Report from the Grand Council: July 2004

A. COMMITTEE ACTIVITY

The Grand Council discussed the validity of commentary feedback initiated by the
board. The council spent the majority of this quarter deliberating and
discussing the re-writing of Grand Council Charter. Much headway was made on the
earlier sections and the remainder of the proposed charter should see something
resembling completion by the third quarter. The Grand Council was asked to
review the membership survey data and provide a general synopsis to the board.
The Questionnaire put out to the SCA last fall was overwhelmingly answered by
those with web-access. The numbers do not support any major changes in the
organization of the SCA. A significant majority of those responding do believe,
however, that newsletters and T.I. should be available both to members and
non-members.

B. COMMITTEE STATUS AND COMMENDATIONS

Through the efforts of the nominating committee, the Grand Council numbers were
rounded out with new members. With 42 councillors now, the only remaining
openings are Kingdom appointees from Caid, Atlantia, An Tir, Trimaris, and
Lochac. A new slate of officers assumed their duties this quarter. Chair :
Cathal Mac Edan na faeled, Vice Chair : Hrolf Herjolfssen, Secretary : James
Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, Moderator : Haraldr Bassi, Clerk : Rosalyn MacGregor.

C. PUBLISHABLE SUMMARY

The discussion regarding the process of seeking commentary identified that while
it does not accurately reflect the population of the SCA at large nor the 'will'
of the general populace, it does provide useful feedback from individuals who
show an interest and a general concern. It was also interpreted that the
time-delay involved in the feedback was a necessary cog in the decision-making
process that prevented overly-speedy decisions being made before all of the data
might be in. One concern seemed to be the ineffectiveness of the process that
results in such small returns from given areas. The members of the Grand Council
were also given the task of fine-tune their governing document on request from
the board to be submitted on completion for approval. Putting aside the obvious
'conflict of interest' arguments the members are attempting to provide a
comprehensive, effective document that will enhance their usefulness to the
board itself. Much focus was on a collateral request from the board in the
middle of the discussion to include term limits for Grand Council members. The
concensus regarding this item was that since the Grand Council is a functioning
appendage to the board itself then the request must be actioned accordingly.
However, a significant number of councillors felt that term limits would either
be less useful than the Board hoped or a positive hindrance to the work of the
Council.

REPORT ON THE NUMBERS on the Poll taken in Fall, 2003 (being 38 AS) Flieg
Hollander (adopted as written by the Grand Council)

Overall The answers given generally support the status quo, even the answers by
non-Members. For the few areas where there are a relatively large number of
people who support a change, there is a significant minority opposition to
change. It appears that the vast majority of the participants in the SCA are
reasonably comfortable with the way things are.

The closest thing I saw to a significant desire for change was to make
subscriptions to T.I. (and to a lesser extent the Kingdom newsletters) open to
all rather than being strictly attached to membership. (Ignoring "no opinion":
T.I - Members 71%:21% Non-Members 79%:13%, Newsletters Members 60%:31%,
Non-Members 76%:15%) The only startling thing here is that members as well as
non-members supported openness of publication subscriptions. There was also a
relatively large support for Kingdoms managing subscriptions to their own
Newsletters. There was however, an inconsistency between the answers given for
7a and 7b. It is my opinion that the Board might give some thought to the idea
that Kingdoms could offer independent subscriptions outside of the SCA-managed
membership subscriptions for their Newsletters, if they so wish. They might also
wish to investigate the costs of allowing independent subscriptions to T.I (and
possibly CA). Given that T.I. is already an optional publication, this shouldn't
be that hard to do.

There are several areas where the answers given were inconsistent with the
question. For instance, for the Members poll, there was a tiny fraction of
people who answered 13a that they were non-members, but in question 13b there
were 8% who stated that they were not currently members but had been in the
past.

There were also a (very) few people who reported impossible values for questions
12 and 13c. (It is not possible for a person to have been a paid member for 38
years, nor to have participated for 38 or 39 years at the time the poll was
taken. Even now, I have only participated for 38 years and 2 months, and I was
at the first tourney.)

I was far more fascinated with the answers to the demographic questions than
with the policy questions. It is unfortunate that the raw data was not kept;
analysis of responses compared to Kingdom of origin would have been potentially
revealing.

First off, the ratio of member to non-member responses was about 6:1. IF the
response rates compared to the general populations are similar (i.e. 20% - 25%
of the total populations answered the questionnaire) this would imply that the
rumors of "vast numbers of non-members" are just plain wrong. Even if the
response rate of non-members were half that of the members, the ratio of the
total populations would be 3:1. This is consistent with numbers of non-members
which I have seen in the NMS reporting from the West Kingdom (Only 20% of
attendees are non-members).

A plurality (14%) of non-members have been in less than one year (i.e they are
newcomers). Half of non-members have been in for 6 years or less. Half of
members have been in 9 years or less. In the member numbers there is a bi-modal
distribution with peaks at about 5 years and about 14 years. The answers to
question 12 also show relative spikes at 10, 15, 20 and 25 years, indicating to
me round-off on the part of the responders who have been in for a while, both
members and non-members.

I am at a loss to understand how 24% of non-members could have been members for
less than one year, given that the minimum membership length is one year.

The modal member attends 6-10 events per year, while the modal non-member has
attended 0-5, consistent with the modal non-member being in for less than one
year. (i.e. a substantial number of non-member are newcomers.)

A very large percentage of all respondents have been officers (including
Autocrat) at some level. A relatively large number of respondents have been
officers at more than one level (at least 17% of members responding). The 7% of
current non-members who have served at the Kingdom or Society level should be
queried as to WHY they are currently non-members there may be useful insights
there.

Non-members are generally younger, poorer and less educated (a consequence of
being younger, I suspect, since "Some College" might well translate to
"Student") than are members. However, the average SCA participant is not rich by
any stretch of the imagination. Despite this, most SCA participants donate money
and/or time to other charitable organizations. Most SCA participants are
childless, but there is a significant portion with children and a moderately
large segment of (probably late) teen-aged or just out of it, participants.

I also analyzed the response by Kingdom by normalizing the values to the number
of reported members in the Kingdom. An Tir, Ansteorra, Lochac and the East
responded out of proportion to their numbers. Artemisia and the Outlands were
significantly low in their response. These numbers were nearly equivalent for
members and non-members. Given that the responders were overwhelmingly those who
were net-connected, this suggests a significant bias against those regions of
the US which are under-connected. (I am at a loss to explain the Lochac
numbers.)

The modal age of both members and non-members is in the 25-45 range. This
represents an aging of the SCA demographic compared to the last demographic
survey taken about 15 years ago.

D. CONFIDENTIAL

Nothing to report

Respectfully submitted,

Tom Pilcher, Secretary SCA:James Llewellyn ap Gruffydd - #31393 Barony of
Seagirt, Tir Righ, An Tir

tpilcher@shaw.ca (250) 995-8526