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updated 19.4.11
ECF NEWS
ECF FINANCE COUNCIL MEETING
16.4.11 in Birmingham (1.34 pm)
33 attended if we counted right, plus three Office persons. Apologies for absence, at 13, were much fewer than at the AGM though the attendance was almost the same. Clearly reps are growing less courteous. But the number of people who had appointed proxies was pretty much as before. The papers of the meeting, if you want them, are still at http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=897.
     It wasn't a bad meeting, as ECF General Meetings go. Unless you were a journalist. There were longueurs, but everyone more or less behaved, and where's the copy in that? Mike Gunn in the chair kept things moving, and the meeting finished unwontedly early.
(1) Business Plan. Oh dear, we seem to have come to an accident straight away. The Business Plan, as someone remarked, contained things that were budget-related. So it was best to approve the Budget before approving the Business Plan. Agreed, so we'd come back to the Business Plan later. Only we never did, unless it was very brief and your Webmaster nodded off at the critical moment.
(2) (Provisional) Accounts 2010-11. There were one or two queries, not always satisfactorily answered. For example, why had expenditure on postage gone up by nearly 75%? (We're talking about a £1500 increase, or nearly.) Finance Director: Don't know, we'll have to look at it. Your Webmaster would suggest that part of it will have been the Game Fee invoices which they suddenly sent by post to six months' worth of events without looking to see if they'd paid already. But shouldn't someone have picked the increase up before Council did?
     However. The expected outcome was a surplus of £16,000 - nearly £2000 better than budget. The real problems come next year.
(3) Budget 2011-12. The proposed Budget envisaged a deficit of £16,700. One exchange: "The Marketing budget (£400 expenditure) is ridiculously small." (It has to be said that budgeted income was £0.) Marketing Director: "The trouble is, the ECF (me included) isn't very good at Marketing. We need ideas rather than money. Ideas, anyone?" No.
     Someone said we could remove the deficit at a stroke by cutting out our International activity for one year. That is, by sending no team to the European Championship. Council did not adopt this suggestion. By 17 votes to 3 it left the budget provision as it was but ruled that no fees should be paid to players out of the budget unless sponsorship could be found enabling us to send the strongest team possible. (This seems to mean that if we manage to field the strongest team possible without getting sponsorship we are not allowed to pay them any fees even if the budget has spare cash in it. Perhaps that scenario is not one we need to concern ourselves with.)
     A proposal to remove the £5000 contingency item ("We've never had one before") found no seconder. At this point Council adjourned the Budget deliberations till after the next three items.
(4) Game Fee 2011-12. The Board had decided not to recommend any change from the current 54p, preferring (we think) to leave the hard decisions till next year in view of Item 8 below. This surprised some. At any rate Council held the traditional card vote (poll, sorry), and while the votes were being counted someone said the more you charge, the more people play, and someone else disagreed with him. The results of the vote were:
     25p             1
     48p             1
     50p             3
     54p           49
     56p             9
     57p           12
     58p           17
     60p           77
The median, hence Game Fee from 1st September 2011, is 58p. The various reduced rates were not discussed so follow the default rule.
     Those voting for 60p will have been justly mindful of the fact that it divides by 12. We should have jumped straight there from 48p three years ago. (Worst ever GF rate? 29p at the turn of the century.)
(5) Direct Members' Subscriptions 2011-12. Again no recommendation for change from the Board, but Council thought if it was increasing Game Fee it should do the same for DM subscriptions. All Basic subscriptions will go up by £1, and others by £2. All, Junior included. Voting, on a show of hands, was something like 18 to 1.
(6) Member Organisations' Subscriptions 2011-12. Council (nem con) took its own lead and increased the minimum payment from £52 to £58.
(7) Budget 2011-12 (part 2). Council now found itself in a position to reach some conclusions. The Finance Director recalculated the outcome (quickly and approximately) in the light of the decisions just made, and the deficit was down to about £8500 or £9000. Accordingly a proposal permitting the Board to draw down £15,000 from the Permanent Invested Fund was amended to permit a drawdown of "up to £10,000". This was approved, and so was the Budget: nem con in both cases.
__________

It was now 3.15 and the meeting adjourned for tea and a
BCF EGM
which (the EGM, we mean) authorised the drawdown just mentioned. There was some discussion, which we won't go into, of the powers and responsibilities of the PIF trustees.
     The BCF meeting concluded at 3.25 and the ECF one, fully refreshed, resumed at 3.45 with
__________

(8) The Funding of the English Chess Federation. Future funding, that is. Nothing much will happen till 2012-13. You won't be expecting us to explain what this is about. The relevant ECF paper (MS Word) is here, and the key pages are 8 and 10.
     The CEO introduced the discussion by setting out the major advantages and disadvantages of the possible schemes (Membership Only and a Simplified Hybrid). The meeting then said all the things you'd expect. (You'll find them in the EC Forum.) Very selectively: It was pointed out that Gift aid, should the ECF gain a charitable wing, works with Membership but not with Game Fee. (Clearly important, though limited doubt has been cast on the statement since.) A former Finance Director said he would like a Membership scheme which looks as much like Game Fee as possible. A Board member floated the possibility of variable Membership rates for club members depending on the club's percentage takeup. (And they say an advantage of Membership is its simplicity...!)
     We won't go on. Council debated for well over an hour. Then on a show of hands Membership won 17 - 14. So a card vote (dammit we've always called it that), and Membership won 91 - 71 with 7 votes for neither of the above. So the Board will go away and draft rule changes implementing Membership only, and bring it to Council in, perhaps, October 2011. Much remains unaddressed, not least the method of collecting Membership fees. Oh, and representation in Council, if indeed Council survives.
     There's another worry, if you favour change. Or if you don't, though for different reasons. Membership won with 53.8% of the vote. It will eventually require, as a simplified hybrid would not have done, changes to the ECF Articles; and these will require 75%.
(9) Change to the ECF Articles. Yes, one came up next. The International Director proposed that the Articles be amended to allow a person, exceptionally, to hold two Directorships. The proposal got very little support.
(10) Change to County Championship Rules. This one (proposed by the Home Director) caused much confusion because hardly anyone had downloaded the New Improved Version of the text, and even those who had were unsure what the changes were because they were not highlighted. Eventually it was established that pretty well all that was happening was a minor cost-saving change in E6 and an uncontroversial changed date in Ell, and the changes were agreed by a very large majority.
(11) Text of Articles, Bye Laws etc. The Chairman of the Governance Committee had supplied a report which mentioned, among other things, the constitutional mistake(s) surrounding the AGM's election - all right, non-election - of a Non-Executive Director. Someone asked, "Will there always be a copy of the Articles (etc) at general meetings?" Chairman: "Yes. I've got one here." We're not sure whether he meant "on my laptop". Of course the text ought to be present in electronically searchable form.

The meeting closed at 5.28 pm.
rjh 17.4.11, amended 19.4.11. Let us know of errors or omissions. Some omissions are deliberate.

ECF AGM
16.10.10 in Birmingham (1.30 pm)
32 attended if we counted right, plus the Office persons. Chris Majer was elected chairman in John Paines's absence. (CJ, who sat beside him, had declined nomination for that honour.) Those apologising for absence, at 34, slightly outnumbered those present. A roughly equal number, but not necessarily the same people, had appointed proxies. The papers of the meeting are at http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=897 if you haven't downloaded them already.
     An account by Mick Norris appears on the EC Forum at http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2273. Mick's treatment of Officers' Reports is more detailed than ours.
(1) Grading enhancements on website. It was only a Matter Arising, following recent lobbying we think, but the Board's original and minimalist approach (see last paragraph of item 5 in the next meeting down) is replaced by something gratefully closer to FIDE and Yorkshire. For some brief post-AGM details, see the EC Forum at http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2034&start=30.
(2) President's Report. CJ mentioned a number of the things he had undertaken. He is currently talking to potential sponsors and hopes to have news soon. He has, of course, been very active but may be less so in future because of acting commitments. He initially spent quite a lot of his own money on travel and so on while on ECF business, but has lately charged for petrol and accommodation at "reasonable" - that is, pretty basic - rates. This might amount to £3K or £4K a year if his activities remained uncurtailed. Council, in re-electing him further down the meeting, did not ask him to curtail his activities. The President got a round of applause for his first year in office.
(3) Chess Sets for Schools. The scheme's passing, so long urged, came without whimper or protest. "Have the 7,000-plus schools that got no sets been put in the picture?" "They should have been." (Can't argue with that.) Stewart Reuben said they would be offered six free credits for the Certificate of Merit.
     We understand that Holloid are still aiming to produce sets and are looking for a new partner to assist with distribution. We wish them the best of fortune.
(4) Money. The Finance Director apologised for the fact that the Accounts were not audited. We had broken even, near enough, in 2009-10 and looked (but very provisionally) to be on target for a £32,000 surplus in 2010-11. We would be saving some £20,000 on Office costs due to staff cuts. But reserves remained worryingly low, and the loss of the DCMS grant (all of it, starting April 2011, if you've been away) would not help.
     It was remarked that the (separate) BCF Accounts showed debts owed by ECF which did not seem to appear as liabilities in the ECF Accounts. The Director said they were there, but lumped in with something else. It was agreed that the ECF Accounts should in future be more transparent in this regard.
(5) Home Chess. The Director said a priority next year would have to be supporting weekend congresses in any way possible. Some top congresses were endangered if not actually extinct.
     You may have seen reports on the EC Forum of a dispute between e2e4 Congresses and the ECF about the manner of reporting results for FIDE rating. Someone asked if it had been resolved, and the Director said a solution had been found which he hoped e2e4 would find acceptable. We have since heard that e2e4 did.
     Someone else asked about the late (and still awaited) start of the County and District Correspondence Championship. No one seemed to know anything about this, and the Director said he would look into it.
     It was noted that Dave Thomas was standing down as Manager of Grading. "Is his successor appointed yet?" No, the job has been advertised and his successor will be appointed at the next Board meeting.
     This report does not come close to reflecting Adam's activity in his first year of office. He got a round of applause.
(6) FIDE Congress. The President, in Nigel Short's absence, said Nigel had provided a long report of the recent, and colourful, FIDE Congress. If his report has been published it has passed us by, but it appears it is damning (and nonetheless understated, in the opinion of the President who was also there).
__________

It was now 3.20 and the meeting adjourned for tea and a
BCF AGM.
We normally hive BCF adjournments off and put them at the end, but on this occasion there was an item which may have influenced subsequent proceedings in the ECF meeting, so we'll treat it here.
     It was a pretty routine meeting, apart from having twice the usual number of sets of Accounts to approve. (See further down if you've forgotten why.) It also approved some Constitutional amendments providing, among other things, that BCF Accounts in future require an independent examination instead of a full audit.
     We would have liked to leave it at that. But arising out of the John Robinson accounts it was mentioned that a report had appeared in the national press, stating that the Federation had provided no financial support for a certain junior in (we think) the recent World Junior Championships. The junior in question had, in fact, received support from the John Robinson Trust. It was reported that the offending journalist was Malcolm Pein, who had subsequently recognised that his account was inaccurate but declined to correct it.
     The ECF meeting resumed at 4.02 with
__________

(7) Elections. There was a proposal to elect everyone en bloc, since there were no contested elections, and this was agreed and done except in the case of one candidate for Non-Executive Director. You've guessed. Malcolm Pein. Someone suggested that his election might be made conditional on an undertaking not to criticise the ECF in public, or something to that effect. But we've all criticised the ECF. The offence would probably have been shrugged off, had it not been for two other things that now came to light. One was that Malcolm's Board emails (the Board send a lot of emails) would not go direct to him because he did not wish to be swamped. Instead they would be filtered by the President, who would pass on the important stuff. Then it further emerged that Malcolm would not (?usually) attend Board meetings; he would appoint an alternate straight away. These things were not well received. A feeling arose on the floor of the meeting that a Non-Executive Director should have a more committed approach than this. It went to a show of hands, and the candidate lost by 11 votes to 12. So a card vote, with the same result by 49 votes to 62.
     There's more. You may have seen statements on the EC Forum that some directed proxy votes, in the candidate's favour, were incorrectly not cast. We fear this may be true, through confusion or misunderstanding or carelessness, though we don't know that it was confined to votes for the candidate.
     It isn't nice. At all events the position is vacant and the Board may fill it.
(8) Revenue streams: the future. You know that the Board thinks the ECF's current methods of raising income from players are too complicated. (Who doesn't? There is one bit of it that probably no one understands.) Council was asked for a steer on four possibilities for the future: (1) Membership exclusively; (2) Game Fee exclusively; (3) A hybrid as now, but much simplified; and (4) the status quo. A steer, not a decision. The Board merely wanted to know which options, if any, were considered unacceptable; it would then work on what remained and come back with proposals in April. On a show of hands (2) was thought unacceptable by a clear majority, and (4) by about 105% of Council, and we will wait and see what the Board comes up with.
     Andrew Farthing's analysis had suggested that anything up to 25% of Game Fee was not getting collected. Sorry about the weasel "up to", but no one really knows. If it's anything approaching 25%, it is strangely at odds with an assurance given at the 2009 Finance meeting by the then Finance Director, who said he had checked carefully and there looked to be a reasonable match between games played and Game Fee collected. Maybe there did, then; but it is no secret now that a certain league has been very much underpaying, consistently over the last few years, and that the ECF suspected nothing till the other month when the shortfall amounted to several hundreds of pounds. It may have been an isolated case, and it may not. Either way, how was it allowed to happen? (Yes, we believe they have paid off the arrears.)
(9) FIDE rating of County matches? Decision deferred till April. But there was some discussion, and there didn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for it.
(10) Twice-yearly Standardplay grading lists? This proposal was heavily rejected when first raised in April 2007, but the Home Director wanted to give it another go. Your Webmaster was astonished when it was accepted, this time, with two votes against. The leagues seem to have taken on board the fact that they don't need to use January grades for eligibility if they don't want to.
     The change is to take effect from January 2012. We've a feeling the grading team was asked to work on it, but there's no work to do. You just do it the same way you do Rapidplay. It is not certain, of course, that all league graders will be willing and able to provide halfyear results. The accuracy of the January list will depend on it.
(11) Twenty-First Century Catch-ups. Council approved an amendment to the Articles permitting the Board to take decisions on a majority vote by email. Also a Bye-Law amendment permitting election addresses to go on the website like anything else. They previously had to go with the Agenda by post. We're sure there's a reason why the Agenda has to go by post.
(12) Dates of future meetings. Finance: Saturday 16th April 2011 in Birmingham. AGM: Saturday 15th October 2011 in London. Someone suggested Sundays to avoid clashing with football matches (arguably desirable on two different grounds); but the idea was not liked and was scarcely discussed.

The meeting closed at 5.41 pm.
rjh 22.10.10

Earlier material is in the Archive.