Clubs are the backbone in the grassroots activities of cycling.
The participation of clubs in the association’s business is going to be the key to our association’s success, and the activities of individual clubs are going to be the engines that drive progress in our association. Every club needs to have an active racing team, put on at least one event, have at least one active official, and needs to participate in association meetings and programs. The association only exists as a structure and forum for those clubs to organize and coordinate activities between themselves.
What can the association do to help? It can provide structure, and information, and provide a forum for clubs struggling with similar issues. It can’t generally provide the resources to *fix* a problem. Only to coordinate and combine the efforts of individual clubs. And this work, itself, has to be distributed amongst the members of the association.
For example. I’ve heard a lot of conversation over the years about supporting (fill in the blank) junior/master/women/novice racers. I’ve got no problem with that. But it is best done at the club level, with coordination of programs at the association level. In other words, if you want to support a certain “underprivileged” class of racers, do it successfully at the club level first, and then make efforts to broaden that support by associating with other clubs that share your interests. Past experience has taught me that “top down” programs don’t do as much as people wish they would, or last particularly long. If you can’t develop a successful program at the club level, it isn’t likely that the association can do it for you on the statewide level.
One thing that the association can do is to encourage/require standard formats for events that ensure opportunities to compete for these classes. Examples of this would be class conformity, reduced/capped entry fees, minimum requirements for prize lists & depth of payout, etc. But that effort will only be successful if enough clubs agree to support the standard, and enough riders show up at the races. The association can also act to distribute information about how the most successful clubs operate, so that all can benefit from their knowledge and experience.
It’s more difficult to attempt to “subsidize” class specific programs on a statewide level. The difficulty usually involves what procedure is used to determine which programs or individuals are subsidized, not to mention the non-trivial problem of funding the program. Once again, this is best accomplished at the club level, for example, where clubs use fundraising/sponsorship to reimburse riders for travel expenses, pay for coaching, or provide equipment.
One of the good things about the current situation with our Local Association and USA Cycling, is that we get a rebate for every annual license sold, that comes back to support our programs. That gives us a base income without levying additional fees, and provides us with a direct incentive to sustain and build our membership, by whatever means we think most effective. But it’s important to note that this money, welcome as it is, is not sufficient to pay for the most important resource that our association needs – the interest and time of knowledgeable people who want to further the growth of the sport of cycling. An annual budget of $10K a year isn’t all that much money if you start talking about paying for services…
At the very least, we need to assemble an organization that can function at deciding what to spend that amount of money on, and how to analyze its effectiveness.
We’re not there, yet, but we’re getting closer. I’m hopeful that we’ll have a good turnout for the annual meeting to finish old business, resolve current problems, and begin the work of developing programs for the future.