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It has been 1.5 years since the hiring of Mr. ED by the organization formerly known as USOF. The idea behind the hiring was to lead us into the big time, as it was stated that all major sports have an ED. In pushing for the position, USOF officials and others spoke of the money that could be brought in by a qualified candidate. Mr. ED had been the marketing director for US Lacrosse during a time when they acquired 3 Million dollars in sponsorship from the main LaCrosse equipment supplier. Image what orienteering could do with that kind of money!
They also talked about how having a fulltime position would mean that ideas could be moved on. In the past we have had 10 year growth plans that didn't go anywhere and this was blamed by some on the fact that there was no fulltime paid staff to continue pushing the organization forward.
So here we are 1.5 years later. Mr. ED has grossed $2,000 from Motel6. He hasn't given us any information on other leads, but claims he will be able to get $10,000 NEXT year. Whoopie! His budget is $100,000 and he has been spending every dime of it. His major accomplishment last year would appear to be the 5 year "strategic" plan. Well, now it's a 4 year plan, since it took 1 year just to get the plan written.
I won't comment much on the 5 year plan except to say that in reading it I found mathematical contradictions that led to another error later on in the plan. Also, there is little in the plan that I can see that will reasonably lead us forward. Instead, it appears more like a wish list than an objective oriented plan. Suffice it to say that some of the objectives have already NOT been met and there is of course no penalty for not meeting them, or any real way to complete them.
Mr. ED has pushed for a new website, an online national magazine(to save money to pay his salary) and a new logo and name to help him generate the $10,000 in sponsorships, etc. he hopes to get NEXT year. He has combined the real USA orienteering team with all the fringe teams(ski, mt. bike, trail, scuba, rogaine, etc). While I don't have anything against some of these things, they certainly aren't worth paying $100,000/year for, are they? I like to call them window dressing, as they are nice to look at, but don't move us forward.
So, what is the plan to move us forward? Beats me. Orienteering USA hasn't presented anything substancial. Mr. ED hasn't given any information to club leaders about how he is helping us out. The one thing they have done in this process is increase our taxes by 400%. We used to pay 25 cents per participant. That has been bumped up to $1/person. Thank you, Orienteering USA. No new services, just more taxation.
We all want to move orienteering up in this country. It appears to me our ED is having trouble getting it up. Is he impotent?
10/23/10
The battle cry has been called. Now it is USOF president Clare Durand spearing the charge. As seen in previous articles(see below) Rick W. and Gary K., both former USOF presidents, used mathematics as a way to increase the membership in the national organization. Rick suggested each club increase in size by 10%. Gary proposed having 14 new clubs of 100 members each. In both cases, they were completely correct in their statements that doing so would increase our membership. Of course, I suggested much larger numbers, so that orienteering would really take off in the USA.
Now, President Clare is leading the charge for a 40% increase in membership in 5 years. And I say, if you're just picking numbers out of thin air why not pick bigger numbers? How about starting at 400% increase in membership? I'd maybe go even higher if I were better at math.
So, I say President Clare pick a bigger number and we'll all feel better. But no! She picks a puny little 40% figure and because of this I am deeply suspicious. Send her to the drug testing clinic!
In all three of these presidential proposals none of them presented a viable means of actually increasing membership. They simply picked a number and a mathematical equation to match it. Their figures are correct and membership never grew, because they had no reasonable plan to make it happen. Both Gary and Rick failed to meet their goals and Clare's legacy will be one of failing to meet hers. This won't happen because we don't want it to happen. It will happen because to date nobody has offered up a workable solution.
5/9/9
Say what?! That's right. The national federation is mandating background checks on potential felons like Cathy Y. It is quite possible she, as our treasurer for 27 years, has been milking us blind of all of our money! So the national organization is ordering background checks to protect us from ourselves.
How silly that this "brilliant" idea has never even crossed my mind. For all these years I've considered Cathy to be a person with outstanding values and of the greatest character. It never even crossed my mind that she could possibly be involved in criminal activity, possibly even a felon or worse!
But who knows how many years Cathy has spent behind bars prior to coming to the club? How long is Cathy's criminal record? It might be an encyclopedia of commitable crimes. A War and Peace length book of unmentionable acts, perhaps? How many skeletons does Cathy have in her closet? Just thinking about it spurs images of Edgar Allen Poe's novels! I will not be able to sleep until my conscience is cleared by the USOF background check.
The world will end if we don't run background checks on Cathy every 5 years!
Oh, wait! What if she never got caught? Oh! My god.
Well folks, we aren't going to find out, because there is no way in hell I'm wasting our club's money running background checks on our beloved Cathy or any other club members. I prefer to spend it making maps and improving our events.
"What did they think the politics of panic would invite? Person on the street shrugs, "Security comes first". But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse." Bruce Cockburn, 1981
5/9/9
USOF hired an executive director to take the lead in implementing programs that would lead to growth in orienteering in the USA. As best as I can tell, his main duty for his first year was to develop a plan that could be used to make that happen. The draft of that was posted recently and it was painful to read.
Having hired someone for a significant amount of money, we were all expecting a professionally done plan with lots of creative ideas and solid objectives that could be used to gauge progress. What we have to date is an amateurish looking outline with incomplete sentences, misspelled words and stale ideas that have been around for years. Why it took 9 months for such a rag to appear is beyond me. I would assume it was because he was embarrassed to make it public earlier. I am certain I could write up a better draft in one week.
So, what's wrong with it? I've seen comments from people that read it and had positive things to say about it. Am I just too critical? Shouldn't I give it a chance, maybe a year to two? I don't think so.
The first thing one notices about it is the first page or two of rambling about whatever, sort of a book report about what someone wrote as an approach to making a plan. That's all well and good to use to write the plan, but should it be part of the plan? I think not.
Secondly, with few exceptions there are no objectives. It is a wishy washy feel good statement that doesn't tackle the issue and give solid guidelines for how to resolve them. For example, it says we should try to get sponsorship, but it doesn't say how or how much or from whom. Every sport in this country would love sponsorship/free money to promote the sport. That's not important. What is important is how to get it.
Another interesting item in the draft is getting more volunteers involved. Duh! This is pure genius. I'm glad we hired an "expert" to point this out to us. What I find more ironic and comical is that it's the one paid person pointing this out. And this person also intends to hire support staff in the future. I ask, "How about volunteers for the support staff?" We clubs get volunteers if we can find them. The ED gets paid staff. OK.....
There was one thing in the draft that I found concrete. It was a plan to hire 4-6 foreign mappers and get visas for them. With regards to it being an objective, I was happy. I'm not sure I agree with the way it sounds like they will approach issue of getting foreign mappers, as I prefer the under the table(ie cheap) method of getting and paying them. It also seems in conflict with developing mappers in the USA. If we want USA mappers, we need to train them and give them work. How will that be possible if we are getting labor from outside the USA? The foreign mappers will take away the work that is available for US citizens who are trying to get in the business.
Now I know at this point the first comments that will be shot back at me will be, "It's only a draft." To that I say, "Yes, and a poor one at that."
Unfortunately, I see the whole process so far as a fishing expendition. We have hired a guy with no idea of how to promote orienteering. He doesn't understand the sport or the people that do it. He has spent 9 months running around trying to figure it out and just spits back ideas that he hears from others. I am amazed that more people in the orienteering community haven't been vocal in critizing his work. I believe that is because they are afraid of the backlash that they might face from others who have pushed this ED idea and refuse to believe it isn't working.
So, here we are just a couple months away from renewing the ED contract. We'll have another long range plan on paper that goes nowhere, just like the 10 year plan.
2/4/10
It's been 12 years since USOF implemented it's plan to increase membership by 10%. Back then there were real concerns about the reasoning put forth by then president Worner and reasonable people had concerns about what was being smoked by the pres.
Well now suspicion has fallen on the entire board. The new way to increase membership is to hire a CEO that the membership can't afford. This new CEO who has no real prior knowledge of orienteering is going to lead us to the promised land. He is going to raise tons of money and increase our membership by 80% or more. There's just one problem. The board has so little faith in this plan they are tripling their taxation on member clubs to cover his salary. They have no timetable or objectives with which to judge his worthiness. They also have no way of overseeing whatever work he is doing to earn his salary.
It is very clear to any rational person that this is a very good deal.....for Mr. CEO. However, it once again raises questions about the board. And just like before implementation of a drug testing program seems imminent. This time it will be for the whole board. When decisions like this are made one must wonder where the bong is and "What have these guys been smoking?" 4/23/9
Concerns have been expressed about the possibility that USOF presidents have participated in the use of illegal substances.
Questions were raised in the last administration after then president Worner suggested that increasing membership by 10% was as simple as having each club increase membership by 10%. Now a quick analysis of the figures shows that this calculation is flawless. However, one has to question why the president didn't add a zero to that figure, so that USOF could have doubled in size!
Further suspicions of foul play were aroused when current president Kraght suggested in a recently published article that if we create 14 new clubs of 100 members our numbers would increase by 1400. Once again after consulting with a mathematics expert(my niece is really good with numbers) it was discovered that no multiplication errors were made here as well. But, once again one is left to ponder, "Why not create 140 clubs with 1000 members each?". That would increase our numbers by a whopping 140,000!!!
Proposals are now being brought forth, and hearings are being scheduled to question those in charge. Implementation of a drug testing program for presidents seems imminent. Now missing a few zeros for us common folk is to be expected. But when our leaders overlook them, one is left to wonder "What have these guys been smoking?" 11/1/97
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