frogs in the SCA
Oct. 3rd, 2002 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThe SCA is kind of like that.
Once upon a time, some SF fans in California founded a club. It was pretty informal. A year or two later, some folks in New York got together to do the same kinds of things, and they called themselves the east-coast branch of the same club. Things were still pretty informal. Then, a couple years after that, somebody decided that things were too informal and what we really needed was a corporation to manage the club. (Cue ominous music here.)
Over the decades, the corporation has grown and gradually assumed more control over the everyday operations of the local groups. Once upon a time, all you had to do was report up the chain about what your group was doing. The corporation didn't really provide any services to local groups, but it also didn't demand much so that seemed ok.
But over time people wanted more uniformity, so the corporation started requiring local groups to have certain officers, who would report to corresponding corporate officers. And because no bureaucrat is ever happy if he has nothing to do, those officers started coming up with more and more rules that local groups had to follow.
Mind, the corporation still wasn't doing a heck of a lot for local groups. But the groups complied, because the whole process was very gradual. Each individual demand seemed inoffensive to most people, and nobody listened to the Cassandras who thought this wasn't a good idea.
About ten or fifteen years ago the corporation did something very clever, in a Machiavellian sort of way. They required that local groups put all their money in bank accounts in the name of "SCA Inc", with the corporate tax ID. This was, allegedly, to cut down on fraud and improve accounting. What it really does, however, is to hand over group assets to the corporation. Any local group that, in the future, decides to take its toys and go elsewhere -- to another re-creation group, or to a new corporation -- will find that it has no toys. Mind, the corporation didn't supply those toys, nor the money. Things like regalia are generally donated by artisans to the local group, and money is raised by local fund-raising efforts or locally-produced events. What the corporation provides there is (1) a liability policy of questionable utility to cover events (e.g. if you damage the rental hall), and (2) tax-deductability of your direct donations, because it's a 501(c)(3).
Also over the last fifteen years or so, the corporation has gradually increased membership requirements. You see, the corporation, unlike most 501(c)(3) corporations, doesn't do any corporate-level fundraising. No grants, no mass-mailings to the public, nothing. The corporation is funded entirely by dues paid by people who want to be members of teh corporation. If members don't think they're getting anything for that money, some of them don't renew. And the corporation is lousy at PR. So membership income has been going down, costs have been going up (largely avoidable costs, by the way), and the corporation is feeling the pinch.
So, gradually, they have moved from the "chartible organization, voluntary donation" model to the "you owe us" model. It used to be that only a few officers were required to be members, and they were mainly the people who could cause legal trouble for the organization if they screwed up. But now lots of people are required to be members. And if a group doesn't comply, well, you know that bank account you used to have?
But something else has happened at the same time. Somehow, paying dues to the corporation became a patriotic obligation of people who wanted to participate in the society. Never mind that the society we know -- the events, the feasts, the classes, the tourneys, even the newsletters -- are produced by volunteers just like you and me, not by the corporation. If an event loses money, it's the local group that has to absorb that; the corporation doesn't blink.
Required membership can go only so far; in 1994 they tried to require membership for any participation in society events, and that got shouted down. But many people (these same patriots) believe that non-members are "freeloaders" who don't do their share, so it's perfectly reasonable to charge non-members more to attend events (even when the non-members spend the day washing dishes and the members sit around gabbing with their friends). They liken it to belonging to a museum, which nets you a discount on admission, but they forget that in that case it is the museum that incurs the expenses of being open. In the SCA, the presence of a non-member at an event does not cost the local group any extra money. And, again, it is not the corporation that pays for events, so membership is really irrelevant.
For about a year, the corporation assessed a $3-per-event surcharge on non-members. (A typical event, with dinner, costs about $12.) This amount is way out of proportion with actual costs. Compliance was spotty, rules-lawyering abounded (I helped, though I was a member at the time), and after about a year they rescinded it.
But the corporation still can't manage money worth
a damn, so they are once again having problems. This
past July they announced that they are going to reinstate
this tax, details to follow. From what I've heard,
thay are working very hard on the rules this time,
and they have already threatened dissolution for
groups that do not comply.
Why am I writing this now? Because last night, most of the officers of my local group demonstrated that they, too, are corporate toadies, and I'm disgusted by it. (I will publicly praise the three officers who opposed the latest action as soon as I learn who they are.)
Soon, we will have a local election for a particular office. This is an office that is purely society-side; it has no impact on the corporation. (Still, the corporation requires the holder of that office to be a member of the corporation.) In the past, when we have elected this officer, all participants in the local group have been allowed to cast ballots.
This time, they are limiting it to members of the corporation, for no good reason. (If I had known this ridiculous idea was on the table, I would have gone to the meeting. I'm not an officer, though, so I didn't.)
You know, the corporation doesn't have to seize control of the society so long as local groups are populated by quislings who are happy to just hand the society over without question. The corporation doesn't require membership for voting; that's a local innovation. So I am disgusted, first by the new tax and now by this.
I'm not going to let all this idiocy run me out of the society, but I think I am going to become much less supportive of the organization, and that I'll probably become more of a pain about some things. (For example, I will require receipts for all surcharges paid, for income-tax purposes.)
I'm probably not going to help with fund-raising efforts any more, even though my local group could really use the help. After all, the corporation could walk in and claim this money that they didn't earn, and the officers of my local group don't seem to be doing much to protect the locals from corporate stupidity.
In the past, there have been events that I have attended not because I wanted to but because I was expected to, or was asked to help run something. Now, I am going to carefully choose the events that I want to attend and the efforts that I want to support, and I'm going to be much less inclined to listen to arguments based on "duty", including "peerly duty" and duty to the local group (the latter so long as its officers behave in this way). I'm not going to pay a tax to a corporation without moral standing to demand it in order to go work at an event.
Many people aren't corporate members because they can't afford it, or because they don't "need" to be. I remain a non-member as a matter of principle: the corporation has done some things that are outright damaging, and until they reverse those actions I am loathe to support them. Now, going to events that they have no hand in running supports them, and that makes me sad, but I'm not going to stop going to events. I will go to fewer events, though, and I think they'll make less off of me from the new tax than they would from a membership.
I still resent them for claiming -- successfully, it would appear -- ownership over the society that they did not build.
Re: 2/3 of praise due
Date: 2002-10-09 08:22 am (UTC)