About 60 percent of our membership is under 21, but this per-
centage has been flat over the past seven years. On the other hand, female membership numbers deserve serious study. It appears that over the past year we have doubled the percentage of adult female members as a percentage of the adult population. Another encouraging statistic is that about 16 percent of our under 21 members are girls. This compares to 16 percent one year ago and 13 percent seven years ago. It is clear that we have had growth in the under 21 female category, and interestingly, these mem- bers might be starting to convert to adult members explaining the uptick in female adult memberships. If you recall membership trend discussions in previous del-
egate and board meetings you will remember that we have discussed the membership drop off starting at age 11 in the under 21 category which tells us that a large portion of our member- ship are new members. More detailed analysis of this should be done in a systematic way and reported regularly. These metrics represent opportunities and also challenges. It
is evident that we need to address the conversion of under 21 members into lifetime adult members. We also need to address the question of how to bring casual online players into the organ- ization. We are hoping our launch of online chess will be the first program to address getting new members into the organization. In the past we have had membership drives which we should
study and I suggest we need to seriously consider a promotional membership program for members between 12-21 in which they are given free membership if they maintain a certain level of activity (for example, if
they play a minimum number of games
in USCF rated tournaments; how about 30 games?) Looking at our trends with female members is also quite an eye
opener. Contrast female youth memberships of 16 percent to female adult memberships of 31
⁄2 percent. This suggests that we
are losing most of the females in the scholastic programs with- out conversion to adult membership. However there is a doubling in the percentage of females in the adult membership population, so some conversion is taking place. I suggest that we have an opportunity and should envision new ways to retain our under 21 female members and convert them to adult members while at the same time asking the very difficult question: “Why do we have only 31
percent females in our population of adult members?” Many of our current adult and scholastic members have
⁄2
family members (mothers, sisters, daughters) who play chess, but do not play in tournaments. We need to change this. I think that rather than developing an affirmative action type pro- gram we should instead tap our adult members with an incentive membership program which rewards existing members who bring females into the tournament chess realm. We should also consider publishing Chess Life 4 Girls. The potential in this area is great and should not be overlooked. Moving back to a discussion of scholastic chess. We have a population of parents supporting scholastic tournaments and we should find services to offer them that would be considered valuable to them, and ideally result in more memberships or revenue to USCF from these services. For example, the USCF could offer seminars for parents, analysis service for parents who want a master to give an update on the current state of their child’s game or a team situation, free Internet service at events for those who have family memberships, etc. As an organization which has a substantial membership pool
in the under 12 age range, we must be vigilant to ensure a safe environment at our events and immediately take strong and per- manent action in the case of impropriety. It is important to realize that our customer in the case of scholastic players is the par- ent. We risk losing a membership if a parent feels that any of these concerns exists: the child is unsafe; playing conditions make them unhappy; they dislike the venue, direction and administration of the event, coaching or trainer’s attitudes or methods; or fears there is preferential treatment or impropriety.
uschess.org
Perception is reality and we need to be actively managing our reputation by continuing to seek feedback directly from the parents and continuously improving our events and programs based on that feedback. It is worth noting that we have a major new initiative with the
Boy Scout merit badge program and we should be carefully monitoring the participation and conversion levels. This is the kind of story we need to actively participate in and keep associated accomplishments in the spotlight.
Report on Trips to Represent the USCF Board The Boy Scout program is a good segue into the final section
of my report, which is to tell you what I have been doing since becoming president to promote chess for the USCF community. Since August I have been busy working to promote a positive image of our organization. One important event that I attended was the World Chess Hall of Fame grand opening in St. Louis last September. Following the U.S. Open in Orlando, I travelled to Athens, Greece
in my capacity as secretary of the FIDE Verification Commission. During the time in the FIDE Athens office I also had meetings and discussions about our top issues with various FIDE officials includ- ing FIDE Executive Director David Jarrett, FIDE Treasurer Nigel Freeman, and FIDE Deputy President Georgios Makropoulous. When I returned to the U.S., I played in the Labor Day Chess
Festival in Santa Clara, California and attended meetings of the Northern California Chess Association. On the 1st and 2nd of October I opened the National G/60 and G/30 Championships (also in the Bay Area) on behalf of USCF and also played in the events. As many of you know, I am not a tournament director or an organizer. I play in tournaments and talk to many of our most active members at these events. So far in 2011, I have played in nine tournaments, and played 51 rated games. From the 15th to the 22nd of October, the 82nd FIDE Congress
was held in Krakow, Poland. USCF sent a delegation of seven peo- ple to represent us at the FIDE Congress. Our delegation included Walter Brown, Sophia Rohde, Francisco Guadalupe, Bill Hall, Tony Rich, myself, and Michael Khodarkovsky. Our agenda for the Krakow Congress included ensuring that
norms and titles earned by our players were awarded; lobbying and working to explain our popular five second delay time con- trols, primarily 40/2 followed by SD/1 with five seconds delay starting from the first move; providing input and explanation of our opposition to a long list of proposed new fees; and finally to introduce our new team and actively participate so that we will have more commission members from USCF in the future and thereby achieve better representation of our key issues. Each of the members of our delegation wrote an article which
was published on
uschess.org for Chess Life Online. (You can find them in the October archives.) I am happy to report that all norms and titles earned in five-second delay tournaments that we put on the agenda for consideration were approved. For now, our organizers cannot hold norm events using the delay time control. It is our hope that delay time controls will be approved as an allowed time control for norm tournaments in the future and we are still working towards this end and hope- ful of a positive outcome soon. I continue to communicate by e-mail and phone with our
friends from FIDE to advance USCF interests. We are working with our continental president and other key FIDE officials with our recommendations for commission memberships. I am hopeful that we will have new members on some of the key FIDE commissions in the near future. Zonal President Francisco Guadalupe and USCF Delegate Michael Khodarkovsky gave a more detailed international report later in the meeting.
—Ruth Haring, USCF president See more on the FIDE Congress on page 34. Chess Life — January 2012 9
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