Lifetime BCWF Members

[Gateholio]

Ive asked another club I want to join about these Double dipping charge, told them clearly I already am with the BCWF. It didn't matter, they dug heals in and again stated, no it's part of the fees. To hell with them, I won't join.
It's not just A Flat of Beer. It's principal.

We volunteer at these clubs, put in countless hours on wildlife and fishery projects, yet get these responses.

Ya wonder why recruitment is down. Duh???

Sherm has a valid point, and it needs to be addressed properly from all sides, or the BS continues.

Recruitment is down?

Many wildlife associations that operate a gun range have a waiting list to get in.

This is actually a simple problem with a simple solution- If you already pay BCWF fees through your club, don't buy a separate lifetime membership. Your club is the one collecting the fee from you, not the BCWF.

[BRvalley]

this has been an interesting thread...I can agree with the concern on double dipping, and working in finance myself I do question how challenging this actually is on either side of the fence (but of course a volunteer organization doesn't have the system resources/talent a larger company does, I also suspect there are some continuous improvement initiatives that could help, ie standardize reporting from club level), but still I would be inclined to think it would be easier to manage at the club level, if they are willing to cooperate....you bought a lifetime membership directly from the BCWF, that is a separate product and separate transaction versus your local club membership

If the club doesn't want to work with lifetime members on a fee reduction, then don't join the club, the club loses membership until they see it as a legitimate issue....or possibly they just don't care at all

I'm not fully up to speed on BCWF issues, but there's been enough gossip on this forum on various issues that I agree it is the principle, I wouldn't want any extra of my money spent if I didn't fully trust how it was being utilized

[Imdone]

Recruitment is down?

Many wildlife associations that operate a gun range have a waiting list to get in.

This is actually a simple problem with a simple solution- If you already pay BCWF fees through your club, don't buy a separate lifetime membership. Your club is the one collecting the fee from you, not the BCWF.

Ya, people are spilling over the seams to help hatcheries ....... Laughable your comments...... Your have no clue besides shooting clubs, try getting help pulling Beaver dams, counting fence repair and maintenance, laying gravel, taking spawn, it goes on and on.
Plus several shooting ranges have Chosen to leave the BCWF because of lack of support, direction, dedication.
I've been with the BCWF for over 40 years and supported that, but several issues could be clarified. It used to be there Clearly for hunters, fishers and shooters, now it walks on crushed glass, careful where you step.

[Gateholio]

Ya, people are spilling over the seams to help hatcheries ....... Laughable your comments...... Your have no clue besides shooting clubs, try getting help pulling Beaver dams, counting fence repair and maintenance, laying gravel, taking spawn, it goes on and on.
Plus several shooting ranges have Chosen to leave the BCWF because of lack of support, direction, dedication.
I've been with the BCWF for over 40 years and supported that, but several issues could be clarified. It used to be there Clearly for hunters, fishers and shooters, now it walks on crushed glass, careful where you step.

Many people join clubs to access their shooting ranges, that's just the way it is.

If you can't get help with projects, it's not because of lifetime member fees.

[Imdone]

Completely irrelevant post above. Again your opinion has no clue outside of your little window.

There's many bigger issues at hand.

Several years ago I battled endlessly to keep our range shooting club with the BCWF. It got voted down from the majority because of lack of support from the BCWF and its silent stand. I've continued to support it. I know it does good things, and I like helping, but, it COULD and should do way better.

Get back to its Roots.

[Mulehahn]

Interesting. I don't see how it can be that Complicated. The BCWF now requires a birthday as well as name to apply senior discounts. Once the data is entered it really wouldn't be that big of an issue to have a note pop up when a matching name and birthday is entered. That sounds like basic data entry. It might be a bit more complicated to create an automatic response asking what to do with the funds; refund vs accept as donation, etc; sort of like an automated out of office reply but I could be out to lunch as well. I have only used, not written, preexisting inventory programs that do very similar things. As far as I can tell club memberships are the equivalent of BCWF inventory. Doesn't sound like we are reinventing the wheel.

But maybe I am missing something and the issue really does lie with the individual clubs. Which I don't see as someone could easily lie as to be being a member of the BCWF to save the money. Only the BCWF should have a complete membership list, are the ones to receive the money and should be the ones to refund it for services not rendered. But I seem to be in the minority so I will begrudgingly acquiesce..

The issue falls to the clubs. Now, as I said earlier in this thread, I have held 3 different memberships to the BCWF at one point. When I asked each club about it I was expressly told that the BCWF demanded the fees and opting out was not an option as they understood. It has now been put forward in this thread that there was misunderstandings and collecting memberships for the BCWF is optional. If this is true then a simple guide from the BCWF outlining the fee collection process and options should be drafted up and distributed to all clubs and made available to all members who ask. This is something that should be done immediately and is certainly doable and easy.

[Imdone]

Interesting. I don't see how it can be that Complicated. The BCWF now requires a birthday as well as name to apply senior discounts. Once the data is entered it really wouldn't be that big of an issue to have a note pop up when a matching name and birthday is entered. That sounds like basic data entry. It might be a bit more complicated to create an automatic response asking what to do with the funds; refund vs accept as donation, etc; sort of like an automated out of office reply but I could be out to lunch as well. I have only used, not written, preexisting inventory programs that do very similar things. As far as I can tell club memberships are the equivalent of BCWF inventory. Doesn't sound like we are reinventing the wheel.

But maybe I am missing something and the issue really does lie with the individual clubs. Which I don't see as someone could easily lie as to be being a member of the BCWF to save the money. Only the BCWF should have a complete membership list, are the ones to receive the money and should be the ones to refund it for services not rendered. But I seem to be in the minority so I will begrudgingly acquiesce..

The issue falls to the clubs. Now, as I said earlier in this thread, I have held 3 different memberships to the BCWF at one point. When I asked each club about it I was expressly told that the BCWF demanded the fees and opting out was not an option as they understood. It has now been put forward in this thread that there was misunderstandings and collecting memberships for the BCWF is optional. If this is true then a simple guide from the BCWF outlining the fee collection process and options should be drafted up and distributed to all clubs and made available to all members who ask. This is something that should be done immediately and is certainly doable and easy.

Well said above.

[Rob Chipman]

Did the Clubs/Membership vote it down because the extra work was going to go to the Club? which anyone can see is unworkable........

"I had a conversation with the head of our accounting division again today and, again, she assured me that it is not as simple as many assume.
It involves comparing, on a quarterly basis, 1) the membership lists from clubs
(which come in various formats and on various timelines and at times come in very challenging condition)
with the 2) list of lifetime members
and 3) all the lists submitted by other clubs in order to identify who is a member of multiple clubs as well as a lifetime member."

I'm a tech-challenged old phart but even I know how to build a spread sheet
List creations and comparisons is simple data entry on the right program
If the Fed is really running Membership with pen-and-paper instead of a 21 century data base..........
no..... i won't.........must resist.............



thanks for your work Rob

I think you're misreading who might be running their operations with pen and paper....Hint: It's not the very competent person I speak with who runs our accounting program. Key issues you identify are "right program", "data entry" and "spreadsheet". Head office accounting *can* do it. They're capable. It involves integrating a bunch of different reports that are received in a bunch of different formats, with varying accuracy, and which are received at varying times. If only all clubs had a reporting system that was compatible with (God forbid, actually integrated with) BCWF's system. If that were the case there would never have been a need for a special resolution tweaking the constitutional bottleneck so that we could create a workaround.

So, yes, the accounts department at BCWF *could* do it. It's so difficult, time consuming and expensive that....well, you can imagine....

[Rob Chipman]

Interesting. I don't see how it can be that Complicated......

That is (and was) the obvious starting point (to clarify, this isn't the first time this has come up and is not the first time I've tried to get some sort of solution). Accounting staff produces a *ton* of reports that I'm fortunate enough to be allowed to examine (yes, I just used the word "fortunate" - apparently that word doesn't mean what I think it does, but I'm going through a pile of this reports in preparation for a Finance Committee meeting tonight as we go through the budgeting process. You simply cannot imagine the joy ) That starting point dead-ended when very competent staff said "Yeah, no, nowhere near as easy as you would assume". Point being: we started here, our competent and trusted staff advised it was not the way to solve it, so we moved on to different approaches. Feel free to dispute this with staff rather than with me. I'm just providing data.

But maybe I am missing something and the issue really does lie with the individual clubs. Which I don't see as someone could easily lie as to be being a member of the BCWF to save the money. Only the BCWF should have a complete membership list, are the ones to receive the money and should be the ones to refund it for services not rendered. But I seem to be in the minority so I will begrudgingly acquiesce..

I'd quibble and argue that the issue is that one person buys two or more different products from two or more vendors.

The BCWF sells a lifetime membership to anyone who wants to buy on, and the BCWF does not question the buyer's motives. Some buyers purchase the lifetime membership because they want to demonstrate commitment to conservation, the BCWF or both. Others may buy the lifetime BCWF membership because it's cheaper over the long term. Some buyers understand what they're buying and why, and recognize that the lifetime membership with BCWF is *not* the same as what they buy from a club. Others are less clear on that.

Clubs sell memberships to finance a variety of things. I belong to a local club that has no range, and I belong to another club that does have a range. I was, for a while, also a direct member, as that's how a lot of big city people join the BCWF (LML clubs are aging out and disappearing, as opposed to rural clubs that constantly impress me with what they accomplish and offer to members). Part of the fee the club charges members goes to the BCWF because of a constitutional feature of the BCWF. That feature went into the constitution long before anyone anticipated that some buyers of different products from different vendors on different terms and on different time frames would think they're buying one product twice from the same vendor.

BCWF volunteer leadership *has tried* to square that circle, regardless of who's to blame. The resolution anticipated the concerns of BCWF members who could imagine a dishonest person gaming the system by lying to a club and came up with a reasonable solution: if the club told BCWF that the member had provided proof that they were a lifetime member the BCWF was prepared to accept that and take reduced payment without reducing the number of votes due to a club. That solution worked because BCWF trusts it's member clubs and it's members and isn't trying to double dip or rip anyone off.

You raise a very interesting point, however: what does a BCWF membership buy someone? What. exactly, are the services rendered or not rendered. That's a discussion for another thread, and is a discussion that is occurring among BCWF leadership, for obvious reasons, but it's clear that there are different opinions among the general public (including BCWF members) on what the BCWF value proposition is. An awful lot of people think we're just an insurance re-seller who gets them a deal on a magazine (and that is clearly a perception that needs to be changed).

..... I have held 3 different memberships to the BCWF at one point. When I asked each club about it I was expressly told that the BCWF demanded the fees and opting out was not an option as they understood. It has now been put forward in this thread that there was misunderstandings and collecting memberships for the BCWF is optional. If this is true then a simple guide from the BCWF outlining the fee collection process and options should be drafted up and distributed to all clubs and made available to all members who ask. This is something that should be done immediately and is certainly doable and easy.

I think its wise to recognize the importance of the "misunderstanding" concept. It's very valuable because it completely removes assumptions that are both incorrect and negative, so thanks for bringing that to the table.

We certainly could say that BCWF *demands* the fees and opting out is not an option. Read the constitution and look at 3.2 , 3.3 and 3.4. Seems clear that the BCWF tells clubs the basis on which dues will be assessed and how that will affect membership records at BCWF and how the amount charged will be determined (it's determined by the members at an AGM, not by BCWF leadership, which takes direction from the members as outlined in the same constitution).

OK, fine.

However, the BCWF *does not* tell member clubs what classes of membership they must or cannot have, nor does the BCWF tell member clubs how much they can charge or how to structure their finances. As far as I can tell the only hammer that the BCWF could use (should the BCWF *want* to use a hammer, which the BCWF leadership has demonstrated time and again they do not want to do) is on the issue of votes, and as explained, that is a very narrow application (the 100-101 threshold, the 200-201 threshold, the 500-501 and every subsequent 500 increment threshold). A club could offer an associate membership and not worry about the votes, or could simply refund a member that portion of the fee remitted to BCWF. Let's remember- that portion of the club fee remitted to the BCWF is pretty small in the grand scheme of things. Nobody actually collecting the fee is committed to collecting it - not the clubs, not the insurer, not the publisher of BCO and certainly not the BCWF leadership, which has demonstrated that it would like an easy solution but has been unable to find one).


Your suggestion of a simple explanation to be circulated is pretty easy. I don't think I'll dive too deeply into the intricacies of the fee collection process, but I think your suggestion is one of those no-brainber obvious things that always seems to appear....after the fact Thanks for making it.

[Shermanator]

Thanks again Rob for the time put into this issue (I still believe its one) and for the extra information which I've been trying to get for a long time! At least you and I agree to disagree, so we're compatible in that respect, and as you well know a good debate can resolve issues or at least bring light to unknown parameters with that issue. Something I do find interesting in all the conversations but especially yours, is that there is in fact a method/way that the issue I have brought up can be fixed! However, BCWF does not have the means or wherewithal to get it done. I'm not sure if that's because BCWF believes or says this issue is not their fault and its the local Clubs fault or what, but the bottom line from what I've read is that it can be fixed, and that's kinda what I've been trying to find out and get done.

I will continue looking into this issue, I realize that I have kinda reached a dead end with BCWF but I have other sources to turn to in order to find out more and post it here. I am going to approach local Clubs with some of the information you have provided and that I was unaware of and get a reading from them. Perhaps it'll rattle some cranial matter and get them looking into this deeper than they did before, and realize that they don't have to collect the BCWF twice?? Maybe?? Is that correct? A circular to the local Clubs from BCWF would obviously go a long ways in "fixing" what they maybe don't know, and if "fixing" at the local level helps out BCWF members than its a win win, for them and for BCWF. Sherm