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SCA: the lawsuit
I wasn't sure whether I was going to post about this (the discussion is happening in lots of places already), but a few people have asked what this relatively-long-time-SCAdian thinks, so...
I can't help feeling a bit of Cassandrafreude over this. A few people, most notably Duke Cariadoc (a real-world economist who knows a thing or two about organizational structure and law, and from whom I take a lot of inspiration), have been arguing against the centralized corporation for decades, for reasons including the giant target it paints on the corporate coffers. People called us paranoid. (Granted, I oppose the current centralization for many other reasons too.) Since the corporation asserted its ownership over all local-group funds about 20-25 years ago, I have been expecting something like this to happen. (Before then, a group could maintain its own bank account, absent the benefits of being part of a non-profit, if it wanted to. Some did.)
I have lots of questions about the current situation -- about what options were considered and why others were rejected, and about the timing. This post is not about that.
I have met the president of the SCA and several of its directors. I have had polite, respectful, and challenging conversations with them about various corporate doings. I have found them to be decent people, not at all like the situation in 1994. They are in a difficult position and, frankly, out of their league. This is not about the individual people who are in charge of the corporation. I think the problems are institutional and uncorrectable within the current structure and common mindset of the SCA.
So long as that giant target exists on the (new-reduced) coffers, and especially now that the SCA has settled once and thus demonstrated its willingness to anyone who wants to sue regardless of merit, there will be no end to the problem. Lawsuits are pressed when the potential payoff exceeds the expected costs of prosecution; big bank accounts mean higher potential payoffs. If the target had instead been "SCA Kingdom of the East, Inc" with a tenth the assets of SCA Inc, the settlement probably wouldn't have been $1.3M.
And not only are we a target no matter what we do (the precautions put in place after the current case would not have prevented that case), but every case and every precaution does some incremental harm to the society. People get deterred from volunteering because of either the risks or the new regulations, and meanwhile the level of discourse in these discussions is often rather far below what you would expect from a society founded on chivalric ideals. It's ugly and tiring, and I suspect we lose as many people to the arguments as we do to the underlying situations.
A single corporation holding all those assets does harm to the society. There's just no way around that. The directors of any corporation have a fiduciary responsibility to protect those assets; they do not have a duty to protect the culture that makes the society what it is. A corporation must protect its assets, and fears around that will always trump other concerns. It's not reasonable to expect otherwise.
It's funny: the most consistent argument I've heard for why we need a central corporation is insurance coverage. We're currently suing our insurance provider for refusing to pay a claim.
People have been advocating decentralization since the very beginning -- in fact, the society came first and the corporation only some years later -- but the idea has never taken hold. People like central authority, uniformity across the society, and -- while they grumble about the rent -- a central office that you can call when your newsletter didn't arrive or you need proof of membership for Crown Tourney. Demonstrations from other organizations that a decentralized structure can work are met with indifference or dismissal -- "we're different". Questions about whether the current structure is worth the cost, financial and otherwise, are often met with emotional, not logical, responses, preventing conversational progress. People do not see the possibilities that loosely-associated independent organizations could bring -- that An Tir could have same-sex royalty and AEthelmearc could adopt new fencing forms and Atlantia could reduce the fighting age to 14 and Caid could choose its royalty by vote and... (I'm making up some of these examples, ok?)
As I said before, I believe the president and directors are acting with the best of intentions. But even the best-intentioned people can end up perpetuating something that ought to be re-examined. If the current situation causes the society to re-examine its structure, to allow kingdoms to spin off and make the rules and cultural changes they find appropriate, with the consequent distributed liability, then $1.3M will have been a small price to pay for that change.
But that won't happen, just as it didn't happen in 1994. Too many people in the SCA are too eager to preserve the current structure unexamined, to avoid the responsibility that would come with independence, and to call anyone who says differently a bad person. The biggest fight the SCA has been through during my time was the fiasco that started with the mandatory-membership decree, and that did not rally people for a change in the end. This will not either. We rush to gather the payment for the disaster that has just occurred, but we are unwilling to ask what we should do to reduce the chances of a repeat occurrence. We think new rules will save us and we ignore the sights trained on the bank accounts. People have already compared the current and forthcoming fund-raising to the outpouring of support in the face of hurricanes and floods; I instead compare it to rebuilding on a ten-year flood plain.
I have been drifting away from the SCA over the last couple decades, and this is not my fight. Not this time. Fortunately for me, there are really only three things about the SCA that really matter to me, and the demise of the corporation (were it to happen) would not harm any of them. They are:
1. All the interactions and shared projects with friends across the world-wide society; we'll keep making music and researching clothing and brewing beer and cooking feasts and so on regardless.
2. Local activities. The absence of a tax-exempt corporation with an insurance policy (now shown to be of dubious reliability) won't stop us from gathering for tourneys and feasts and academies. It may affect where and how we do those things, but people who want to have fun together will keep having fun together. Other small groups do things at least as dangerous as we do; surely the liability problem isn't completely intractable.
3. Pennsic. Pennsic is nominally an SCA event, but it is unlike all others I have attended in structure. It is also the largest source of annual revenue for Cooper's Lake Campground, and I have no doubt that were SCA Inc. to vanish, the Coopers would make official what has been true in practice for years, that Pennsic is a Cooper's Lake event.
So if SCA Inc. were to go away, then after some local fund-raising efforts to replace seized property like crowns and loaner armor and kitchen supplies, I think the only impact I would notice would be the refreshing freedom to return to a society that's about the re-creation and the people and the fun. I don't think I'd mind that outcome at all.
no subject
Lots of smaller, affiliated corporations would limit the prize (in most cases) and limit the damage, and none of them would be irreplaceable.
no subject
In the case where the smaller corporations couldn't afford to indemnify its officers against personal lawsuits, a lawsuit itself, regardless of the outcome, would financially ruin or do great fiscal harm to individuals. In maby personal cases, there is no such thing as limited damage - any damage from a lawsuit would be devastating in fees alone. Who would take the risk to their families? Some would. I wouldn't.
In the case where individuals could be indemnified, but lawsuits burn up the little Corporations which are then replaced, how long would that go on before no one is *willing* to replace them? Our non-profit has much value, but we aren't feeding the homeless, we aren't providing life skills to children (in an obvious way)... We are a historical hobbyist organization with no deeply rooted societal purpose. Burn and replace wouldn't work for very long, when all we really want to do is play.
In the SCA, people burn out all the time just doing the normal business of facilitation of the game. Some of you are reading this now. If more people are forced to the meta-game, burn out would be higher and faster as people who aren't prepared for it take the Corporate positions. Settling for a burn-and-replace model may work, but it's not infdefinite, and the risk is too high for my taste.
no subject
You are correct that a non-profit which cannot indemnify its volunteers and officers is at risk - but that risk is as much from the state that incorporates it as it is from the risk to the volunteers. The non-profits I have examined that use the IRS Group Exemption also provide umbrella insurance policies, as well as umbrella exemptions. Sub-groups are free to find a better deal, of course. (There are risks to having multiple small corporations share a claims history, but at the same time it is part of risk sharing - so not altogether bad.)
I agree: no indemnification, no volunteerism. In this case, that's a historical statement - at the time when I last autocrated, the SCA did not indemnify volunteers or local officers. When I bought a house, I quit doing that stuff. Same for my absolute long-term refusal to assist with children's activities. I don't care to be a target.
Your question about repetitive "airbag deployment" of little corporations begs a question: why would that be? If the failures are diffuse across the Known World (and it is the result of proper indemnification), either there is a structural problem that merits fixing (or the corp should die), or the problem is not nearly so likely to effect recruitment. Contrariwise, if the repetitive failure is localized, failure to instate a new corporation is the right solution: that nexus of volunteers and law is too dangerous to continue.
The path to "death of the umbrella SCA predicted" that you seem to have made, is not a path I see clearly. Can you elaborate? How did you come to assess that risk - are you presuming a lack of indemnification (which is not justified) or some pattern of repetitive failure that you did not explain?
no subject
I don't understand your question about airbag deployment, as I didn't use that metaphor. If you mean smaller Corporations failing due to bankruptcy brought on by lawsuits, and being re-invented by its former members, that was your idea, not mine. I was only pointing out that it's not sustainable, volunteer-wise.
I also don't understand "death of the umbrella SCA predicted", as I didn't say that, either. I don't know what you're referring to.
We play SCA becuase it's fun, or we're getting something out of it otherwise. The nature of our games is such that we need an internal structure of volunteers to run it. If it's a PITA to run it, or risky personally (which you admit it is even under the current structure, by you youself declining to take on positions of responsibility), you don't get as many or as qualified people to do it. Who wants to spend their free time dealing with meta-game stuff like lawsuits? We have one Corporation now, with a Board, who have volunteered to deal with just that. They have a hard time finding qualified people to volunteer to that one Board. Multuply it by 19 Kingdoms, and you have major drain on the few qualified people that are even capable of it, let alone qualified.
I don't think that the current Corporate system is perfect, not at all. But I'm happy that we as a Kingdom don't have the same stresses that the BoD does. I don't think we could handle it.
no subject
I had been cited elsewhere in the conversation as using the phrase "Corporations are like airbags", and I probably made a mistake in presuming you had read it. I find your bald assertion that "burn and replace wouldn't work for very long" to be doubtful. I'd like to see more analysis of that from you before I am prepared to believe it.
Your post also asserted that this model would, in the end, fail the umbrella corporation through an inevitable lack of volunteers. That was what I meant with a reference to the shibboleth of "death of the SCA predicted".
My point, which remains, is that while you are positing theory, there are many local affiliation equivalents out there which are successful under that model.
The data is somewhere here (http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/charitablestats/article/0,,id=97186,00.html), I feel sure, but I lack the time to check it. Given how many hobbies, fraternities and sororities, and other similar organizations that I know of do this, and it works, and for many it has worked for decades: I'm letting the facts speak.
One last thought: what new workloads do you think that the Kingdoms would need (if they were separately incorporated as subsidiaries) beyond what they already have? I can think of very very little.
no subject
Under your burn-and-replace model, I was not predicting the death of the SCA. On the contrary, I actually think the SCA as a whole would survive nearly any crisis or reorganization, simply because it fulfills a need that isn't met in many other places (though increasingly, MMORPGs). There will always be someone who wants to play at knights in shining armor, and those with a true interest in re-creating medieval life. What I think could fail is particular local or regional groups, and potentially individuals, especially in litigious areas. I would rather see them protected.
You mention many other hobbies and similar organizations that are separately incorporated under an umbrella organization, and it works for them. I'd be happy to let those facts speak, but I am not familiar with any of them that are comparable to the SCA in size or principal. Or type of volunteer, for that matter. You mention fraternities and sororities, and you have a point there, but these have a both a constant infux of new folks, and a very limited term of engagement - burn-out is unlikely there, so I can't call them analagous. I looked at a couple of other living history organizations, and the ones I saw are all much smaller than the SCA, and limited geographically. Give me an example of a truly nationwide, hobbyist non-profit umbrella with membership numbers similar to ours. The Civil War folks, maybe? Don't know much about them, though I'm pretty sure they don't have a national umbrella. I'm not challenging you - I'm actually interested.
You find my assertions doubtful, and I find yours so, too, based on what I know. Honestly, your model for the SCA is a thought-experiment based on a hypothetical. It's interesting, but I'm not surprised we see the path of the thing differently. There are too many unknowns, and I assume we both have different experiences within the SCA (I don't know who you are).
Don't get me wrong, though. I don't think the current system is perfect, or even ideal. I see how Monica's suggestion could change things for the better in some ways, but I also think it would change other things for the worse. It's my opinion based on my experience and sadly (hard to admit), my fears.
no subject
Barbershop.org
I did a quick look at a few others - I think American Contract Bridge League is likely similar, I found a few chess clubs that are similar, same for dog ownership, dog rescue and other animal rescue organizations.
Sports - I believe that most youth sports organizations function similarly.
Is that a good start?