SCA corporate antics, again

[cellio]

On Saturday, the SCA Inc board of directors apparently voted to reinstate a $3-per-event surcharge on each attending non-member. This charge is payable to the corporation; note that, otherwise, event fees are not. This will start January 1, and implementation details will be forthcoming. They did this several years ago and eventually repealed it because it was so divisive; I cannot imagine why they have chosen to restart that argument.

I am not a member of the corporation, for philosophical reasons. I am uncertain how I will respond to this new move. It will probably involve reduced participation. I am pesimistic that even my local group will push back, let alone my kingdom or other local groups near me. Too many people seem to think that the corporation enables the SCA to exist, but really, it's the local groups. The organization is run on volunteer labor, not membership dollars.

There are two primary reasons that I am not an SCA member. The lesser is that, when they implemented compulsory membership for any degree of participation, which was a move at odds with 30+ years of custom, they accomplished that change by making an illegal change in the bylaws of the corporation. In the eight and a half years since then they have not rescinded or reversed that illegal change. Requests that they address the issue have gone unanswered. It does not matter if they would ever act on that change again; they have left the door open to it and they did not follow the rules in opening that door. This is a stumbling block for me.

The greater reason is that I am bothered by the corporate tendency to assert ownership over that which it does not provide. This new tax, for example, is supposed to be in payment for the services the SCA Inc renders for events -- but it's way out of whack. (Something under a quarter per attendee would be about right.) The corporation does not provide events; local groups do, without any corporate money. Local groups bear all of the risk. The SCA is, financially, a confederation of independent local groups, with rules that come down from above. Over the years the corporation has bullied local groups that wanted to do things differently, to the point where most groups have caved.

There are other areas where the corporation regulates what it does not actually provide -- newsletters, web sites, structure of local groups, and more. It's one thing to say, for example, "we provide the web server so you'll follow these rules", but in fact what happens is that some volunteer provides a web site for his local group, on his own server, and the corporation tells him that in order to provide this service he must follow these rules and purchase a membership in the corporation. There has been more and more of this sort of thing over the last ten years or so. I don't want to help fund a corporation that behaves in this way. It is the classic case of a corporation that was created to serve its members but now expects its members to serve it.

It is most definitely not about the money; every year I donate several times the cost of a membership to my local group and kingdom, and Pennsic for that matter. (Pennsic imposes a surcharge on non-members that equals the cost of the basic membership, but I'd rather give the money to Pennsic than to the corporation.)

Comments

Re: From the Pennsic class schedule:

[cellio]

Yup, should make for an interesting discussion. (However, note that Dani spent 6+ years as nominal head of the finance committee and he couldn't figure out how the corporate finances work, either. The sloppy bookkeeping didn't end after the troubles of 1994.)