Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Renewing as NASPA club

The club as a whole will want to discuss this issue. Formerly in the NSA, we did not have to pay to register as a club, because Hasbro subsidized the NSA, therefore there was no fee for the club to pay. Since the inception of NASPA, this has changed; we are required to pay $30 to register as a club.

This comes with good and bad sides. Good: We have some liability insurance coverage in case anyone is hurt at a NASPA event. Bad: we are required to have a registered director at all club events. Sometimes this just isn't possible for us.

And, who pays this fee? I don't want it to land on Steve and John, they already do so much for us all. It should be covered either by club dues (which we have also not discussed) or by adding to our Local Club Tournament fees.

NASPA has been expressing some dislike of other Scrabble organizations lately as well (read: WGPO) which may cause us some trouble in the future. Their policies on this are still in development.

So, let's spend some time talking this over.. unfortunately, I won't be at club for the next three weeks!

2 comments:

Steve said...

Thanks for bringing this up, Cheryl. I have a few comments to add to this discussion:

1) I agree with letting the club at large decide (hopefully with a decent consensus) whether to continue under the NASPA banner. However, Since John has resigned his NASPA directorship, I would be the sole director (from NASPA's point of view) if we are to continue as a NASPA club, which I'm fine with, if the club as a whole decides to renew NASPA status.

2) Although NASPA recommends it, I don't think it's a requirement for a sanctioned NASPA director to be at every club meeting. That certainly hasn't been the case this year, as there have been many sessions where neither John nor I could attend. If NASPA were to decide to de-list us, it wouldn't be for that reason.

3) I think the benefit of liability coverage is marginal at best. I don't think NASPA has ever been sued by someone getting injured at one of their events, although John may have more info (also being an attorney his opinion probably counts more here :). I also think that most commercial venues like Perkins probably have liability to protect their patrons anyway.

4) Regardless of whether one feels the $30 club fee is excessive, I think it's a small enough figure (especially if several of us chip in) that it shouldn't be a deciding factor in NASPA renewal. I think the main benefit of keeping NASPA status is the publicity and recognition on their website. What is this worth? One thing that might help answer that would be to maybe poll the new folks (who've joined in the past year or so) to see how they found out about the club.

5) One thing that may make this an easy decision in my case is if NASPA goes through with its inclination to disallow its directors to run non-NASPA events. If that happens, I'll follow John's lead and resign my NASPA directorship as well, in which case NASPA will be forced to delist us anyway unless someone else steps up to fill the role of NASPA director for our club.

Anonymous said...

Well if we had a multiplicity of directors, and one was running the other tournaments and the NASPA-registered one was not... do you think they'd let us squeak through that loophole? I think they [what they, it's Mr. Cree] are being whiny kids who want to take their toys and go home b/c someone else wants to play in their sandbox.

I'm not objecting to the fee alone, but when you add the annual fee to the higher game fees, and then the rules changing to whatever flavor they want that season, it's time to "have the talk." The core of our club is tournament players, and we will maintain our personal NASPA registration to play with that bunch. But a lot of our casual players are not, and I don't want them to be bothered with all the politics (and the extra cost as well).

Agreed, let's take a poll. HEY NEW FOLKS: how did you hear about us?

Cheryl