Wairarapa Badminton Association
– Doing Affiliation fees
differently
By Bevan Smith -
President - Wairarapa Badminton Association
New
Charging Policy
The Wairarapa Association developed a
new charging policy back in 2003.
This was needed as we had less and
less people willing to affiliate resulting in most of the burden of our
affiliation fee being covered by an ever decreasing group of die hard
players. We felt this was not right and
that all players should contribute to the financial needs of the Association
not just the keen players. Sure the keen
player should pay more and the social player less but all should pay something!
How
it Works
We now ask the member clubs to
record all players each night of club.
To avoid double handling of
information a form was devised that doubles as a sheet to make up games
throughout the club night and a record of all players including who is
affiliated and who is social is sent to the Association treasurer. The
treasurer then invoices the clubs usually monthly or bi-monthly.
The way it works is that if a person
comes to club they normally pay $4 to play of which $1 is paid by the club to
the Association and $3 remaining in the club.
If a person affiliates by paying a
club and association fee (normally around $60 per person 50/50 split between
the Club and Association) then they are normally only charged $1 for a club
night and that is kept in the club with no money from those players coming to
the Association.
This means that for every
“non-affiliated” player a dollar per night of play comes to the Association and
for every affiliated player $30 per year comes to the Association. Before this we were only collecting $30 from
the affiliated players.
The
Response
Some clubs were initially a little
reluctant till they realised that this allowed the association to keep other
membership charges in check or be able to put money in programmes that can help
the clubs.
The clubs were also reminded of the
services the association provided such as sourcing coaching contacts,
promotion, advice on funding and running of the intermediate and secondary
schools competitions etc.
The
Impact
The new system has brought in around
$600 per year to the Association over and above the affiliation fees keeping
our Association solvent.
It has also altered our focus – now
instead of trying to get players to affiliate by threatening them that if they
don’t they can’t play in interclub and other negative practices our focus is
now on bolstering the numbers playing in clubs.
Most clubs simply raised their
visitor fees from $3 to $4 so there was no extra cost to them.
Administering
the Charging
As we talk to Associations about
this the common question is “how do you collect the money?” We rely on mutual trust and a good
relationship between the Association and the Clubs but we can also do audits to
check that clubs are providing the right details if we sense there is a
problem. It took a while to get Club
support but once we had their support we have found that there are very few
problems.
Encouraging
the Association and Clubs to Grow
One of the good things about this
approach is that when the association spends money on promotion it is also
getting some back.
For example we have found that
letter box drops are the best ways of attracting more club players so the
Association pays for these to be printed knowing that if they result in 50 more
player nights we recoup the investment and the club benefits from extra players
and ultimately Badminton is the winner.
True
Membership
An additional benefit is that it
reflects our true membership – that is all of those playing or visiting a club
pay something. Also all those taking
part in our intermediate and secondary school competitions pay something (over
and above the entry fee) to the Association too.