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[Schutzenmeister]

19 minutes ago, shred said:

"Staff reset" is different from "ROs reset" in the IPSC world. 

 

Works best in places where there's a supply of labor that doesn't need or want to RO.  You can run matches very efficiently and conveniently that way if you can get the cash and bodies to match up, but figure 3 setters per stage * number of stages * number of days * day labor rate.

 

IPSC actually recommends 1 person to reset for every 6 rounds fired in a stage.  I think that may be a bit much, but the concept of 1 resetter for every x rounds in a stage is a good rule of thumb.  That is, of course, if the match can AFFORD it.

[shred]

36 minutes ago, Schutzenmeister said:

IPSC actually recommends 1 person to reset for every 6 rounds fired in a stage.  I think that may be a bit much, but the concept of 1 resetter for every x rounds in a stage is a good rule of thumb.  That is, of course, if the match can AFFORD it.

 

OK, a bit of quick scratch-math for 4 setters/stage (24 round stages IPSC-count)

 

Say 18 stage 3 day match.  216 setter-person-days.  If you can find enough people locally that will do it for $100 a day (high in some parts of the world, low in others), $21,600 of the match budget.  About $60/shooter cost for 360-ish shooters (squads of 10, 6 stages/day, AM/PM), $50 if you go to 12 shooter squads. 

 

I hear "get rid of the prize table and use the $ for setters" in the distance now.  Find some match finances and see how much is spent on prizes, it's usually not much and prize table sponsors are very reluctant to give cash instead.

[motosapiens]

17 hours ago, Sarge said:

He lost me at 36 minutes when he said all major matches should be staff reset. That will always be a hard no from me.

same here. partly because i am cheap and would rather spend the money on more shooting, and partly because i shoot better when i reset and stay mentally involved in the match instead of sitting on my fat azz and smoking cigarettes and talking about myself.

Edited February 4 by motosapiens

[858]

11 minutes ago, shred said:

 

OK, a bit of quick scratch-math for 4 setters/stage (24 round stages IPSC-count)

 

Say 18 stage 3 day match.  216 setter-person-days.  If you can find enough people locally that will do it for $100 a day (high in some parts of the world, low in others), $21,600 of the match budget.  About $60/shooter cost for 360-ish shooters (squads of 10, 6 stages/day), $50 if you go to 12 shooter squads. 

 

I hear "get rid of the prize table and use the $ for setters" in the distance now.  Find some match finances and see how much is spent on prizes, it's usually not much and prize table sponsors are very reluctant to give cash instead.

 

Staff/RO labor, and Associated costs for labor, were greater than 60% of the total cost of the 2022 CO Nationals. Nationals are heavily subsidized by the membership; ie lose money. It appears that Nationals has become RO payola with stipends, lodging, banquets, and gifts. 2024 CO Nations are $400 per shooter to enter and are estimated to still lose roughly $300 per shooter. This is a fairly compelling reason why local clubs should run outlaw matches. If the USPSA won't clean up it's spending there is no reason to run their matches. 

[18111811]

How do you get competent volunteers to staff these matches for free?  Having worked the VA state match a handful of times (but no longer), I had to dedicate 4 days, with 2 days off from work, to volunteer.  Meals were covered but I lived close enough (90 min away) that I didnt take the shared hotel room that was offered.  I know other ROs came from much further away and some people took off a week plus prior to the match to build the stages.  While I agree that the money situation is a s#!t show, I cant see how you can draw people into volunteer, and keep the stages running smoothly, without covering costs of food/lodging for volunteers.  Im on the fence on the travel costs to get down there as there may be a middle ground between contracting stage builders/resetters vs flying people in and potentially hiding money spent on board members to be there within the volunteer line item of the budget.

Edited February 4 by 18111811

[858]

22 minutes ago, 18111811 said:

How do you get competent volunteers to staff these matches for free?  

 

You don't. You charge enough to cover the overall cost and you don't hold 87 different nationals. Maybe even hold the events in places with more people, lower cost lodging, and existing large facilities. Crazy, I know.

[Joe4d]

24 minutes ago, 18111811 said:

How do you get competent volunteers to staff these matches for free?  Having worked the VA state match a handful of times (but no longer), I had to dedicate 4 days, with 2 days off from work, to volunteer.  Meals were covered but I lived close enough (90 min away) that I didnt take the shared hotel room that was offered.  I know other ROs came from much further away and some people took off a week plus prior to the match to build the stages.  While I agree that the money situation is a s#!t show, I cant see how you can draw people into volunteer, and keep the stages running smoothly, without covering costs of food/lodging for volunteers.  Im on the fence on the travel costs to get down there as there may be a middle ground between contracting stage builders/resetters vs flying people in and potentially hiding money spent on board members to be there within the volunteer line item of the budget.

you get volunteers by making it a volunteer sport..  And by that I mean If I am volunteering my time and labor to RO or CRO an area match,, I expect the president, directors, RM's MD's to be doing the same. But ummm yeh.. we know that aint happening.  I am not volunteering so a handful of people can get a free ride..

[Fishbreath]

4 hours ago, 858 said:

It appears that Nationals has become RO payola with stipends, lodging, banquets, and gifts.

 

Lodging isn't really optional. Almost every major match pays that cost for staff if you take a roommate. The RO gift at 2023 CO Nationals was a jersey. Memory might be faulty, but I don't remember a separate staff banquet. The stipend was $25/day. They reimbursed travel costs of up to $375. The last two points are the major differentiators over ordinary major match staff packages, but neither strikes me as excessive when you want the most qualified staff you can get, and you need twice as many (roughly) as your average level 2. I was the only person on my stage who didn't have at least a CRO certification. A large proportion of the difference comes from the fact that Nationals is longer, and daily expenses (hotel, mainly) run higher when your staff is on site for five or six days instead of two or three.

 

Charging people enough to cover the costs (see the hike to $400 for 2024 Nationals) has social media howling with outrage.

 

[correction: there was a staff dinner at the Cardinal Center campground's event hall; don't know why it slipped my mind.]

Edited February 4 by Fishbreath

[858]

34 minutes ago, Fishbreath said:

 

Charging people enough to cover the costs (see the hike to $400 for 2024 Nationals) has social media howling with outrage.

 

That's why it was raised. The corporate staff is trying to avoid changing by showing the higher entrance fee upsets participating members. The problem is less than 1% of the USPSA membership actually attends national matches. And yeah, by all outward appearances, nationals are the good-times subsidy. 

 

I don't actually care about your (the royal you) experience at nationals. I don't want to pay for it. That is a common sentiment too. I think the new BoD are on board with making nationals revenue neutral, or as close as they can get. I suspect when the old guard is gone you will start to see changes with the structure of nationals. Boomer vacations aren't terribly interesting to the younger members. 

Edited February 4 by 858

[ltdmstr]

Fall Classic in Rolla MO the past couple years they had volunteers from Ft. Leonard Wood reset stages.  Cost them nothing and military folks got community service credits for doing the work.  Good deal for all involved.

[motosapiens]

4 hours ago, 858 said:

 

Staff/RO labor, and Associated costs for labor, were greater than 60% of the total cost of the 2022 CO Nationals. Nationals are heavily subsidized by the membership; ie lose money. It appears that Nationals has become RO payola with stipends, lodging, banquets, and gifts. 

this begs the question, how many nationals have you RO’d? if the compensation is so overly generous, why isn’t it enough to convince you to take advantage of it?

[motosapiens]

2 hours ago, 858 said:

 The problem is less than 1% of the USPSA membership actually attends national matches.

i don’t know much about your area, but i md’d at my local club in idaho yesterday. 48 shooters (not bad for a damp winter day). by my count at least 13 of the shooters have competed at nationals in the last couple years.

 

i know when i go to nats i always enjoy myself.

[motosapiens]

3 hours ago, Fishbreath said:

 

Charging people enough to cover the costs (see the hike to $400 for 2024 Nationals) has social media howling with outrage.

after asking a few questions on fb, it appears that much of the howling is coming from people who don’t even go to nationals, and many are not active at all in the sport anymore.

 

one of complaints i read that was at least from an active competitor was from an individual who has a years-long reputation (at multiple clubs) of never helping with setup or teardown.

Edited February 4 by motosapiens

[Rich406]

Covering or offsetting the cost of volunteer ROs isn’t unreasonable.  Hotel rooms, fuel, food, plane tickets etc have increased dramatically since Covid. Everything is more expensive.

 

Asking a volunteer to essentially pay for volunteering is a good way to get no volunteers.   

[Schutzenmeister]

7 minutes ago, Rich406 said:

 

Asking a volunteer to essentially pay for volunteering is a good way to get no volunteers.   

 

"Volunteering" in this context = Working your butt off ...

[Fishbreath]

2 hours ago, 858 said:

Boomer vacations aren't terribly interesting to the younger members. 

 

As Schutzenmeister said above, I can't imagine anyone who's actually worked a major match characterizing it as a vacation. It's a substantially harder weekend than shooting one as a competitor.

[RJH]

I had to reread it twice because it was written poorly, but it looks like what 858 is getting at is not that ro's shouldn't be compensated but, that compensation should be rolled into higher match fees and not subsidized by the organization. In other words not subsidized by all the members that are not interested in shooting Nationals. 

 

I don't think the Boomer vacation comment was directed at the ro's but, more directed at the discount that people shooting Nationals are getting since Nationals is so heavily subsidized by the organization.

 

Like I say, it was written kind of strange so maybe I'm missing it. But that's kind of what I think he was trying to get at. Maybe he doesn't like to have to pay a higher membership fee if that fee is going to subsidize an event that he doesn't care to participate in. Kind of like when you get taxed for a program that doesn't pertain to you at all but, you get to help pay for it anyway

[858]

1 hour ago, motosapiens said:

after asking a few questions on fb, it appears that much of the howling is coming from people who don’t even go to nationals, and many are not active at all in the sport anymore.

 

one of complaints i read that was at least from an active competitor was from an individual who has a years-long reputation (at multiple clubs) of never helping with setup or teardown.

 

So you think members that don't go to nationals should pay for the members that do go to nationals? It should not come as a surprise there is a contingency of members that don't want the organization to change. Membership fees and level 1 match fees are paying for the revenue shortfalls of the national matches. 

Edited February 4 by 858

[motosapiens]

19 minutes ago, 858 said:

 

So you think members that don't go to nationals should pay for the members that do go to nationals? It should not come as no surprise there is a contingency of members that don't want the organization to change. Membership fees and level 1 match fees are paying for the revenue shortfalls of the national matches. 

i don’t much care one way or another. maybe im unusually successful but membership fees and level 1 match fees are pretty negligible from my perspective. i literally pay more than 20x as much on ammo and travel costs to shoot local and level 2 matches.

 

$40 membership +30-ish local matches ($4 each goes to uspsa) means i’ve been sending about $160 of my hard earned dollars to uspsa each year. that seems pretty cheap considering how much i enjoy the sport 

 

i paid more (and got less) from ama membership when i was racing motorcycles, and i pay more (and get less) from usahockey membership. it wouldn’t surprise me and i wouldn’t care if both orgs are using some of that money to subsidize national programs. that seems like a reasonable expense for a national organization. nonetheless i think it would be wise for the org to take some steps towards greater fiscal responsibility.

Edited February 4 by motosapiens

[Chills1994]

1 hour ago, Rich406 said:

Covering or offsetting the cost of volunteer ROs isn’t unreasonable.  Hotel rooms, fuel, food, plane tickets etc have increased dramatically since Covid. Everything is more expensive.

 

Asking a volunteer to essentially pay for volunteering is a good way to get no volunteers.   

I SO’ed the 2007 IDPA Nationals (near Allentown, PA).

 

Then I RO’ed the 2008 Single Stack Nat’s at PASA Park, IL.

 

I got way more schwag and free clothes/uniforms from the IDPA nat’s than anything I got from USPSA.

 

In fact, there was a hotel room SNAFU at the 2008 SS Nat’s.  Nobody wanted to do anything to fix the situation until somebody higher up on the food chain overheard me on the phone giving driving directions to my  girlfriend to come pick me up (after the RO only day of shooting in the mud and rain before the regular competitors got to shoot the match….not in the rain.)
 

And then on the last day for the RO only schwag and gun drawings, my name and my carpool buddy’s name were intentionally left “out of the hat” because I raised a stink about the hotel room situation.

 

That was the last time I SO’ed/RO’ed a Nat’s level event.

[858]

1 minute ago, motosapiens said:

i paid more (and got less) from ama membership when i was racing motorcycles, and i pay more (and get less) from usahockey membership. it wouldn’t surprise me and i wouldn’t care if both orgs are using some of that money to subsidize national programs. that seems like a reasonable expense for national organization. nonetheless i think it would be wise for the org to take some steps towards greater fiscal responsibility.

 

AMA went bankrupt and only sanctions MX and SX now. They are a for profit corporation and generate revenue from national events.

[motosapiens]

5 minutes ago, 858 said:

 

AMA went bankrupt and only sanctions MX and SX now. They are a for profit corporation and generate revenue from national events.

haha, probably because they wasted so much of my money on the national offroad events. we raced several hare and hounds and national enduros in 2008-2009 timeframe. shooting seems awfully cheap in comparison.

 

oddly enough, the enduros are still advertised as “ama national enduro series “, so perhaps i should have facebook fact-check your post.

Edited February 4 by motosapiens

[shred]

Does anyone subsidize Area matches?   I can't recall that ever being a thing, so it would give a decent ground floor on what the per-match costs really are for a Nationals.

 

Just threw out a bunch of old cancelled checks.. it's amazing what L2 and L3 match fees were in 1997   $65 was a lot.

 

 

[MHicks]

Never been to nationals but I try to make several Level 2  or above matches each year. I haven't seen full staff reset but some matches do have staff reset of activators and moving targets. I do like that for consistency.  You should be able to demonstrate to a squad how to reset them but sometimes you still have problems. 

[zzt]

6 hours ago, shred said:

 

OK, a bit of quick scratch-math for 4 setters/stage (24 round stages IPSC-count)

 

Say 18 stage 3 day match.  216 setter-person-days.  If you can find enough people locally that will do it for $100 a day (high in some parts of the world, low in others), $21,600 of the match budget.  About $60/shooter cost for 360-ish shooters (squads of 10, 6 stages/day, AM/PM), $50 if you go to 12 shooter squads. 

 

I hear "get rid of the prize table and use the $ for setters" in the distance now.  Find some match finances and see how much is spent on prizes, it's usually not much and prize table sponsors are very reluctant to give cash instead.

 

There are ways around that.  For example, the PA State Trap shoot hires local high school students to do the scoring, loading the traps, picking up spent shells, etc.  Works like a charm.  There are usually more girls than boys.

 

When I was Treasurer at my local Trap club, we hired the girls from 7-11.  We paid them $11/hr. back then.  It was more than they made at 7-11, so they always arranged their work schedule so they would be available for our matches.  They did a tremendous job.  Shooters loved them.  They each took an average of $30 home in tips, on top of their pay.