The following article has been submitted to Score: It explains why we feel that penalties suggested by BOF are unworkable and will cause unnecessary friction at event registration, while doing nothing to  promote our sport.

No Penalties for Non-members at INVOC Events.

The recent membership changes introduced by BOF have been less than well received at INVOC. The scheme seems a not particularly subtle attempt to coerce participants into taking on membership whether or not they wish to do so. We know that their solution is really designed to suit orienteering in England and so doesn’t fit our local priorities and have to accept that, as the organisation of orienteering in the UK remains in BOF’s hands for now, we will have to accept the situation.

There is one issue however on which we will not toe the BOF line. The proposal that non-members should be charged £2.00 extra to take part in events is unacceptable to us and following dialogue with BOF, we have decided not to implement this at INVOC events. There are a number of reasons for this.

Firstly, does it encourage people to attend and keep coming back to events? We think the opposite and that the message given out by this policy will be counter-productive: The published entry fees are going to appear inflated as we are advised to use the un-discounted figure in advertising. Perhaps more significantly, at their very first contact with the sport, the message for those trying orienteering that we are going to charge them extra unless they join (free or not) is very negative. We feel it much more appropriate to encourage new participants with normal or even discounted entry fees to start with. We have never had any problem with applying the right sort of quiet social pressure to encourage those who regularly attend to sign up. Perhaps most importantly, we feel those who actually run the sport locally should be free to decide what’s best for our area.

The free first year’s membership is apparently designed to offset this argument, but the thinking here is flawed. People these days are very wary of commitment to amateur sports and don’t wish to be pushed into signing up before they have had a chance to assess whether they really want to be involved. If we immediately try to get them to commit to membership, demand all their details and besiege them with mailings, we think they are more likely to be scared off than captivated. The policy is clearly designed to boost the membership figures of BOF, but our impression is that however good the numbers might look, large numbers of these free memberships will be inactive and never likely to return to orienteering.

Several practical aspects of the scheme also concern us. Our main difficulty in running events is getting new people involved in the organisation. Organisers hate having to ask for volunteers and even more so to have to keep asking the same old people time and time again. So we try to encourage those who don’t normally help to get involved, usually by doing some easier job such as registration. Newer members are quite wary of committing to this, worrying that they won’t get it right in the face of regular orienteers (yes some of them are quite scary). Now they are supposed not only to understand the complexities of courses and classes, but we are to ask them to apply differential entry fees, demand membership cards from all and sell a membership to those who don’t have one. Hardly likely to encourage the less experienced to take on the job. Organisers also face increased administration, dealing with who entered as what, sorting out several different entry levels and again this is hardly likely to encourage them, especially if inexperienced.

A further aspect is increased complexity. Orienteering has a problem with complexity, often not recognised by those who have been in the sport for many years. The commonest comment I have had from newcomers is how confusing it all is and I recognise this from when I started. Firstly there are all those acronyms and funny maps which are so counter-intuitive if you’re used to OS, then you need to get to grips with colour coding. Get that sussed and start to improve and move up a class or two and suddenly you get control descriptions apparently written in ancient Egyptian. Then you think you’ve got it all sorted and you know the difference between your C4 and C5 and someone starts talking about district and local events and SOLs and some of the real oldies go on about badge events. Think you know what that means, and then the club coach gives you a colour badge when you haven’t even been to a badge event. Decide to give it a try anyway, but where have the colours gone? Suddenly your age is the thing, but nobody seems entirely clear which one you are in, plus there’s long and short and if you have kids it’s A or B but the ages don’t seem to matter and its a nightmare. And let’s not even get thinking about score and relay.

We really need to make all this simpler, but BOF seem determined to make it even more complex by introducing their batty differential entry fees.

Finally the card; it’s yet another bit of kit to remember and inevitably will get forgotten. If BOF and its adherents are to be believed, we are apparently supposed to charge the extra £2.00 to all who don’t have card, whoever they are “to make the scheme consistent”. So when some well known club member turns up without we’re supposed to penalise them for their forgetfulness. Not designed to help relationships.

So at INVOC events, we will not be penalising non-members by asking for more, nor will we be demanding membership cards. All adults will pay the same fee. The present event registration form doesn’t allow us to publish our actual fee as we are supposed to put the fee plus £2.00 penalty, so remember that all adults will pay £2.00 less than the fee in the fixtures list. Yes more confusion for the newcomers, but there it is.

We hope that there may be others of you who feel the same and encourage you to revolt against this nonsense as well. I might point out to you that the advice to apply this idiotic proposal is entirely advisory and you are under no obligation to do as BOF wishes.

Keith Slater.