UK Student Archery Association

GNAS student fee hike proposed [07/Dec/09]

Feedback needs to reach GNAS by Fri 8th Jan, so get commenting. [Extra para added 19th Dec, correction 4th Jan.]

Currently the cost for a University Archery Club affiliating to GNAS is a flat annual fee of £100. GNAS have put forward a consultation document abolishing group affiliations and introducing individual membership for everyone in four price bands. Students would be in Band 2, paying 50% of the cost of joining GNAS - or £17.50 per person. The consultation document shows that 35 student clubs currently affiliate, with over 1,700 students effectively paying an average just over £2 each. For a small student club with, say, 20 paid up members, affiliating to GNAS in the present system would cost £100, but now affiliating everyone would cost £350. A larger club, with say 60 members would now face a bill of a staggering £1,050! GNAS would prefer a more streamlined membership system - and if membership levels remained the same, would make £30,765 annually from students rather than the current £3,500 - an increase of a cool 779%.

Currently clubs are able to budget for joining GNAS and can do so without increasing membership costs. If banded individual membership came into being, there would no way to do this, and the majority of the increase would be passed on to the members. Clubs, meanwhile, would face a stark choice between a large membership fee increase and not affiliating to the governing body. One might expect this website not to agree with anything that increases the costs for student archers, but this change would clearly be damaging to GNAS in the longer term, as the student clubs produce fewer archers to pay full fees once they become tax payers.

The membership fee alteration consulation document is available from that link and also from the front page of the GNAS/Archery GB website. Please do respond and pass it around to all your club members so they can do the same. Replies should be sent to comments@archerygb.org.

Thanks to Matt Brown and also Steven Johnson for bringing this to my attention. The measures also covers Juniors, School, Seniors and Disabled clubs and membership, however I'm not qualified to comment about those.

This mirrors a very similar proposal put forward by the Scottish Archery Association (as one of the GNAS regions) who had a proposal to change the flat fee from £70 to £10 per person. The SAA AGM was on Sunday 6th December, but SUS co-ordinator Matt Nowicki was successful in corralling enough votes from the student clubs in Scotland to defeat the measure.

Staying in Scotland, the match results from the first three SUS League Matches have been published. Edinburgh won their two matches easily, with no other side going beyond 1900. In SUS league matches Edinburgh give little sign of their true strength, but unfortunately none of the five other sides in action would even have been in Edinburgh's rear view mirror as they extended their winning streak in SUS(F) to 37 fixtures.