Report from the Grand Council: March, 2002

To the Directors, Greetings.

Items Requiring Board Action

The Grand Council has prepared a list of ideas generated by the discussion on the topic of the 'Value of Membership' for the Board's consideration. While there are many topics of discussion that have arisen from this, the Grand Council has distilled a Proposal from our discussions, which is tendered for action by the Board. All information is included in attached appendices.

The Grand Council would like to continue on this topic another quarter, but request guidance on whether the Board would consider it productive or if new topics are being considered for the Grand Council to discuss..

Policy Interpretations

None at this time.

New Officer Policies

None at this time.

Commendations

The Chairman of the Grand Council would like to thank the following for their hard work putting together the proposals submitted this quarter:

Rosalyn MacGregor, Simone ui'Dunlaingh, Dafydd ap Owain ap Cadell, and as always, Galleron de Crecy

General Status Report

The Council spent several months, as directed by the Board, discussing the values (and weaknesses) of being a member of the SCA, both in the US and outside the US. As a result of that discussion a number of ideas were generated for improving the value of membership and for alternative ways to generate revenue for the Corporation. The list itself was approved without dissent for inclusion in our report. Individual items in the list appear in no particular order, and have not been individually voted on to determine if the Grand Council has a consensus of support for any individual idea. This list of ideas is the result of our brainstorming, presented at face value as such to the Board to facilitate their further brainstorming. This list is included in full in Appendix A.

The Grand Council did not have enough time to develop all of these ideas as much as it would have liked, nor did it attempt to reach a consensus about specific ideas. However one of the recurring themes to our discussions centered on the idea that more facts are needed about membership statistics in order to draw valid conclusions or to make sound strategic decisions. Thus a Proposal on the topic of Membership Data Gathering was voted on and approved without dissent, and is included in appendix B

There are several other proposals in the works, but in general the Grand Council would first like to know the Board's reaction to the information provided herein. The Grand Council has many ideas to play around with but always prefers feedback from the Board on which ideas it would like expanded.

Please note that the Grand council will begin its nominations process this next quarter, as usual.

Publishable Report Summary

The Grand Council has been examining the value of membership, issues related to increasing membership, and issues related to increasing corporate revenue. A membership data gathering proposal and a list of ideas have been submitted for the Board's consideration.

Respectfully submitted

Todd Perkins (Dafydd ap Owain ap Cadell)
Assistant Secretary, Grand Council
7516 Arlington Ave.
Shrewsbury. MO 63119-2123
(314) 645-3107 p3wt3r@swbell.net

cc: directors@sca.org, gc

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                   Appendix A

The Board assigned the Grand Council the task of examining the value
of membership in the SCA. The following are all (or nearly all) of
the ideas we came up with. Inclusion of any item in these lists is
not an indication that the Grand Council has a consensus of support
for that item, especially in "Section 4: Revenue Resource Ideas".

Section 1: US Membership Benefits

The Grand Council has examined the current Membership benefits, and
has further identified the differences between the benefits for US
and Non-US members; an unordered list of those benefits yields the
following:

1) Receive kingdom newsletter
2) Receive TI
3) Access to research and practice of others published in
    newsletters and pamphlets (TI, CA, Kingdom, and local)
4) Eligibility to hold office and fight in crown tourneys
5) Receive mildly preferential treatment in device submissions.
6) Warm fuzzy feelings of belonging
7) Small tax deduction for filing itemized US tax returns
8) Local groups don't have to pay tax or fill out NFP paperwork
9) Same game, same rules - worldwide
10) Avoid occasional event premiums
11) Maintain group status (shire, barony, etc)
12) Maintain SCA-wide publications (O&A, Officer handbooks, Corpora,
      Combat rules & standards, etc)
13) Ability to vote in local polls in some groups (where applicable)


Section 1a: Membership benefits outside US

1) Receive kingdom newsletter
2) Access to research and practice of others published in
    newsletters and pamphlets (TI/ CA/ etc) - if purchased separately
3) Eligibility to hold office and fight in crown tourneys
4) Warm fuzzy feelings of belonging
5) Same game, same rules - worldwide
6) Avoid occasional event premiums
7) Maintain group status (shire, barony, etc)
8) Maintain SCA-wide publications (O&A, Officer handbooks, Corpora,
     Combat rules & standards, etc)
9) Ability to vote in local polls in some groups (where applicable)


Section 2: Weaknesses of US Membership:

The Grand Council has also discussed the weaknesses of membership for
both US and Non-US members and come up with the following unordered
lists:

1) Lack of customer service
2) Lack of universal membership franchise (voting) at local,
    regional, and Society level
3) Lack of loyalty to corporation (or perceived lack of reason
    for loyalty on the part of members in general)
4) Perception that Corporation is not in touch with general
membership
5) Must pay extra for reliable postage
6) Few members understand liability policy and role of General
    Liability Insurance
7) Current system doesn't require membership to play
8) Membership not convinced that Corporate infrastructure is
    essential to perpetuation of Game
9) Membership does not understand how membership dollars are spent


Section 2a: Weaknesses of membership for Non-US members:

  ALL OF THE ABOVE, plus:
10) No NFP tax compliance benefits to groups
11) Receive either newsletter or TI, not both as with US membership
12) Significant newsletter delivery time issues
13) Significant currency exchange rate issues
14) No tax deduction for membership contribution


Section 3: Membership Improvement Ideas:

With these in mind, the Grand Council recommends that the Board
investigate the following possibilities to improve membership:

- Revisit the World Proposal
- Unbundle TI from membership
- Improve TI / CA, investigate on-demand publishing towards
   regionalization of issues
- Provide other publication alternatives (ie: offer purchase of
   back issues, other publications, choices of publications to
   be bundled with membership)
- Offer multiyear memberships
- Offer other insurance benefits to membership
- Offer web-based services (ie: online renewal, purchase of
   items from stock clerk, SCA brand/trademark merchandise)
- Offer password-protected member-only online resources(handbooks,
   research materials, annual reports, back issues of TI, etc.)
- Offer Corporate Discount deals with airlines, auto rental,
   hotels, museums, etc.
- Institute a Public Relations campaign to "sell" corporation to
   non-members and to inform how corporation benefits members.
- Offer membership more conveniently by instituting a kingdom
   office to register new memberships at events. Provide training
   for this new office.
- Offer Student/senior discounts (proof of age and/or school
   status necessary)
- Improve communications from board, timetable of board minutes, etc.
- Re-institute membership class "H"
- Restructure membership so that different 'levels' or bundles of
   benefits could be purchased for different prices
- Develop corporate business plan, vision, goals; share plans with
   membership in annual report.


Section 4: Revenue Resource Ideas:

The Grand Council has discussed the issue of increasing revenue for
the corporation and recommends that the Board investigate the
following ideas for additional revenue sources:

- Actively seek Bequests, Trusts from membership
- Actively pursue obtaining grants
- Actively pursue corporate underwriting/sponsorship
- Re-examine the issues surrounding non-member surcharges
- Consider instigating an event charge to groups based on
                a) percentage of total revenue,
                b) flat fee per event,
    or          c) fee graduated per attendee per diem
- Institute branch memberships
- Franchise out sale of SCA Brand/Trademarked products T-shirts,
   mugs, mousepads, pins, logo, etc)
- Franchise "SCA, Inc" to Non-US groups/corporations and provide
   a tangible benefit summary to accompany.
- Require any/all non-member surcharges currently being collected
   to be sent to Corporation
- Sell SCA-brand e-mail addresses, web services
- Sponsor SCA-brand credit cards
- Investigate ways to cut corporate costs, including the option
   of moving to a less expensive location
- Develop corporate business plan, vision, goals. Share plans with
   membership in annual report.
- Investigate outsourcing possibilities to reduce costs where
   applicable
- Institute Merchant Memberships with additional perks to
   merchants (Advertizing discounts, etc)
- Institute Organizational Memberships with minimal benefits(for
   College Groups, Libraries, other organizations), could be used
   in concert with corporate sponsorships as well.
- Re-institute lifetime memberships for suitable fee
- Sell annual special-edition membership tokens to members only.
- Pursue an aggressive program for advertiser-based sponsorship of
   SCA publications, (may necessitate a volunteer or paid staff
   position)
- Consider selling single event memberships for a small fee to
   non-members at events Note: this would not be a non-member
   surcharge; it would be a single-event membership that would
   be as valid as yearly memberships and convey some of the
   benefits, but limited in duration.



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                   Appendix B


Membership Data Gathering Proposal

Without adequate information about population trends nor exit surveys
of those failing to renew SCA membership, the Grand Council can only
guess at the extent and cause of membership stagnation. We are
proposing a number of ideas for the Board to investigate which we
believe will help recruiting, retention, and corporate financing,
however we believe that better data will support better planning.

Thus, the Grand Council suggests that the Board of Directors
investigate the possibility of using market research professionals,
overseen by a Society member with a suitable professional background
to conduct a study including but not limited to:
   1) recruiting rates,
   2) retention rates,
   3) churn,
   4) Society demographics,
   5) recruiting patterns,
   6) reasons for separating from the Society,
   7) subscription rates relative to the participant population,
   8) subscription churn rate,

We additionally suggest this study should commence as soon as
possible and should be completed within twelve months.



Possible reasons for the decline in membership are:

1) The 'value' of a membership has declined (as defined so far in our
discussion with a cost/benefit approach).

2) The SCA was founded as a distinct sub-culture within a particular
time in history.  It answered various needs in its members at that
time/place. Given that the world has changed (and not just with 11
Sept - but over 30-odd years) we might need to ask if the SCA is
still relevant.
  a) If it is possibly relevant, how does it need to change
     to bring it more in line with current tastes so as to
     resume growth, or
  b) If it is a relict of history, but many enjoy playing it
     still, how do we change it to a non-growth model to
     preserve it as long as possible.

3)  As a sub-culture the SCA attracts people of a certain sub-set of
tastes and background.  With demographic change (we are all getting
older) our tastes may have changed somewhat and the SCA (which has
stayed the same ? or has moved in a different direction) is no longer
addressing these.

4) Our tastes have not changed, but we have inadequately socialized
many new attendees.  This means that they have their own
interpretation of the SCA, which differs markedly from that
originally, held as members were inadequately transferred. This means
that the SCA has moved away from its (original) members.

5) As the SCA has grown, so groups have increased in size. Baronies
become large enough to be Principalities etc and some Shires may be
larger than Baronies.  People have evolved to handle ready
interaction within a group that has roughly (depending on certain
factors) 30 to 100 members.  Many have difficulty strongly
identifying and feeling altruistic towards larger groups (unless they
can reify them eg into a 'Nation' when the loyalty again becomes
personal).  This means that with growth the person can become
alienated.  The primary reason people stay in any volunteer group is
not the philosophy that the group may have or its ostensible purpose
for being, but that they feel at home with the people they interact
with.  They are friends.  They are 'people like us'.  Even if we
disagree with them, we know that we will both put our disagreements
aside for the good of the group.  As a group grows and alienation
spreads, this altruism declines and people see the group more as
'them' than as 'us' {as an aside - this process is increased in
geographical groups that have strong households}.  Note that this is
particularly the case with SCA Inc.  Because it is large and people
have little input into the corporate body, it is readily seen (and
demonized) into 'the other' - the source of all problems - the
'evil'.

6) Ownership of the SCA may perhaps be perceived as no longer vesting
with the members, but with small elite groups.  These could be the
BOD, the Peers, Royal Peers or any other local group seen as holding
onto power. This will again lead to alienation (see above) regardless
of the size of the group.  Note that this is most likely to be a
possible cause of alienation in Kingdoms with a restricted Crown List
or in Baronies which have not changed B&B for 5 years or more (ie an
SCA generation).

7) (Similar to 2 but a different focus) Society has totally changed.
We (and I am being very general here) are now a more litigious
society with less sense of community, being one with the Pharisees in
relying on strict interpretation of rules rather than a set of
values.  Seeing that the SCA was founded around core values, a move
to a more instrumental society makes us, as a group, increasingly
irrelevant.  This is a problem that will affect numbers in the USA
more than the rest of us as the USA is the trend-setting country in
this regard.


8) (Possibly a sub-set of 7)  By far the most important thing
identified by respondents to my thesis work as something they 'hated'
about the SCA was 'politics'.  In interviews this was pursued to see
what people meant by this.  It came down to a lack of courtesy.
People had joined the SCA (generally and at least in part) out of a
Romantic sense that there had to be a better way than the way they
saw society heading.  When they saw the SCA (or its members) behaving
instrumentally, becoming rules oriented rather than people oriented,
or having feet of clay (eg rhino-hiding their way to the top or any
other inappropriate behavior) then they become disillusioned.  It is
possible that cumulative disillusion is coming to a head, or again,
that alienation from the group exists (ie people still see themselves
with 'The Dream' but cannot see others as holding it).  Note that
this does not need to be real - merely perceived.

9) Demographic change (not wholly age related).  Whether we like it
or not, it is characteristic of western societies that there is an
increasing divide between income groups.  Whereas the tendency was
previously towards embourgeousment (a consolidation of social groups
into the middle class), today we are seeing a fragmentation as
downsizing and the move to a part-time and casual workplace occurs.
The SCA is a luxury activity.  The first thing to suffer in
interaction with the SCA is the part that means least to us.  For
many people in an income bind this is membership.  (BTW don't dismiss
the cost of a membership as trivial - for a person on welfare it
isn't - particularly if a real bill comes in at the same time).

10) What we are seeing is simply an artifact that has arisen because
we are not looking over a sufficient timescale.  To determine if this
is the case, we would need to look at membership numbers each year,
and possibly new and renewed numbers.  We could then plot these using
a trend analysis (possibly utilizing a Henderson 13 point moving
average) to see if we are seeing a real change or something that
disappears.  We do not regard this as likely, but it is a possible
explanation and the only one that can be empirically tested easily.
Note that if there is a real decline, but it is only recent, then
this analysis will tend to disguise it.  Updating the moving average
each year is, however, fairly simple.