During the AGM it was brought up that we should increase our fees from £25 to £30 fro the full academic year. After the AGM a couple of points have come up that put this decision in a new light. So I would like us to sit down and discuss this again. Find attached a poll where you can leave your opinion anonymously, though as usual I'd appreciate more input from individuals than that. Present your arguments and thoughts below please.

My opinion:

Staff Members: If you have attended some of the later practice sessions, you'll have noticed that we have a fairly sizable new number of staff members. This is the result of Norma's successful "Staff Give it a Go" session. A lot of them are really into the sport and are strongly considering returning at the beginning of the next academic year. They are faced with one main problem though: The finances behind it all. The ISE charges extortionate prices to non-students. Now, don't look at it as favoritism, I am well aware that the club is a university sports society and as such students are at the forefront of our planning. However, the adults in the club (like Norma and Terry) add a very valuable 'new dimension' to the club. They are down to earth, reasonable (something we students lack on several occasions) and form a very good connection to competitions outside of the university circles. These additional competitions form part of our strategy to advertise the club's name and get more practice. Next to all of this, the adults who shoot very well, namely Norma, provide the club with much appreciated leverage when dealing with the ISE. So if anything, we must consider the staff shooters as additional numbers and leverage to obtain the things our club needs.

The Bigger Picture: This is the core point to my argument, and while it is something you won't have considered, step into my captain shoes for a minute and you'll realize what I mean, hopefully even realize just how much more 'unspoken' depth there is to what I've done for the club over the years: If you look at the club's situation from last year, you'll be aware that we lost the entirety of our intermediate base due to them all graduating. That along with a small intake of novices the year before meant that the flow of the structure was broken. This year on the other hand we've had a beautiful intake of novices, and I am confident that they'll make an even better intermediate team next year. As they move up though, they leave a gap in the novice base.

Increasing the fees this year, will deter a fair number of novices next year that would otherwise join the club. Therefore I argue that we leave the fees as they are, ensuring a sizable intake of novices next year again. Then the club will have a strong novice and intermediate base for the next two years. We can then increase the fees next year if necessary, because having the two covered, will ensure the club has good teams for at least the next years, and thus not being so dependent on the intake anymore. Increasing the fees now would put the club's improving 'health' at risk.. that is my belief

Well I think the decision should be based on the account balance of the club. If the club is running out of money we may need to increase the fees, however this may have negative consequences as flo highlighted above. I think if it was proposed that the fees would be raised, there should be a reason for that, so it could be useful to have that explained on this poll.

If the fees are increased in order to get more stuff (I dont think this will be the case) or just to keep pace with inflation, or generally increase the available balance (cough... greediness..cough) I don't agree with this. If indeed we need to raise money for the club, I can easily find other ways of raising money without touching the value of the fees. We can easily organise fundraisers and increase the efficiency of these.

I was the one who brought it up on the AGM, while asking if we have money.
Completely agree with the previous comments, and there is no point if we do, but if we dont then this might be a good thing. Could you, Flo, please tell us if there is money on the club account?

I understand that the increase will lower the number of novices next year, and it should not be let to happen, but I can not see a sensible way of raising enough money for new equipment if needed. I am more than happy to go through the cupboard again, to find this out.

I agree with Alex, we should have more fundraiser, and I apologise for failing in this respect this year, but it is not all that easy. The pub quiz made around 50 pounds (if I remember correctly) and the coffee sale is currently at around 20 (this will significantly increase this Sunday). This is just about enough for a dozen of arrows, which we keep going through quite fast.

I know we got new equipment this year, and I am very happy for it, but instead of an achievement it might be a good idea think of this as a start of a longer development. 2 years ago we got the bosses, now this stuff, I think we should try to keep this up, this way we could have a great new set of stuff in 2 years and that would benefit all the novices.

Please dont misunderstand, I am against raising the fee in general, but if it is needed it should be done, in order to improve club equipment and support for competitions.

Glad to see we've managed to get some sensible discussion going here, thanks guys. Addressing some of the points:

- The Club's Balance: This is something I am not aware of unfortunately. It is only Hana that has access to the account. While I could ask her to have a look into the account to give us a number just now, there are still a great number of things that need to be settled. I'll take this opportunity to bring up a rant I've kept in the background so far: There are a whole group of novices that still haven't payed back the club! It is honestly getting ridiculous. I know that we've been late with handing in forms to competitions, and as such there wasn't a lot of time for them to pay, but all those competitions have passed now.. and still no one's payed. I'm seriously coming close to switching to aggressive mode and just embarrassing them in front of the club by singling them out and taking away priorities from them.

Getting back to the 'balance' though, Hana and me need to sit down and go through all the financials of the club now that it is the end of the year. Once everyone has payed back the club we can then come up with a definite Balance. From what I can tell though, I don't see why we'd be short on money. What makes this decision a bit harder is the fact that appart from minor income during the year from fundraisers, the club's balance is pretty static. Ie, we get a huge income at the beginning and after that there are only expenditures. As mentioned before though, I think our finances will be just fine.

- As for equipment, I see what you mean rp, and I think it's a sound idea. The problem is that if you look at the club's activities just now, buysing new equipment just isn't justified any more. In our last purchase we bought 2 new bows, and new sights... the two new bows have hardly been touched except by the staff members just now at the end of the year, and looking at the novices, they also only seem to always use the 3 same bows... As we can see in the cupboard though there are tonnes of boxes with (now) perfectly kitted bows that aren't used. Similarly there is a whole selection of bows that are perfectly fine in the bags at the bottom, just that no one bothers using them... I can understand that ^^ the bag just doesn't live up to the 'prestige' of the box, haha.

So, from my point of view I don't think we need to invest that heavily into new equipment any more. We have perfectly functional bows, they just need to be pushed to the forefront more. Arrows are a different matter, those I can see us investing into, no argument there. Alright, how about I organise a meeting with Kelvin, head over to the cupboard and have a proper sort through the bags and boxes, so that we have a realistic assessment of how many 'perfect' bows we have?

Finally I'd like to officially raise the financing issue:

- This year, in order to make attending the competitions more luring I discussed with Hana and RP the idea of the club paying half the fees for our archers. Considering the other half of the share isn't being payed by the members any more though, for next year I have to withdraw my support of this idea. While this will put more financial pressure on the individual archer (something I have argued above we should refrain from doing) I don't think the club should take the fall on account of the individual being too lazy or dishonourable to pay back their share. I suggest the club no longer pays half the entry fee any more next year

Once again, thanks Alex and Rp, I'm delighted to see we're getting some valuable brainstorming and administration of the club done on here,

Flo

My exams are done by the 4th of May, so I'll be free from then, that includes games, travels, archery practices, and certainly checking up equipments. Btw I highly oppose the idea of withdrawing support to the novices, what this year's novices have failed to provide does not mean the next ones would fail, the responsibility should fall to the individual novices who did not pay for the fees and I blame them for that. I strongly suggest that we continue this scheme and let the new treasurer take on the job to chase after people who fail to pay.

The financial situation of the Club is certainly one that we should consider when talking about next years' fees, but there is no harm getting more is there? I see no greed in planning for the future for the Archery club. I would support raising the fees for the following reasons:

1. Most of the very promising novices this year joined the club due to their enthusiasm or interest towards the sport, I do not believe that an extra 5 pounds would deter one such as me, or Elliot (who has more bows than I personally can remember) to join the club.

2. Archery is an extremely equipment heavy sport, there aren't a lot of sports that requires as many stuff as our club does, and those with more equipments I would certainly imagine would cost more. (which leads to one thing I want to ask: is it possible to know the fees of other clubs so we can compare to them?) I find it reasonable to pay 30 pounds for a whole year of archery sessions shooting GOOD equipments (that's my part next year) and I believe people would be satisfied.

Regardless of our current treasury I can only see benifit from the increased income via fees:

3. The arrows definately needs renewing, and I will look into the other eruipments as I have said in the other thread. Perhaps I may not have explained it enough but my aim is not only to improve our equipments but to make the users CONFIDENT in them, that is they will feel comfortable using them even on competitions and not feel that they are in anyway too much of an inferior class to the personal bows that many other competitors would use. This would not only let us have a larger novice base beacuse of the attractive equipment, but also more would be interested in joining competitions despite not having their own bows. I have personally talked to several people who find the club equipments wanting when they think about joining competitions or shooting competatively with others, some even think that a personal bow is required in order to properly shoot, which then I would provide Jacob as an example of a bloody good novice with a CLUB BOW (I will defeat you one day Jacob!) and won us a lot of victories ove the year.

4. Keeping the price normal serves us nothing as no one knows that we had in mind of increasing the fees and then generously and considerately decided to stay the same. If we need incentives for people to join we need something that the people can actually find and know that we want to encourage them, and the new fortune would allow such an opportunity: Sponsership. I must admit at the very begining when I heard about the club sponsering us in registering the comps I felt it is a waste of money, however I have changed my mind over time, considering how many comps I have been to, the fees required to register in the comps alone totally outmatches the 5 pounds increase in the begining of the year. This sponsership not only will provide us a marketing victory, but also make people think we are encouraging thme to join competitions. THIS is what we need to do to have a novice base. Having new people join the club is not enough, we need people to COMPETE.

5. Sponsership can come in different ways, competition registration fees is one, but how about equipments? Perhaps we can help people out with their first kit? As mentioned before Archery is a highly equipment orientated sport, and those equipments are expensive. With the extra money we can help members to get the own equipments easier. I can think of several methods on top of my head right now, from directly sponsering, to gifting certain club equipments to members, of course if they have given us results that is. Is this not a better incentive for people to actively join club activities and not just register and disappear? (although I must say I have no problem with these people, because they have basically donated to our treasury, which I would thank them XD)

From a financial standpoint it would probably be better if we left the fees as they are but did not pay half the entry fee for the competitions. However, this is pure speculation without having a look at this year's finances. For the record though, an extra £5 on the entry fee wouldn't have made a difference to me really when joining and, if I remember correctly, archery would still be one of the cheaper clubs to join even with the £30 fee.

If people haven't paid their competition fee then you could prevent them from going to more competitions until they pay. We should also make people more aware of the need to pay fees like reading out who still needs to pay at the start of each practice during the other announcements.

I think that the fees should remain as they are, as a club we should aim to attract as much new talent as possible instead of just those who can afford it or are not put off by the cost (the 'It'd still be cheap even if raised' argument accepted).

Additional funding should be provided by more and better advertised/organised fundraisers, which will also benefit the club publicity-wise. I know it is easier said than done (I've been told of the clubs poor fundraising record) but I think it is possible with planning and a little imagination.