Compensation for Club President

[Jake Di Vita]

What you fail to see is the dedication and sense of responsibility that match staff on every level bring to the tasks required. Money will not improve that, and might actually diminish it. Please think about the single-minded effort you put into making Grandmaster. Look at the time and effort you put into diet, exercise and maintaining your health, and how passionate you are about it.

I don't fail to see that at all. I've put many many hours in designing stages, stats, and helping to run matches on my own time as well. I do know that I would be a better shooter if I were paid to do it. I'm not, so I do what I have to do to get where I want to be. I don't think using you or me as an example in this case is relevant simply because most people have an aversion to doing anything hard. You obviously don't. That makes you special and, unfortunately, a rare breed.

I understand you spend an inordinate amount of time working on matches as a volunteer. If everyone were as committed as you, I don't think we would be disagreeing. But, everyone isn't as committed as you.

So YES, that is exactly what I am saying. When you take something I do for the love of it (my hobbies & taking care of my friends), and make it my "job," you strip all the joy and motivation out of it. For some of us, money is simply not a motivator.

Just because money doesn't motivate you, doesn't mean it won't motivate anyone. Regardless, that's not how I was referring to it.

As I said before, I am in total agreement with you for local and state level matches. I think national level matches could and should be several magnitudes better than local or state matches. Can you give me a better way of doing that without injecting money into the match and staff? Eventually you're going to be limited by man-hours available.

I also think this would make a significant difference for attendance in future matches.

[colt22man]

I am not the club president but I do organize 1 monthly uspsa match and 1 monthly steel match for our club. When I'm really organized, stage design, match prep, scoresheets etc. are complete a week in advance. 4-5 days prior to the match I call responsible hard working club members for a couple hrs. work prior to the match. None of us are paid for our work. My reward are competitors after the match commenting what a great match it was. I try to set up state/sectional type stages, usually 4 plus a classifier. I do allow help who arrive early on match day for final setup to shoot free(first 4 who arrive). I love shooting, I want fairly tough freestyle stages for all competitors to enjoy or learn better technique for future match's. My motivation is to provide competitors a fun safe match everyone will enjoy including myself.

[spanky]

I am not the club president but I do organize 1 monthly uspsa match and 1 monthly steel match for our club. When I'm really organized, stage design, match prep, scoresheets etc. are complete a week in advance. 4-5 days prior to the match I call responsible hard working club members for a couple hrs. work prior to the match. None of us are paid for our work. My reward are competitors after the match commenting what a great match it was. I try to set up state/sectional type stages, usually 4 plus a classifier. I do allow help who arrive early on match day for final setup to shoot free(first 4 who arrive). I love shooting, I want fairly tough freestyle stages for all competitors to enjoy or learn better technique for future match's. My motivation is to provide competitors a fun safe match everyone will enjoy including myself.

Well said.

[Ted Murphy]

Digging up an old thread

5 years ago the local shooters kicked in and gave me an engraved revolver as a gift.

I would not trade it for a million dollars

Sometimes a bottle of booze, a card, or a thank you gift says more than any attempt at monetary compensation.

edited to correct what iPhone auto correct did

Edited March 24, 2011 by Ted Murphy

[Dan Hefta]

Digging up an old thread

5 years ago the local shooters lucked in and gave me an engraved revolver as a gift.

I would not trade it for a million dollars

Sometimes a bottle of booze, a card, or a thank you gift says mire than any attempt at monetary compensation.

Thanks goes a long way in my book... I wish that I heard it more than I do.

[ALBY]

IMHO and speaking as a thoroughly burned out stats officer....

USPSA scoring is simply unacceptable. too many divisions, complicated, time consuming...

just about anyone can help with setup, but the number of people that can effectivly interface with ezwinscore and stagescore/palm scoring is much smaller. our monthly match is 7-8 stages, 50% of them are multigun, and we get about 75-90 shooters. without palms, the entire stats burden is easily over 10 hours. with palms, it is lower, but they have a complicating effect of their own. stats duty has ruined my shooting.

on average it takes 2-3 seasons to train a stats person. i've been doing it for 5 years and i still discover ways to screw up the palms or ezwinscore.

i'm now a big fan of time plus scoring.

if u are not, do a tour in the stats shack of your local match.

something must be done to simplify the administrative end of this sport.

**rant off**

[BillChunn]

USPSA is well aware that this is a volunteer sport. The significant danger is BURNOUT. There was a club in Port Huron Michigan that had a great reputation for outstanding matches, an indoor range for the winter, all kinds of steel targets and interesting stage designs. The optimum word in the previous sentence... was

Stepping in as a match director, fewer and fewer people wanted to help and it eventually turned into myself and one other individual that did everything. Yeah... burned out. No one took over and today that USPSA club no longer exists.

After joining another club and running that for two years, the idea was a smooth turnover to the next guy. That was the focus at the end of year one so at the end of year two, the club continued with a different person in charge. It's a grooming process and a transfer of what has been learned the hard way. Today, that club has not only expanded it's facilities, but has earned it's way into the good graces of the Board of Directors as one of the "money making" groups of shooters. That was 10 years ago. The club is still growing strong, new shooters show up on a regular basis and we are able to shoot 12 months of the year, not something every club in Michigan can claim.

How is that done? Planned turnover for every position. Match Director, Stage Designer, Stats, Registration, Pistol Committee representitive and even RO's so nobody gets burned out. Sure the "old guys" are still around and they help out when they want but it's much nicer to see that they are enjoying the sport as a "trigger puller". They earned it.

Compensation? Not going to happen unless there's significant cash coming in from television rights.... and this sport just does not lend itself to TV. Top Shot proves that on a weekly basis.

HH

[Jim Norman]

Stage Score and pre-registration. Load the majority of your shooters in the night before. Do sign up and squadding on the range as always, Walk-ons get a number. Write their number on the squad list and on their sign in sheet. At the end of the day, download the palms, change the walk-ons to name, div and number as required, do the classification update, delete the unused walk-ons, post to your web site. Let 4 days pass for changes, and then the scores are final, period. send them in. It takes me about three hours for stats now.

Now the sucky part. I HATE, yes HATE, squadding. No matter how you do it, there are people that are not going to be happy and there are squads that will flow and others that will screw up a match. This is an hour of hell once a month. It needs to be done in an orderly fashion regardless of the scoring method. It is separate from stats or it can be.

We do the following and it mostly works:

Online pre-registration. You fill out the form, submit the form, open the acknowledgment email, verify you signed up correctly, Open the registration form, fill it out, then print it and bring it with you to the match. At the match, gather your friends, come up to the sign up table with up to 10 peoples forms all filled out and have your $$ in hand. You are likely to get squadded as a group. If any of your people are registering at the match, let us know and we assign their Walk-On number. Simple (Yeah Right), all a squad needs to have is experienced shooters that can RO (And will RO and run their squad) if the squad has the right people then you are in and our work is simple. The problem starts when the shooters show up towards the end or the sign up period when squadding is pretty much done and suddenly 4 people just have to shoot with Buddy. Sorry, likely ain't a gonna happen.

All in all the system works. Now you mention running a multi-gun event each month concurrent with you USPSA pistol match. Set up a second set of palms for that and run it separately. That can easily be time plus. It is even supported by EZ. Just don't combine the two.

The last bit is and it probably should be the first bit is TRAIN your replacement even if you keep on going like the Energizer bunny for years, with people in the wings you can travel to a different match, go on vacation, work, shoot on occasion without having to work, just plain take a day off. Do it all yourself and in a short time you won't be having any fun and it is likely that your match will suffer and maybe even come to an end. TRAIN YOUR REPLACEMENT. This covers just about every part of life except marriage and raising your kids.

Jim

[Jim Norman]

Oh and I forgot to mention, no body gets paid. Start paying some and it becomes "Their" job not "Our" job. Unless you all want to pay nationals or area prices to shoot club matches and even then you really could not afford in our economy to run a match where there were no volunteers. Payment for the President (and I am the Club President as well as the co-director and stats dude for my club) is a Thank You. I don't want any more than that. I think if this became a job, no matter what it paid, it would still be a job and the enjoyment would go away.

[BillChunn]

Now the sucky part. I HATE, yes HATE, squadding.

The solution for the bigger matches is the USPSA Self-Squadding website.

This is a link to the Ohio Sectional Chanpionship. If you want to shoot with your buddies, send in the forms and the cash early and pick a squad number. Much simpler.

But for the local monthly club match, it's still a pain in the butt.... especially if you get one squad that is twice the size of every other one. When they reach the 30+ round field course, squads start stacking up at that stage very quickly. Especially if the shooters are not pasting and resetting steel.

HH

[jar]

But for the local monthly club match, it's still a pain in the butt.... especially if you get one squad that is twice the size of every other one. When they reach the 30+ round field course, squads start stacking up at that stage very quickly. Especially if the shooters are not pasting and resetting steel.

This is what most of the clubs in the NE section (at least the ones I've visited) do:

Next to sign in is a table with one target on it for each squad(white side up). Shooters write their name and shooter number(at the clubs with palms) on the target. Someone watches the targets, and if one gets un-balanced, it gets turned over until the other squads catch up. People who want to shoot together can have the first guy who gets there put all the names on a squad if they want. This seems to work very well. If you get there late, you're stuck with the shortest squad. If you show up early/on time you can shoot with whoever you want, if you're late, tough.

[Jim Norman]

We have not tried the self-squad list at the match. I think we MIGHT give that a try. The problem is that each squad MUST have embedded RO capability. But just maybe this might limit some of the stress.

The Online self squadding from USPSA works because the Matches in question all have dedicated range staff. At the local level I don't think this is common.

Thanks for the idea.

[Strick]

Squading has become a major pain for me at out IDPA club also. We shoot every wednesday night and the 1st saturday. Lately we have had over 40 shooters at the weekly matches and yep..........they all want to shoot together. On top of that we are getting spread thin on SO's. We have started doing the "self squading" but you are right, knowing how many SO/RO are going to show up is the only hang up. It has helped though .