22-04-2013, 09:43 PM
I've read previous postings on this subject with great interest.
As someone who has been rebuffed by potential funders on several occasions in the past six or seven years, (a sort of hobby of mine, you understand (:-)), what CS is being put through comes as absolutely no surprise to me at all. My successful bids, I have to say, were not Chess-related at all.
What little I have learned about this difficult business seems to tell me that if you want to buy rump steak, you should not go to the fishmonger's. Year on year, the market for funding becomes increasingly sophisticated and competitive and many bodies now see fit to employ professionals to obtain funding. Ironically, local organisations, able to show a benefit, seem to be favoured over national ones which tend to have a much broader and comprehensive remit.
It strikes me very forcibly that CS is a national body, which is clearly geared towards supporting a public good. It is encouraging participation in a pursuit that has as many adherents (on the quiet) as football does. It is completely ignored by a myopic Scottish Executive that seems to place active sport on a pedestal but , at the same time appears to regard Chess as little more than a pass-time for bored pensioners with little else to occupy their time.
That risible out-dated myth has to be dispelled once and for all-now!
For years, I've been advocating the need to appoint a development officer. Marketing, incidentally, is not quite the same animal as development though there are obvious links between the species. No one in the Directorate has ever said to me at any time that it would not be a good idea to have a development officer. The idea has been generally accepted, in principle, but never followed through on. A development officer would not, BTW, be solely concerned with fund-raising projects but generating funding would be part of his or her overall remit. Essentially, a D.O. would be the 'public face' of the organisation, so he or she would not be a shrinking violet of any sort! =) S/He would have to be given total freedom to operate and use his/her own initiative in terms of the strategy to be adopted and the support network to be established.
Is it really a problem for us to seize this great opportunity to raise the national profile of Chess?
I suspect that fear of change, complacency and systemic inertia have contributed to the syndrome we're confronted with.
At some level, what has happened recently may indeed prompt CS to do what I had first suggested six or seven years ago at an AGM. It need not cost the organisation an 'arm and a leg' , in my opinion. A 'payment by results' compensation system should attract the sort of ' get-up-and-go' individual who would be suitable for that post and run with it successfully.
Leaving that long-standing proposal aside I do hope that, in the much shorter term, all members will follow up on David Deary's suggestion to contact their local MSPs about all this.
If Chess Scotland were to prepare a petition to go before the Scottish Government,I would willingly sign it. I believe that only 200 names are required for it to be placed on the business agenda of the Scottish Parliament. Is it not high time the Scottish public was made aware of the way that Chess is being purposely marginalised instead of encouraged as it is, notably, in the rest of Europe, America, Scandinavia and India?
In my opinion, Chess Scotland, a national representative body, should not have to go cap in hand to anyone for financial support. State education is paid for out of the public purse and I see Chess as being ,amongst other things, an excellent form of lifelong-learning . It may, indeed, begin in schools or in the parental home but, unlike a lot of more physically demanding activities, can be continued as a pursuit or activity until a person is in his nineties (or beyond!)
Why,then, arbitrarily remove it from the education budget?
I await your comments!
Chris
As someone who has been rebuffed by potential funders on several occasions in the past six or seven years, (a sort of hobby of mine, you understand (:-)), what CS is being put through comes as absolutely no surprise to me at all. My successful bids, I have to say, were not Chess-related at all.
What little I have learned about this difficult business seems to tell me that if you want to buy rump steak, you should not go to the fishmonger's. Year on year, the market for funding becomes increasingly sophisticated and competitive and many bodies now see fit to employ professionals to obtain funding. Ironically, local organisations, able to show a benefit, seem to be favoured over national ones which tend to have a much broader and comprehensive remit.
It strikes me very forcibly that CS is a national body, which is clearly geared towards supporting a public good. It is encouraging participation in a pursuit that has as many adherents (on the quiet) as football does. It is completely ignored by a myopic Scottish Executive that seems to place active sport on a pedestal but , at the same time appears to regard Chess as little more than a pass-time for bored pensioners with little else to occupy their time.
That risible out-dated myth has to be dispelled once and for all-now!
For years, I've been advocating the need to appoint a development officer. Marketing, incidentally, is not quite the same animal as development though there are obvious links between the species. No one in the Directorate has ever said to me at any time that it would not be a good idea to have a development officer. The idea has been generally accepted, in principle, but never followed through on. A development officer would not, BTW, be solely concerned with fund-raising projects but generating funding would be part of his or her overall remit. Essentially, a D.O. would be the 'public face' of the organisation, so he or she would not be a shrinking violet of any sort! =) S/He would have to be given total freedom to operate and use his/her own initiative in terms of the strategy to be adopted and the support network to be established.
Is it really a problem for us to seize this great opportunity to raise the national profile of Chess?
I suspect that fear of change, complacency and systemic inertia have contributed to the syndrome we're confronted with.
At some level, what has happened recently may indeed prompt CS to do what I had first suggested six or seven years ago at an AGM. It need not cost the organisation an 'arm and a leg' , in my opinion. A 'payment by results' compensation system should attract the sort of ' get-up-and-go' individual who would be suitable for that post and run with it successfully.
Leaving that long-standing proposal aside I do hope that, in the much shorter term, all members will follow up on David Deary's suggestion to contact their local MSPs about all this.
If Chess Scotland were to prepare a petition to go before the Scottish Government,I would willingly sign it. I believe that only 200 names are required for it to be placed on the business agenda of the Scottish Parliament. Is it not high time the Scottish public was made aware of the way that Chess is being purposely marginalised instead of encouraged as it is, notably, in the rest of Europe, America, Scandinavia and India?
In my opinion, Chess Scotland, a national representative body, should not have to go cap in hand to anyone for financial support. State education is paid for out of the public purse and I see Chess as being ,amongst other things, an excellent form of lifelong-learning . It may, indeed, begin in schools or in the parental home but, unlike a lot of more physically demanding activities, can be continued as a pursuit or activity until a person is in his nineties (or beyond!)
Why,then, arbitrarily remove it from the education budget?
I await your comments!
Chris