NSRA consultation on membership

[RobF]

http://www.airgunbbs.com/showthread....58#post7782858

[Frog]

I'd be interested to have a legal opinion on this proposal. Intuitively I doubt if requiring people to become members of an organisation could be enforced.
If imposed the result could be airgun clubs disaffliiating. I also doubt if other shooting insurance providers would be happy as they would doubtless loose business.

[Rutty]

I'd be interested to have a legal opinion on this proposal. Intuitively I doubt if requiring people to become members of an organisation could be enforced.
If imposed the result could be airgun clubs disaffliiating. I also doubt if other shooting insurance providers would be happy as they would doubtless loose business.

Nearly every other sport enforces it, shooting is a rare exception. If you don’t want to join you don’t have to, just leave and do your own thing.

Rutty

[Unframed Dave]

Nearly every other sport enforces it, shooting is a rare exception. If you don’t want to join you don’t have to, just leave and do your own thing.

Rutty

Is that right, in the past I have played rugby, badminton, canoed, fished and others. Never had to join anything.

Dave

[Unframed Dave]

Also we appear to have 3 different threads on the same subject. That and a reluctance for some posters to declare their link to the NSRA.

I have to stress that all my dealings with them have been very positive, but this when balancing all 3 threads seems to be very unpopular.

Dave

[Frog]

Nearly every other sport enforces it, shooting is a rare exception. If you don’t want to join you don’t have to, just leave and do your own thing.

Rutty

What I'm saying is I'm already a member of a club and already have insurance. I can not see how the NSRA would make me pay them for membership and for their insurance. I would say they can not enforce it. The NSRA does not write law.
The only thing they could do is tell clubs you are not affiliated to us unless you require your members to pay us for membership and you can not take place in our comps unless your members pay up - i.e. they would have to have the club be their enforcers rather than enforce it themselves. Some clubs might say 'no thanks' and the whole thing could backfire.
They need to be really careful. The motivation for this appears to be they are a failing organisation in terms of membership and income. The long term answer to that is not to try to make people pay it is to do things people want to pay for and probably to cut waste. I'm a non NSRA member but belong to an affliated FT club (for insurance purposes I think).

[Powderfinger]

It is unfortunate that there are two threads running on this and that has stalled the debate.
Whilst it is true that in some sports, club membership requires organisational membership that is not always true. In the case of shooting, there are so many disciplines that there are several organisations and many shooters feel that NSRA only focusses on certain aspects and neglects others. Neglect of FT was one of NSRAs biggest mistakes.
This proposal has perturbed many club shooters because they feel they might suddenly have to pay fees to an organisation that does not cater for them and is using the fees to prop up a declining body. Volunteer club officials will have another admin burden and some tense meetings to explain this to members. I have always found the admin staff at NSRA to be helpful and their two ranges are good but I think it lost its way and the proposal is not the best way forward.

[T 20]

It is unfortunate that there are two threads running on this and that has stalled the debate.

With that in mind, both threads are now merged into this one with a redirect from the FT section directly to this thread.

Hope this helps ?



All the best Mick

[Unframed Dave]

True, the debate has stalled. I've lost interest as my request for people to identify their relationship with the NSRA has been ignored along with my comment above.

Reading everyone's comments it appears there's an awful lot of history and the financial problems of the NSRA are not the responsibility of the shooting public at large.

The comment that all other sports support a representing body is nonsense and the proposer of the suggestion hasn't replied with any argument to support it. I'm all for facts, but arguments being bandied about need to be accurate.

I'm out of the debate from here on in. It's a no from me and if it goes ahead someone, from one of the clubs will find alternative insurance arrangements and that will be the opening of the gate. I doubt this proposal will do much good for the financial position of the NSRA.

Also, bear in mind that the majority of people involved in the running of clubs are volunteers. We don't need any further administrative tasks imposed upon us.

Dave

Dave

[Hemmers]

What I'm saying is I'm already a member of a club and already have insurance. I can not see how the NSRA would make me pay them for membership and for their insurance. I would say they can not enforce it. The NSRA does not write law.
The only thing they could do is tell clubs you are not affiliated to us unless you require your members to pay us for membership and you can not take place in our comps unless your members pay up - i.e. they would have to have the club be their enforcers rather than enforce it themselves. Some clubs might say 'no thanks' and the whole thing could backfire.
They need to be really careful. The motivation for this appears to be they are a failing organisation in terms of membership and income. The long term answer to that is not to try to make people pay it is to do things people want to pay for and probably to cut waste. I'm a non NSRA member but belong to an affliated FT club (for insurance purposes I think).

That's exactly the proposal. The NSRA makes it a condition of affiliation that the club registers all members. Just as RFU Clubs (even down the bottom at Lvl 12) have to register their players and ArcheryGB sign up all members automatically (at a cost of £47/head).

Your club has the choice to go off and affiliate to NRA if it prefers. It is a choice for the club to make - if the majority of the club vote in favour of it then you have the choice to go along with the group or find another club - just as if the committee proposed a £35 increase in subs and the AGM approved it. You would have the choice to pay the raised subs or find a new club. Of course the NRA may follow suit, in which case you simply get a choice of which way to affiliate.

Some clubs might say 'no thanks' and the whole thing could backfire.
They need to be really careful. The motivation for this appears to be they are a failing organisation in terms of membership and income. The long term answer to that is not to try to make people pay it is to do things people want to pay for and probably to cut waste. I'm a non NSRA member but belong to an affliated FT club (for insurance purposes I think).

The clubs that would say "no thanks" are likely ones with few to no individual members already anyway. Club Affiliations account for less than 25% of the NSRA's "Membership Income". Losing a few club affiliations is not a problem if they sign up sufficient members at other clubs.

They have ~800 affiliated clubs at the moment. My back-of-a-napkin maths suggests that they only need ~300 clubs to sign up to this to break-even with their current income (which shows just how pitifully they are being funded by the community at the moment).

Given that this is a preliminary proposal and requires refinement, there's a lot of scope for developing buy-in. FT Clubs are basically unaccounted for at the moment and I agree entirely that the NSRA do a very poor job looking after FT (though they obviously also need to avoid stepping on the toes of the BFTA, it's a unique arrangement of being separate but cooperative which is not working quite right at the moment). If they sat down and were able to work out a sensible and mutually-acceptable deal with the BFTA then that's immediately 70-odd clubs signing up their membership. There are a few gaping holes in their plan which - if filled - make the whole endeavour look fairly sensible. If BFTA want to go off and do their own insurance again, then they can - but they stopped doing it precisely because it was a PITA and the NSRA were able to get them a better deal. I've seen a few comments along the lines of "the NRA and NSRA does sod all for clubs". As far as cartridge shooting goes, your clubs would not exist without the NRA and NSRA because you wouldn't have insurance-acceptable range construction/maintenance guidelines, which means you wouldn't be able to get insurance, which means no sane person would ever volunteer to run a club and personally shoulder the liability risk!

I fully agree the NSRA have taken rather a stick (not carrot) approach over the last few years and been woefully uninventive and uninspiring. I have reason to be tentatively hopeful that this is changing given some recent significant changes on the Board of Management though I continue to have doubts about the CEO. Obviously they need to walk the walk and prove themselves to the community and I continue to beat them with a stick on a regular basis.

But I also think this is the way forward for the sport. You can't expect to be represented in Parliament or have the NSRA fight off airgun licensing if you don't join them. The sport has to pay for that. YOU AND I have to pay for that.

[Phil Russell]

In years gone by when we used to travel around to shoot HFT at different clubs we were only visitors, not club members so I wonder how the NSRA and/or clubs will manage that? A drastic rise in the cost of a shoot as a visitor? No doubt this would increase the admin load already taken by the volunteers. I can see clubs losing members and visitors if this all comes about. Let's hope common sense prevails and the proposal is dropped.
Cheers, Phil

[Rutty]

In years gone by when we used to travel around to shoot HFT at different clubs we were only visitors, not club members so I wonder how the NSRA and/or clubs will manage that? A drastic rise in the cost of a shoot as a visitor? No doubt this would increase the admin load already taken by the volunteers. I can see clubs losing members and visitors if this all comes about. Let's hope common sense prevails and the proposal is dropped.
Cheers, Phil

It’s very straightforward, if you are a member of an affiliated club you will have a NSRA Membership number. Subject to local rules and payment of a visitor’s range fee you will be able to shoot at other affiliated clubs. Clubs that choose not to affiliate will have to make their own arrangements.

Rutty

[Artiglio]

Hemmers, what you say is all well and good but the NSRA are pretty much coming at his from the argument of

“ we’ve performed poorly, planned badly, not communicated well, so you’re going to have to give us your money and trust us”

Not a good message.

My support for the NSRA and the LRC went out the window when i enquired about having some one to one coaching , it was as if i’d asked for a night of physical excess with the female family members of all at the nsra.

There is really no argument for having the NRA and the NSRA, i’ve only used bisley regularly as an NRA member for the last 10 years, i think the place has changed for the better, but the predictable and endless response from those that have much more history with the place is that it should be as it was 30 years ago and with that the shutters come down.

We don’t live in the world of 30 years ago, the NRA have taken this on board and are getting the job done the NSRA need to also move with the times. £35 a year to participate in your chosen pass time is negligible its not the cost that riles people its the way its being suggested and the view that there will be nothing of any real benefit for it, it’ll be seen as a subsidy that allows the NSRA to continue as it is.

Only massive reform is going to alter that viewpoint, “the fund us and we’ll sort it out “ message ain’t going to cut it. Its only chance of working is if clubs decide to go along with it and yet expect nothing in return. Upcoming club AGM’s are going to be fun.