How much will American masters have to ante up?
The USATF annual meeting is over. Awards have been given and policies debated. Delegates and muckymucks have packed up in Jacksonville, Florida, and begun flying home. But for masters track athletes in the United States, two main questions linger: What’s USATF gonna charge us now for annual membership, and what will it buy? Going into the annual meeting, a figure was privately bandied about: a $10 annual surcharge for masters track members of USATF. The idea was to raise $80,000 extra for our perpetually underfunded niche.
This 50 percent increase in our dues would lead to a tripling of our budget — and make possible a lot of initiatives embodied in the draft 2005 Strategic Plan.
I wasn’t at the annual meeting this year. Otherwise you’d know by now what our tab would be. And nobody has written me yet on what USATF Masters T&F has decided. Understandable, given that everyone’s focus is on surviving committee meetings and finding some good restaurants.
But I hope in the next few days to learn the bottom line at Jacksonville. What have Masters T&F wrought? And what will it cost you and me?
If you have any info on this score, lemme know (by writing TrackCEO@aol.com) I’ll share what I learn of a substantive nature.
Just curious: How much do masters in other countries pay for membership in their national associations?
Stay tuned.
3 Responses
I didn’t look at the actual proposal by the board of directors, but from the discussions I sat in on, I will tell you what I know.
I never heard anything directly about masters. One big debate was about raising the youth fees. Everyone who is remotely involved with youth was VERY VERY opposed to ANY increase in youth fees.
Not everyone was a fan of raising the adult fees, but the general feeling seemed to be that if there is going to be an increase (and there IS going to be an increase) that it should be absorbed by the adults.
The fees are only divided into youth and adult. There is not an effort being made to specifically target masters athetes (as far as I know, I suppose I haven’t read the actual plan, and I did not make it to any of the masters meetings), it’s just that masters athletes fall into that adult category.
You’ll probably get a lot more info from people who were at the masters meetings.
Oh yeah it’s not going to triple your budget right away (if at all). The memberships fees go X number of dollars into the association and Y number of dollars to the national office. I heard lots of different ideas about how that money would be split up. You might pay $10 more for membership but only $3 more might go to the national office, for example. It sounds like in the first year or two, that additional revenue from the fee increases will go to improving the infrastructure at USATF and providing more member benefits. Then, eventually, that money will start to trickle down to the different groups.
Some examples of more member benefits they want to be able to provide are a credit card style membership card, a permanent membership number… totally blanking on the rest. Better magazines or something like that.
So… increased fees = more money, but might be a few years until the masters group (or any other group) sees any of that.
Now your association should be bringing more money in as well, so if you had any ideas on ways they could use it to help masters athletes…
Anyway I hope I did not butcher too much of this. There was a LOT of discussion and I only caught a small part of it.
Another hot topic was background checks for coaches (= anyone working with kids). Not that that has much to do with masters directly, but I think a lot of masters athletes also coach from time to time.
By way of contrast, you might be interested to learn that vets in Hong Kong have no membership fees and, indeed, no membership structure at all. The whole thing is run like a charity, like the Red Cross or the Rotary Club. A group of athletes try to promote veterans athletics by organizing events with veteran categories and facilitating trips to veterans meets in other countries around this region and to the world meets. Anyone old enough is encouraged to participate. You don’t have to join anything, just pay your own entry fees and expenses for the events you want to attend. The (very modest) administrative costs are financed by the profits from organizing an annual marathon and road races.
It works pretty well.
Quick Silver
Hong Kong
I have no problems with an increase in dues— even a large increase. However, I think we should make provisions for people who can’t afford the increase. I have some suggestions on how to use the money.
1) Use is as seed money to gain serious sponsors
2) Use the sponsors to help us recruit more athletes and have more good quality competitions.
3) Even having a few more meets of the same quality as the Hayward Classic would be a big boost to the sport.
Leave a Reply