Discussion: Entry fees for orienteering

Over the last few year several threads have touched on the cost of entry fees indirectly in relation to promoting the sport, online registration, professional course planners, and club sustainability. The recent review of US 'club sustainability' highlighted that the average cost per event in the US was well below $10. Has anybody examined the cost of entry fees over the last say 25 years? have they even kept pace with inflation? Given that maps are better today, courses are generally better planned, we have splits, and SI and route gadget at our races that we didn't have before have these extra services ever been factored in to entry fees?

Entry fees in my opinion are far far too low if a club also wants to run any decent non-event related program like marketing, athletic development, kids programs, adult clinics, etc, etc. They CAN do it if they are large enough have enough volunteers but can they sustain it without more money to pay for some professional services like mapping, marketing, course design, arena management, SI etc? Thoughts?

The sport is facing an identity crisis in my opinion. Half the people want only to hang a bunch of markers and run in the woods with their friends...how much do you need to charge for that? It's the KISS philosophy...which I admit has a lot of appeal.

And it seems there's a smaller group that would like to "grow" the sport, with the development programs you describe.

OUSA has aligned with the second group...for the time being. I would like MORE orienteering all of the time. So I align with the second group too. But I'm concerned that some of the attractions that brought me into the sport will be lost...not the least of which were those low fees!

I don't think it's impossible to have both. As a matter of fact - if done right I think it's pretty easy.

There obviously needs to be marketing and developmental programs for the sport to grow. I think costs for bigger races can afford to increase but I seriously do not believe that the cost for all races has to go up. The training or C level meet will not disappear and those provide the perfect opportunity for people that want the simplicity of grabbing a map and heading off into the woods. These meets can be kept small with not much infrastructure, no SI (unless volunteers are interested in doing so...), etc.

Permanent courses are a great way of providing cheap orienteering and promoting the sport at the same time. Grab a map for a dollar (or even as a promotional freebie!) and go and run the course and take your own splits. At the entrance to the park with the course there can be a bulletin with information about the permanent orienteering course, what is orienteering, why running permanent courses is an excellent and cheap way to add variety to your regular workout routine... you get the idea. In my mind much more thought should be put into permanent courses as they provide something for every level of orienteer and good publicity if done properly.

Lastly, as a club grows it should not focus solely on one level of meet. It is important to provide meets to meet the needs of everyone in the club. As a club grows from holding b-meets every second weekend for example it would perhaps be wise to add training events on every other weekend which would meet the low cost criterion instead of trying to stretch too thin and add a bunch more b-meets.

The fact that clubs hold trail-run "fundraisers", where they can hit the unsuspecting profligators with $20 and keep that to support their $3-a-member habit that's far more costly to produce? priceless.

Our fees are set to just cover costs, and they do that just fine. That includes costs of new map production (supplemented with the occasional A-meet to kick off a new map). We raised them recently to pass on the new "federal tax" increase from the federation (higher club sanctioning fees).

Since we don't have any additional social programs to fund like a development program, there is no need for us to add a tax on our local meet fees to fund it. So it comes down to whether your customers want to pay a rider tax on their local meet fees to fund those programs or whether those programs should be funded via other means.

It's not much different

Yes it is. Burger addicts usually also drink cokes, which makes the whole enterprise profitable. Here, all you got is a stand trying to give away say ostrich, which they say is a marvelous product, far preferred to them hormone-fed turkeys, to those whose taste buds are developed enough to appreciate it. The catch for getting ostrich for free is, you have to put in a couple weeks on a farm raising said ostrich.

Well, guess what? far fewer of those who can appreciate ostrich get particularly excited about farming ostrich.

By the way Dan, the Steelers are going DOWN today :)

I'll translate:

The price is so low, unsustainable through any sensible business model other than free volunteer labor, that it has the social contract built in. By entering our events, there is an implicit promise that at some future point you will volunteer a significant chunk of your time so that the show may go on.

This, to me, is the largest obstacle to growth.

By attaching the social contract as an implicit condition of club membership (shame on you if you don't help rake out the birdsh*t—how dare you eat that free ostrich), you eliminate possibly the majority of the people who got past the first barrier, the technical complexity of the sport. Some people want no part of the contract; they are far too valuable, they create far more value per unit time than they ever would putting on an O event, even if you were to price O events reasonably. And most wish they could join in, but have families, jobs, and, well, lack of skills that present obstacles to productively volunteering. And these folks feel the shame and pressure of not being able to contribute, and stop coming largely because of it.

I think it's on the Freakonomics blog that they write about things that people will gladly do for free that they won't do for money. We had that experience firsthand. We invited someone, not a close friend, to dog sit, and he gladly did it. No money was mentioned. The second time, we offered $100. We haven't talked since. All sorts of considerations pop up when money comes into play. In this particular case, most likely certain boundaries were overstepped. The person was uncomfortable with accepting money (for an elaboration of reasons, I guess I'd have to google out that blog post, sorry not this morning).

In our case, money is already in play. Some people will indeed gladly volunteer for the cause. Some won't volunteer if they know someone else is getting paid for a similar job; that's a loss to us, and there is proof of existence. Some will gladly put in a lot more time if there is any money at all; that's a win, and there is proof, too.

I didn't have a concusive indication of what the net effect of this dynamic would be until the explosion of trail runs in the Bay Area in the mid-2000s. Until then, trail runs were almost exclusively put on by volunteers, and remained a niche activity. Volunteer-led organizations weren't interested in promotion, or effective at it. When private operators came into play, we transitioned to 400–500-attendance events every weekend. Almost all sell out. The operators had to promote their guts out to earn this attendance (so they could eat), and to raise the quality of the product; as a result, we have the explosion.

This is all in a different plane than the tax and surcharge and development considerations. Even if there was no opportunity for arenas, development, and other high-cost add-ons (most trail runs are relatively fancy-free, other than lots of free food), the all-volunteer member-service model is the single most significant obstacle to growth. (Conversely, if you are happy with stagnation, retaining the volunteer model is the surest way to go. You'll be guaranteed a premium product at a low price for a long while. Be prepared to rake the birdsh*t.)

While I accept your example that Bay Area trail run attendance increased when a few organizers decided to eek out a living from higher entry fees instead of volunteering for lower entry fees, the only thing they have done is change the demographic of the entrants. Now all the entrants are people with lots of money and no time (or selflessness).

My counter for this is the example of downhill skiing. I love downhill skiing and I used to do it often, but over the past 10 years or so lift tickets have soared from the $30-$40/day to $70-$100/day. Much faster than inflation. And now I can't afford to do it. I've been completely priced out of my favorite hobby. A real shame too. Now all my expensive equipment is sitting in the closet rusting. At one point I spent a season learning to become a ski patroller. Volunteering as a ski patroller usually gets you a perk like free skiing.

The same example for trail races holds for me as well. If the price is too high I won't enter. This is one of the several reasons I never do ARs. The product is overvalued. Why should I pay an organizer's salary when I can get just as much enjoyment by going for a trail run on my own for free?

So yeah, you can pay with time or money, but either way, you pay. Do you offer the lowest possible fee for one demographic or the highest possible fee for the other? The optimum probably varies with the demographic where you live. I can see how your model works great in the Bay Area but might not work so well in rural PA.

By the way, if you are charging more because you are paying the organizer's salary, you are not generating extra money to fund development programs, etc. That only works if your customers are both paying the higher price *and* raking the birdshit.

Some very good points here so far.

T/D wrote: "Conversely, if you are happy with stagnation, retaining the volunteer model is the surest way to go. You'll be guaranteed a premium product at a low price for a long while"

I'm curious whether T/D's statement above assumes the group has that 'critical mass'. My experience from southern Ontario is that once 2-3 key volunteers call it quits from a club that entire product falls apart.

>if you are charging more because you are paying the organizer's salary, you are not generating extra money to fund development programs,

Not necessarily. GHO has an agreement with one organizer to host 1 race per year for us. That race would not have happened if the agreement had not been made because volunteer time was maxed out. By adding that event we also gained a major sponsor. The race brings in a nice sum of money to the club (with very little volunteer time). It then allows us to keep our membership rate very low
(i.e., it subsidizes our athletic development program). To join GHO you pay only $20. But that gets you an OOA/COF membership, free SI rental at GHO events, entry into two weekend events and all club training (3 times a week for running) and 1-2 per month for orienteering, plus access to one of our permanent courses.

I guess using Eddie's terminology. Expanding the sport to a different demographic has allowed the cost for the other demographic to remain low.

The product is overvalued

... but the product don't care. For every disappointed Eddie there are several fat-walleted yuppies who are glad to lighten said wallet. Same for trail runs—the demographics changed, but on top of the soaring attendance. And, those who can't afford it but love it? exactly—volunteer for 4 hours, earn a free entry. Works out to above min wage (even here).

So indeed, we have to be honest what such a change may bring. We know what is going to happen if nothing changes, we've been in it for at least 20 years.

My analogy to the one big GHO event every year would be a club A-meet. But instead of using that money to defray the membership cost we plow that money into our mapping expense, keeping our local meet fees low. Getting that sponsor is great, by the way. My club doesn't have any SI gear, so we don't have those capital expenses to cover. We also don't have that perk to offer.

It still comes down to deciding what you want to spend the money on. If you want to fund something other than the direct cost of the events themselves (be they volunteer run or for-profit run), you still have to collect extra beyond your actual expenses. That's tax and spend. I'm not advocating either way, but you either just cover costs for the product, or you collect extra and spend it on other things. If your customers are happy with that then fine. I'm happy to pay a little extra for a space program and international aid (an ED and an orienteering team?) but someone else might not be.

I ended up fixing multiple issues

Dan—that non-uniform spacing on the main drop-down menu is annoying as hell to me. The menu items that don't have subitems are taller than the items that do. In IE, it looks like margin-bottom is greater on the childless items than margin-top, and the two are equal for the items that have subitems. In Opera it's the other way round; childless items have equal margins, and the ones with subitems have a shorter margin-bottom. (I reported this at least twice.)

I see. My Opera is the latest version as of today. It'd be very curious if the issue were Opera-specific, since usually Safari and Mozilla do pretty much the same things. As a matter of fact, I just looked on Safari and Safari behaves exactly like the Opera I described (opposite of IE, which indeed is 7). There are other, more major issues with the site in Safari.

Sure. To get back on track, here's an Eastern European folk tale, the way I recall it.

A bear and a goat come to market, the bear has some freshly baked pastries to sell, the goat also brought some. But, as it turns out, nobody is particularly hungry. The bear and the goat sit next to each other in a stall, and bide time.

Nobody's buying.

They get hungry themselves.

But it turns out the goat only has a penny, and the bear doesn't have any money whatsoever.

So, says Bear, I won't let you starve, Brother Goat. I'll sell you this here cabbage-filled pastry for a penny.

Fine, says Goat. Done deal. And now the bear has the penny, and the bear is hungry.

I won't let you starve, says Goat. I have this here potato pastry to sell—for a penny.

And the bear is happy and buys the pastry.

And so they keep trading... until, at the end of the day, they're happy and full.

And all they have left, between them, is the same damn penny.

I was really expecting the bear to eat the goat.

Sounds like they were undercharging IMO.

We have this perception amongst rogainers in our state that orienteering is expensive so they don't compete. They figure that at rogaines you get the event, equipment hire, map and anything up to three meals for the cost of perhaps two orienteering entries, in which you 'only' get a map. The failure is to see all the work that goes into behind the scenes in O - e.g. map production (rogaine maps are bought "off-the-shelf" and mainly just have controls added to them), sport development, marketing, capital equipment (e.g. electronic timing systems) etc. Having said that, rogaining here is a fraction of the cost as anywhere else in Australia, or the world for that matter, so it's coming from a pretty cheap base. We've just put our entry prices up for the first time in six or seven years and yet there were still people against the decision because it may affect 'struggling' families or some bollocks.

So is there someplace where it lists what clubs charge, and I'm talking about for local meets? My gut feeling is that a lot underprice the product, but it would be nice to see the data.

I'd also be curious to know how many clubs put on no-frills training events for their local meets vs. races and whether there's a difference in the price charged for the two. It seems to me that most clubs hold 1-2 dozen local "meets" per year, all at very low prices, regardless of whether what is offered would be considered a training event/race (a course or two, maybe novelty, self-timed, results informal) or a competitive event/race. Certainly there's no need to hold $25 races every weekend, but holding only $5 events every weekend also seems a bit like a lost opportunity.

From the "Stategic Plan numbers wrong" thread: local meet fees

there seems to be an assumption thaqt raising the price will cause a drop in participation. Is that really true? Every time I go to O events and look around the car park I see lots of expensive cars - not too many people who couldn't easily absorb a 50% price hike. Sure some (many) would complain (loudly) but the reality is most can afford it.

And then there is the issue of price reflecting value. Theres the old marketing tale of the Nike shoes that weren't selling - when they put the price.

UP they sold better. A product that costs more must be better quality. Charging just $5 for an O event may keep the regulars happy - but to anyone else the low entry fee may just be saying 'this is such low quality it is not worth trying'.

I don't buy either of these arguments. How can you justify a price increase simply by saying "you can afford it?" This is irrational. You should do things for a reason, not just because you can.

I could just as easily say you should be paid 50% less for your fieldchecking because you can afford it.

Every time I go to O events and look around the car park I see lots of expensive cars - not too many people who couldn't easily absorb a 50% price hike.

Yeah, reflecting the typical orienteering demographic of reasonably well-paid middle-class professionals - the same demographic that's dominated O (in Aus, at least) since the dawn of time. If that's the only demographic you want, then go nuts with the prices.

The Nike example has been used at our council meetings as a justification to raise prices, and it's misleading. Expensive Nikes didn't sell better because price = quality, they sold better because price = status and image. Nike was trying to sell an image, and you can't do that if your shoes are indistinguishable from some random $20 brand. They were perceived to have bent the "higher price = lower demand" rule, but what they actually did was create a new demand - for their image - and then sold that.

We're not trying to sell an image (at least, I don't think we are - and if we are then we really need to do something about peoples' O suits) so the standard price/demand rule applies - you WILL drive people on the fringes away by raising prices, even if your core constituency just grumbles.

For marketplace comparison:

50k trail run (median finisher time 6 hours something) from the Bay Area market leader, mid-deadline price, deeply discounted (friend of org/longtime volunteer), no shirt (2011): $58.50

BAOC 6 hour rogaine, no shirt, member rate (2010): $15.00

It isn't exactly the Nike (Veblen) phenomenon; rather, perhaps orienteering is a Giffen good.

If local event fees are suddenly $25-30 per map, I'm one of those who will be priced out of the market. And I'm a single person with no kids; I can't even imagine paying $100 for a family to go to one local event.

I don't consider myself to be "on the fringes" although I'm also not a serious or top competitor on the National/International level. I've been orienteering for 17 years. I'm out almost every weekend. I volunteer at pretty much every event for my main club, as well as selected larger events for my secondary club, with a focus on educating beginners. I attend about 4 A-meets in my region per year, usually splitting travel and lodging costs with 3-4 other people. I would love to go to more but I can't pay for airfare or shoulder hotel expenses on my own. Gas prices are already to where I need to start thinking about cutting back on driving to the more distant local events.

For every well-paid middle-class professional, I'm sure you'll find more like me. I don't own a house. My "expensive SUV" is 12 years old, was purchased used, and has over 180,000 miles on it. It'll be around at least a few more years. I pack my lunch every day for work rather than order out with everyone else. I enjoy amateur photography, but my camera is 6 years old (eons in the digital age). I also ride horses, which is considered an expensive and elite passtime, but have spent large parts of my life working for my trainers in exchange for my lessons or bumming extra rides off of friends with too many horses. I don't show or compete. I don't replace things like clothes or appliances until they're literally falling apart.

I think it would be a real shame to push out those who are willing to work hard and not afraid to volunteer in favor of people who just happen to have lots of spare cash.

Agree with Dan.

I'll say again that we need to look at what we do with local events. They don't all have to offer 7 classic courses, fancy computer e-punch printouts, refreshments, and formal results. They don't all have to be races. They don't all have to use a dozen volunteers.

The Tucson trail running scene has this worked out - almost every weekend (except in summer) there is an informal trail event. Someone has to 'direct' it, which usually involves scouting the course (at 15-30 mi that's no small task), setting up aid station(s), bringing refreshments, providing maps, signing everyone in and out, and reporting on the run informally (via email and blog). It's free, people take turns running it. Yeah, there are results, but it's not really a race. In fact, it's a lot like a local "C" meet. But these same people will gladly spend $$ to sign up for a real trail race where the results matter. They need to train, so they do this for each other. When it's time to race, they pay someone else so that they can get in a good race. We kind of do that with A meets vs C meets, except that often our C meets provide too much for too little. They should be more informal for the price, or they should cost more.

This is not just a North American thing. The local event I ran yesterday in France cost €3 for an SI event with three courses and 50-60 runners.

As per my original post. Have entry fees even kept pace with inflation the last 20 years? Not even considering all the 'added value' of better maps, SI, etc.

Speaking for the southwestern Pennsylvania demographics, agree with Eddie when he says "fees are set to just cover costs, and they do that just fine." The area just doesn't have enough critical mass to afford a more elitist cadre of participants for more specialized activities. We are lucky that we get recurrent participants that are willing to devote half of their free day, and magically volunteer. Yes, a sense of club participation and co-ownership is key, as people feel they are contributing to creating the few events a year the club is able to offer.

btw, Eddie, disagree with you on the *STEELERS*, and I say that with the advantage of post-game time-frame. You must be on the wrong side of the Gulf of Mexico/Atlantic watershed divide...

How can you justify a price increase simply by saying "you can afford it?" This is irrational. The only thing irrational is your interpretation of my words. That is not what I said at all. All I was saying is that if we did put prices up I dont think it would result in much of a drop in participation. Reread the initial post for the justification for putting prices up. By all means disagree with my opinion, but please don't put words in my mouth.

Juffy:
We're not trying to sell an image That is certainly true of Australian orienteering - unfortunately. But orienteering has an image nonetheless - I am guessing you are happy with the current (nerdy, boy scouty, bushwalking...) one?? But if anyone wants to promote and develop orienteering then some sort of 'image' projection is essential. (Interestingly - the guy that started this thread thinks orienteering has such a poor image he prefers not use to the name.)

That the 'demographic of reasonably well-paid middle-class professionals' is the sort of market we should be targeting seems self-evident to me. (though i would prefer to define it as 'intelligent, well-educated, with disposabale income' - I don't like to sound classist!)

But what are you suggesting - we go for the bogan demographic? I believe there is still a vacancy on the OA board for Promotion and Development director - you could volunteer and give that idea a go. If it is a success I will be back in Australia in a flash. You'd find me beside the finish chute in my flannel shirt and acid wash jeans yelling 'show us your tits' at all the W18's.

(I would be interested to know how Hammer's paid organiser goes about marketing, but I would be very surprised if handing out fliers in trailer parks was a high priority. My guess would be the marketing strategy is aimed at a more middle class demographic - to use your term)

But be careful what you wish for - if you did successfully tap the bogan market the fees would pretty soon have to go up anyway - to cover the cost of all the SI units that go missing every event.

Hey there's a thought - the IOF is looking for an exciting new mass start format for WOC, how about this: mass start, 100 controls on a map, the person who brings back the most SI units is the winner - that'll get the bogans interested in orienteering.

As per my original post. Have entry fees even kept pace with inflation the last 20 years? Not even considering all the 'added value' of better maps, SI, etc.

I'm not sure that that is an easy question to answer (well, it may be prima facie), but I think such analysis may be misleading, given that the cost to produce the product has drastically come down due to technology such as OCAD, (cheaper) non-offset printing technology that most of the market accepts, LIDAR, and so forth.

A prima facie analysis, at least for DVOA member rates since 1998, shows that rates have increased more than is indicated by the rate of inflation. In 1998, they were $4, for 2010, they were $6 (and are likely to go up again in 2011, I suppose).

According to measuringworth.com, which simply uses CPI data over the given period to measure purchasing power, that $4 should be $5.26 now (technically, their data goes only goes to 2009, but we know inflation was quiescent in 2010, so $5.26 would be within about 1% or so).

To speculate and take a stab at one of the other points in the thread related to the OP's question, I would guess that the recreational market is price sensitive, while the hardcore market is likely less elastic. But there is one way to find out, double or triple fees and look at the data. Taking large financial risks isn't something the orienteering culture seems afraid to do.

The data coming out of USOF and DVOA both suggest a material decline in participation recently, coincident with a price increase. However, we all know correlation is not causality. Moreover, I don't think we have a large enough dataset (I have yet to see the 2010 data for USOF).

But, were I to speculate on the primary cause, it would be general economic misery (remember, unlike the affluent orienteers that make these pricing decisions, the real unemployment rate is 16% or so, and these people are not driving the Benzes and SUVs others are alluding to in the parking lots; they are working second shifts to support an unemployed spouse rather than drive an hour to run thru the woods). I have no empirical evidence, but the anecdotal evidence I've seen supports this economic misery speculation. That said, should this be shown to be the primary cause, to me it would indicate an elastic market in general. (A secondary cause, at least for me, is price increases without a commensurate increase in quality of the experience; it is hard to speculate how widespread this sentiment is in this market.)

Why not simply comp all volunteer entry fees? I always thought this was a good idea to do, even in lieu of membership discounts.

Good question, and it allows me explore some of the other points surrounding volunteerism in this thread. This will bother some, so you have been warned not to read it if you are one of these people :-)

The answer to this question, and I have this directly from a USOF official, is that it goes back to the social contract point raised by Vlad, viz., and I quote: "You should want to volunteer for orienteering".

There is a pervasive self-righteousness in orienteering among some, that, once you sign on and go to a couple of meets, you owe a debt of volunteerism forever to the good of orienteering. Like many religions, you should want to do this, and you should not expect compensation for doing so. And you will be badgered and guilted into it for as long as you keep coming to meets. (Despite the fact that some organizations easily have the resources to pay minimum wage for this labor, but that is another thread for another time).

This, to me, is the social contract model Vlad seemed to allude to, and I think it is a bad idea, and I think that the market isn't interested in paying this cost above the monetary cost of the product. As evidence, I can simply offer the explosive growth of competing product in the market that does not have this cost (letterboxing, geocaching, trail-running), tho again, anecdotes are not causality.

What consumers want in this market, like most markets, is to pay a fair monetary price for a quality product, and to move on. The problem with the social contract model, as I pointed out in yet another hand-wringing thread on these subjects elsewhere on this forum a couple of months ago, is that most cliques can only grow so large before the benefits of clicquedom are lost at the fringe, and therefore most consumers do not see a return on the social contract investment. Being rational beings, they pursue other product (with their time and money), that offers a more satisfactory return.

I would also conjecture, at least among the more affluent consumers in the market, that they would be willing to pay more to make the social contract guilt model go away, but orienteering is unwilling to offer such pricing in this market (via the discount Dan suggests, for example), because: "You should want to volunteer for orienteering". This insistence on wanting to want to do it is a barrier, IMHO.

I would suggest that two-tier pricing is a perfectly reasonable solution for this market, to the extent that free labor is actually required to produce the product and pay large salaries (a conjecture I also have my doubts about in and of itself, but that is a topic for another day).

In my experience, some in USOF are actually offered this two-tier pricing, but it is difficult for others (like me) to get. It shouldn't be, tho. I've volunteered pretty heavily for orienteering, and, in fact, even won an award for doing so. Likely I was in the top 5 percentile. Yet, when I ran into financial difficulty and simply wanted my USOF membership comped (what $35?) for all the volunteering I had done, it was instead -- "You should want to volunteer for orienteering". (And, as an aside, no compassion for my situation either).

I no longer want to volunteer for orieneteering. You end up feeling like a chump afterwords. I imagine most people in the market are not interested in this sort of experience, and some would respond to a guilt-free pricing tier to avoid the prospect of it.

In all the volunteering I've done for orienteering, I have three times been offered to be comped race or membership fees for my efforts -- once by the team (which I attempted to decline), once by DVOA, and once by a DVOA meet director. Never by USOF, despite me doing the lion's share of my work for them, and even asking because I thought I needed it at the time (none of the others were solicited). This is over 10 years of volunteering at probably the 5 percentile level.
(These are the people I would now respond to, and, as in the case of the team, I have attempted to recently). This stuff matters, at least with some people. Take my experience and insight FWIW, as you care.

My financial situation is no longer a problem. It, at least with me, is never really about the money anyway. Its about respect and not being taken for granted. But, people are still hardwired to respond to incentives (even if they seem trivial e.g. $35), so I think orienteering is being foolish to not take advantage of this fact, and put some self-righteous "you should want to volunteer for orienteering" guilt-laden social contract ahead of it, especially when the evidence is clear that there is no actual return on this social contract when circumstance unfortunately turns and the contractee most needs it.

Compare this with the youth soccer league my son is in. All volunteers are offered free registration for the entire season (and this costs more than a USOF membership or race fees by alot). No hand-wringing, no bullshit, no self-righteousness or begging. No problems either -- the last e-mail I saw said, and I quote "volunteers will be taken on a first come, first serve basis". When is the last time such wording was in a USOF e-mail? By not volunteering, you are subsidizing the volunteers, and are in the guilt-free pricing tier. But, unfortunately, this model does not perpetuate the church of "wanting to volunteer for soccer". But, I don't think they care -- I think they just want soccer to happen.

HTH

I think the main worry about increasing prices is that you lose the people you most want to retain - the ones who will be your volunteers in 10-15 years time. The same discussions have been happening in the UK for ages now.

I think in both countries, the basic product is underpriced - your weekly meet. In the UK it certainly didn't keep pace with inflation. I am however, extremely glad of this fact. I can go to as many local meets as I have the time for here in Western Connecticut. I have to think carefully about the A meets I attend. I don't own a car. My salary is adequate, and better than a lot of people during this financial situation, but I would have to compromise the orienteering if prices were to increase by very much. I always balk at trail and road races - $30 to run up and down a street I run up and down every day? Don't think so.

As for the volunteering - my club back at home (which is a large club, but this is an example) splits the whole membership into helper teams, responsible for manning a single aspect of the meet. There are no penalties for not helping when your team helps. But you get a voucher for two free runs at local events, or a discount at the bigger events the club runs. New members are put into teams and it's a really good way for them to feel more like part of a club. But the club back there is big enough that there are known "non-helpers" that aren't constantly badgered when they say no.

Orienteering is awesome and I hope one day to be in a position to pay more for it. But just because some can afford to pay more, doesn't mean they have to. There are other ways to bring money in aside from taxing a small membership, and from the small bits I've seen of the strategic plan these routes seem to be under investigation and/or already in progress.

GAOC charges $10 per meet for non-members and $6 for members, plus $2 for renting a stick. We're a small club with a limited number of volunteers, so the Meet Director is invariably also the Course setter, so it's a big job.

Folks who sign up to be Meet Director for at least one meet per year get free local meet registration and stick rental for themselves and their entire family for a whole year. Since we have 20 local meets this year, this can be a fairly large benefit.

All meet volunteers are mailed a coupon that is good for one local meet registration and stick rental.

We are not yet having to beat back hordes of prospective volunteers, however.

Most of the non-members paying $10 per local meet are high school kids. Round here, $10 is what it costs to get in to see a movie. This may not be un-correlated.

Two points:

This is not just a North American thing.

All comparisons with Europe must not enter the discussion (with the exception of perhaps the antisocialized UK). Most Euro clubs enjoy a degree of local government support, through various channels, that any club in North America or Australia is unlikely to get, because they perform a mission that the local and higher-level governments thinks is quite important: improving the population's state of health and preventing the kinds of medical costs we have in the U.S.

the cost to produce the product has drastically come down

True for all except mapper labor, which overrides the trend. There are dynamics that enter that particular market that are entirely unrelated to the state of orienteering in the U.S., namely compensation for similar labor in Europe and the rigidity of U.S. immigration laws. And, we aren't at the top of these costs yet.

This thread is painful. Thanks for channeling chitown nicely with the bit about government motives and their impact on everything.

I was going to criticize Randy for a little but of speculation, and rejoinder with some facts, but danf got there first.

The one other quantitative metric you should throw in there is the number of events. We should measure supply as well as demand.

A longer time series may be possible which may permit some crude econometrics. For instance, some stats readily go back to 1996, but maybe not the aggregate participant numbers, kindly supplied by danf.

The raw data may require some more scrubbing. Does anyone have a spare RA?

Well, we could all sit and theorize on this topic for a long, long time and likely never manage to come up with a consensus opinion. Attackpoint seems to be very, very good at that. People seem pretty well set in their ways.

Generally, I mostly care about actual results rather than speculation.

So what would interest me the most is if a bunch of clubs actually went ahead and tested the market. Raise meet fees, AND give free (or steeply subsidized) entries to volunteers, even those not from the host club but who can help out on race days.

Somebody, please, just go for it!

Robplow...
I'll watch for compass rose tatts in the finish chute from now on.

I like the pricing model -

Either pay full sustaining price , run and feel good (i.e. don't feel guilty that you didn't volunteer)
OR volunteer your time , run for free and feel good too .

I think most of our customers like that duality too. Some meets they choose one approach , some meets they choose the other.

(Sustaining price = whatever is takes to pay off the map cost in 5 years, map printing , map bags , pay for permits (or at least something to the park) , insurance, meet portapottis , e-punch equipment etc etc for a quality experience for the meet as a whole)

..run and feel good (i.e. don't feel guilty..

Soooo....how much is your guilt worth? When I recruit volunteers, I usually suggest a time period of "a couple hours.."

Assume we're all worth more than minimum wage...let's say $10-$15/hr, minimum. My plumber charges $30/hr...and I'm sorry; none of you are worth as much as my plumber to me.

So I propose the difference between a volunteer's entry fee, and a non-volunteer, guilt-free, off j-man's chart entry....$25?

@Clark : you missed the whole point...... YOU don't have to put a dollar figure on every human activity ...

"Sustaining price = whatever is takes to pay off the map cost in 5 years, map printing , map bags , pay for permits (or at least something to the park) , insurance, meet portapottis , e-punch equipment etc etc for a quality experience for the meet as a whole"

As that sustaining price does not include labour costs associated with the meet, maybe you need to pay this price and volunteer.

Another way of looking at the volunteer issue is that those who volunteer more place a higher value on the meet experience and so 'pay' more for their experience. If there are too few volunteers, then you can reduce the price not be reducing the entry fee but by redesigning processes to minimise the volunteeer cost. I think there is more sense in that approach than talking about entry fees.

Wil, I guess we are doing part of that test in southern Ontario now. The usual local meet fee with SI rental is $17. New orienteers often comment on how reasonable the price is compared with other activities they do. GHO's Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Raids are about $60/person for 3-6 hours of racing, and they usually sell out.

When we did MTB-O with the Caledon Navigators club, I think our fee was $32 for adults and $26 for junior non-members, which was break-even for us by the time we paid for insurance, venue, etc. No mapping costs were attributed to the event. What's funny is the high level of enthusiasm we encountered from juniors. We charge $7 for juniors at regular O events and never get as many juniors as we had at the $26 MTB-O event.

Compared with other places in North America, I guess O is expensive here but as far as I can tell, it's not driving people away.

I've pondered the pricing thing for awhile now.

I too, feel that most orienteering meets in our area are undercharging (Begineers ~$5, advanced club members ~$10, and ~advanced non-members $15.) Cost of living is high in Bay Area. Comparitively, I'm happy to by $25 for a fun run, $35 for a trail run, $60 for a marathon type event. So for the core activity, yes, the orienteering looks like a steal. The orienteering event still feels a little rinky dink though, so if you wanted to up fees you should also try to enhance the meet atmosphere. (I personally think you could do a lot with simple things like compressing start windows and spending just $1-2 per person on snacks...)

There is a fundamental difference though, from my perspective, between orienteering races and trail races. Right now, I try to attend about 20+ local orienteering meets each year. There is NO WAY I would pay those higher ~$25 prices 20+ times a year. I couldn't afford it. And I would feel ripped off paying that much. Why feel ripped off? I'll pay a lot of money for a race because that's a special deal. But I don't 'race' 20 times a year. Most of the events I do are treated as training activities, and at my level the quality of local course setting just doesn't justify that kind of price. Sometimes, the courses are so basic and the meet environment so bare bones, that I feel like even $10 is a rip off. (A rip off for me. It's probably fine for the guy that comes out twice a year as a special treat)

One solution I've been thinking about, for a large club like ours, is to have a clearly tiered system of meets. The majority of meets can be kept at roughly current levels of infrastructure, and current affordable pricing. But 3-5 meets each year are identified as 'premier level' meets. These ought to include the club championships, maybe a short rogaine type of event, maybe a goat. The premier meets could be where, 2-3 times a year (5 times max?), you pull out all the stops. You have T-shirts. You have a FULL refreshments table. You have online preregistration. You have a compressed start window. Maybe a speaker system and arena. You have focused advertising leading up to the event. Hopefully an exciting and clear way for beginners to participate in the action.

This tiered system ideally could foster a lot of things. It becomes a fundraising opportunity. It allows the club to build a reputation for high quality cutting edge events without putting excessive stress on the volunteer core by requiring you do it week in and week out. You can create branded events that are easier to promote through advertising and easier sell to sponsors. If you do it right, you encourage all your best orienteers show up to the same meet, increasing the level of competition.

Now, if you think about it, this premier meet idea kindof already exists for us, as the A-meet. At BAOC, even with our 'high' local meet fees of $10, our local program is subsized by A-meet profits. But the true potential of the concept hasn't been tapped. One problem with the A-meet is that it is not marketed or directed to include the general public. In fact, we get lower turnout from recreational and casual orienteers at our A-meets. Another problem, is that the higher standards we incorporate for A-meets in terms of map quality and vetting, are not consistently extended to improving the meet atmosphere. My feeling is, that if you can figure out how to market a premier product to the general population, then you're cooking with gas.

further to Bash's comment

"Compared with other places in North America, I guess O is expensive here but as far as I can tell, it's not driving people away"

Entry fees are relatively more expensive but membership and club training may very well be cheaper. Club memberships often include a full OOA/COF membership a few race entries for free and lots of weeknight training opps for $10-$30.

Another fascinating look at varying attitudes and philosophies.

Dunno if I would call the differences a crisis though. Take religion. Many people are guided by its principles. A proportion of them go to church occasionally (big "meets" such as Xmas, weddings, funerals), a smaller proportion regularly (every Sunday). I guess there's some fuzzy point where enthusiasm for the cause makes adherents move from experiencing help for themselves, to want to "spread the word".

When that happens, some volunteer to help run parts of the infrastructure, others take pay (usually modest) for their roles. Meets may be held in someones home (cf using generic topo maps), but specific buildings are usually used (orienteering maps). Here and there these buildings may be quite grand (cathedrals). Decision-making and funding such buildings surely causes a lot of debate. Probably, there are never enough volunteers.

There are alternative approaches using for example radio and TV instead of bricks and mortar. Or standing on a street corner handing out leaflets, or knocking on people's doors. A few even have enough misssionary zeal to travel to far-flung places where the principles are little-known. Back home, there will be tough decisions on refurbishing the church vs stipend levels vs missionary programmes.

We could try tithing:-))

blegg has some valid points regarding event quality/atmosphere and the tiering of events. This is pretty much what our club does - we have different event types and some events are 'reserved' for the more experienced orienteers. These reserved events are typically adjacent to state or national level events or are in more complex terrain. At this stage all local our events attract the same entry fee. The entry fees are about covering the costs associated with the event, have some reserves to maintain the currency of our maps and promoting our sport rather than making a profit and sitting on a large amount of cash assets.

An important aspect to any fixture is providing a diversity of event types/styles. We must also acknowledge that every orienteer (course setters) was inexperienced at some stage and that an active mentoring system will over time raise the quality of events. While our club has a very strong fixture with good course setters, we too need to attractive, involve and mentor new course setters to ensure our club remains strong into the future. An incentive of free event entry is certainly one method, but ultimately the volunteer needs the desire - a lack of desire IMHO results in mediocre course quality.

I have been working hard on increasing volunteer participation and motivation within New Mexico Orienteers. I am finding some people really groove on meet directing and staff work, especially the coaching; others really get into course design, setting, vetting. Few are equally enthusiastic about both.

You have to get to know your regulars, sound them out, find out what they like doing, and ask them to do that. No guilt tripping, no badgering, no quid pro quo social contract. If possible, I talk about why I like a certain task and I wait for them to ask me if they can do it too.

We never have any shortage of control pick-up folks. On the contrary, they're usually standing around eagerly awaiting release. Lately, we also have no shortage of course vetters, setters, and now designers. They're really getting into it.

One social contract I am promoting is: meet director and course designer are NOT one and the same person.

Here is a proposal...

It has been kicked around that raising fees may lower attendance... What about the alternative?

Due to a lack of knowledge of a sophisticate economic model...

Consider the idea if attendance to local events is dependent to some extent on event fees, what would happen to attendance if all local events were free? My point, I believe the correlation to event cost vs. attendance is rather weak in the price range that has been discussed.

To further support Lost Pole's point, we have in the past handed out free entry vouchers for our events at Come and Try it Days. Not many are used.

We did the same. Passed out approx 150-200 of them over a 2 year period at 2 annual intro meets and in "intro packets" and got maybe a handful back. Of those, Its unknown (to me) if any led to a third visit or membership.

Ditto. Ours often, but not always, get redeemed by people who have enough interest and enthusiasm to happily pay and attend. Any little thing that helps reduce the barriers to newbie participation though is a Good Thing. Speaking for our neck of the woods, were we to have the funds available to, for example, advertise events more thoroughly we'd gain more attendance than simply lowering the entry fee by an irrelevantly small amount.

My observation is that the sustained recruitment to orienteering often comes through personal introductions... ie you meet someone who is curious about your sporting interest, so you cultivate that curiosity. They turn up because they are both interested and know someone.

A free voucher only provides incentive if the cost benefit appear significant. If you charged $60 per meet, and then gave a 50% off voucher, people would want to use it. They would feel like they are wasting an opportunity if they didn't. If you charge $5 for the same meet and give a 100% off voucher, they will probably not even bother to hang onto it.

Your local supermarket understands this mentality- that is why they often raise the prices of things before they mark them down as on sale.

Another thing you can do to manipulate people with prices (and event structure) is scarcity. I live in California now, about 25 minutes drive from San Francisco. I hardly ever venture into the city. I haven't been to China Town, Fishermens Warf, or Yosemite in 4 years. Back when I lived in Oregon, I went out of my way to visit these places when I came down. But now that I'm so close, I just put if off. I'll go next month, kind of thing. By tying your coupon or price promotion to a special, limited opportunity event, you provide that psychological spur to get people off the couch.

Incidentally, if you've heard of the "groupon" company, they have cashed in on this psychology greatly. My friends all say their business model makes no logical sense, but my friends forget that people aren't logical.

Yes, Groupon. Their wunderkind Andrew Mason rejected $6BB from GOOG because they didn't want to talk about his dollhouses.

Blegg. You are agreeing with a number of the posts above, in which the main point was that reducing existing entry fee structures won't make a discernible difference to participation. Free vouchers were just the logical extreme end of the argument.