ICCF 2015-009: Eliminate Zone 4 Subsidy
Michael Millstone, General Secretary
Eliminate Zone 4 Subsidy
Proposal
Eliminate the free subsidy for Zone 4 tournaments.
Rationale
The 2008 Congress voted to continue the practice of providing Zone 4 free tournaments.
"For the period 1/12-2007 – 30/11-2008 it had been agreed that Zones 2 and 4 could play their zonal tournaments on the webserver at no cost. In order to support correspondence chess development in Africa and Asia, the Congress decided to renew the concession for free tournaments for Zone 4 in period 1/12-2008 – 30/11-2009."
This practice of providing free tournaments to Zone 4 players has been renewed each year to present.
There is no evidence that any chess development has occurred in Zone 4 since approval of this subsidy in 2007 - in fact, the trajectory of Zone 4 is heading in the opposite direction towards obsolescence in the coming years.
Other Comments/Considerations
The subsidy for free Zone 4 tournaments should be eliminated immediately. If the Zonal Director wants ICCF to consider further subsidies, he or she should submit a business plan, outlining specific steps to be taken to increase chess development in Africa and Asia countries associated with Zone 4. This request to provide clear business plans is consistent with ICCF expenditures by any ICCF official or group and the process of providing a blank check without plan or purpose should be eliminated immediately.
Relevent Documentation
No change to documentation - this was a Congress decision minuted in 2008.
Voting Summary
- A vote of Yes will mean subsidies for Zone 4 tournaments will be eliminated immediately.
- A vote of No will mean unlimited subsidies for Zone 4 tournaments will continue. Congress minutes will reflect the practice of providing ICCF funds to support an initiative without any plans, purposes, or goals. This will also mean other groups or persons may apply to ICCF for funds without rhyme or reason. This also means the Executive Board is relieved of the responsibility to oversee expenditures and activities pertaining to this subsidy.
- A vote of ABSTAIN is not a vote but means the vote holder has no opinion and does not wish to represent the correspondence chess players of his or her federation in this matter.
Comments by Relevant Committees, Commissions, or ICCF Officers
Eric Ruch (EB)
No comments yet
George Pyrich
Michael's rationale is correct. However by abandoning the "project" I feel that we would in effect be giving up our efforts to promote activity (recruit new member federations). Instead can we perhaps not consider one last effort to reverse the rather depressing downward trend?! Now that we have at last an active and energetic Marketing Director can we not consider implementing a planned and considered programme to recruit new member federations, not just in Zone 4 but throughout other Zones, specifically from those countries with active over the board federations affiliated to FIDE. Perhaps we could consider enlisting the services of a professional public relations company?! We maintain a sizeable budget specifically for marketing but this is consistently grossly underspent.
Dinand Knol
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