking to sideline the huge majority of those selfsame orienteers by removing them a whole step further from the decision-making process. Use your vote while you still have it - no taxation without representation!
On a lighter note, fantastic news that Andrew Cordle, EA rep on the BOF Technical Committee, is submitting a lottery application for e-punching. Now that is something worth paying for!
Ursula Oxburgh (WAOC)
u.oxburgh@ic.ac.uk
Next copy date: 21 January 2000
By the way, the contents of this Editorial do not necessarily represent the views of EAOA or the EAOA committee - as if you ever thought they did!