Discussion on funding professional paid Gear Storage

nzLARPS
#21

We welcome everyone to comment about this discussion, however we are not making decisions based on it being a precedent. We, the Auckland committee will be making the decision for the Auckland gear. And if Wellington committee want to look at that decision when talking about the Wellington Gear, then its entirely up to them. I think that the set up affiliates/projects is quite different between the regions and each will need to consider their own financial situation.

Good feedback from Pippi etc wrt smaller games. At this stage the committee have been concerned about getting enough funds to cover the ongoing cost of gear storage to be able to commit to it. So we had only taken into account the games that are pretty definitely going to be regular occurrences to base the figures around. Smaller projects come and go, and can’t be relied upon for a steady income. Its good to have their input too, sorry if it seems like we’re forgetting about them.

I think Affiliates would also be charged some fee for using the gear. There was some discussion at the committee meeting about whether Affiliates should be charged for using the gear, to cover the maintenance/replacement costs, regardless of whatever cost may or may not be charged them to cover storage. They are probably separate discussions, but are probably tied together to what costs can a game bear. (And 1001 Nights has become an affilate. Jade Empire not.)

#22

If you check the minutes from Wellington’s last committee meeting, you’ll see that we have already decided to go with a stepped-fee model.

#23

In conjunction with Pippi Longaxe’s opinion above, I’d like to suggest two amendments to the policy (which I am sure was implicit but it’s best to be explicit)

  • If a project is using no gear, or very minimal gear, the gear fee should be waived in favour of a more appropriate donation, as per the earning capability of the game in question. We still want the gear to be accessible to people running games with low overheads (and as such, low game fees)
  • Affiliates should be charged for gear at the same rates, if not more. The logic is that projects feed their profits directly back into the society as well as the gear they purchase, while affiliates don’t contribute tangible ‘things’ to the society, therefore it makes sense to hire them the gear at a higher rate. This is similar to say, a surf club loaning gear to its members (i.e. projects) at a discounted rate, versus non-members (affiliates). It is not fair if affiliates use the gear for free while projects pay.[/quote]I can’t speak for the rest of the committee, but both of these points were already firmly in my head, so much so that I didn’t even notice they weren’t explicitly mentioned otherwise. I agree that we’d only be trying to recover money for gear from those events which actually use it. I am leery that it could end up just putting people off taking advantage of the gear library, but I think it’s too valuable a resource for that to happen much.

I also very much agree on the point about affiliates paying at least as much. It indeed wouldn’t make sense for them to pay nothing while we are expecting projects to pay.

Personally I favour the percentage of revenue system, as I feel that it naturally adapts to the specifics of any particular relatively well, but ultimately if there is a clear preference amongst the community, and especially game organisers, I’d back whichever one that is.

#24

When this topic first came up, and I had free time to spare, I made some notes to myself about different possible fee models that we could use. I shared these notes with the rest of the committee while we were discussing it, and I was asked to place them here for everyone to read. Please note that these were written quickly, and only reflect my thoughts on the subject. They do not necessarily represent the views of anyone else on the committee, and in fact it’s entirely possible that people don’t agree with this. But, they are presented here in the hopes that it will be of benefit to everyone:

[size=150]Possible alternative approaches for fees[/size]
Flat fee for each event
This would be a simple, fixed fee charged per event for gear usage, e.g. perhaps $500 per event to use the NZLARPS gear library.
Pros
• Very simple system
• Fairly easy to target the required charge – estimate annual storage expense, divide by number of events expected to use gear library over the next year, to come up with charge per event
Cons
• Does not take into account relative size of event
• Does not take into account relative length of event
• Does not take into account differences in amount of gear used, and wear & tear to gear
• Assumes that all events have very similar levels of gear usage
• Ignores possibility that some attendees don’t come for whole event
This could be modified to take into account such matters as whether an event would be a ‘day’ or ‘weekend’ event. Could also perhaps use a differing charge based on various criteria such as number of attendees, or total budget size.
It could also perhaps be modified to a fixed charge per day or part thereof that gear is used, so that a normal weekend event would be charged three fees (as it uses gear across Friday night, Saturday and Sunday morning), and a day event is charged just one fee.

Fixed fee per head fee for each event
This would be a simple charge for each attendee to an event, e.g. $5 per person.
Pros
• Simple system
• Total amount scales linearly with the number of attendees
• Higher number of attendees also likely means more gear used, so event would be paying a higher charge for using more gear
Cons
• Unpredictable cash flow – cannot make reliable predictions of number of attendees much time in advance. If fee is set based on expected number of attendees, could find at the end of the year that we have significantly over or under charged compared to our goals.
• Ignores possibility that some attendees don’t come for whole event
• Does not take into account relative length of event
• Does not take into account differences in amount of gear used, and wear & tear to gear
• Ignores differences in gear usage because of higher or lower numbers of crew vs players
• Last-minute drop-outs might mean that an event doesn’t pay as much for gear that is taken out and used, even though nothing else is different
This could be modified to make a distinction between ‘day’ and ‘weekend’ events, e.g. perhaps $5 per head for a weekend event, $1 per head for a day event. The downside to that would be that GMs might feel they have to start charging to crew at day events, whereas some recently (e.g. most recent Teonn day game) have been free to crew at.

Fixed fee per crew member for each event
Considering that it is largely the crew who use the Society gear, a slightly different approach to the one above could perhaps be taken, in that the charge would still be based on a headcount, but only counting the number of people crewing. But while the crew might be the ones directly using the gear, players still receive the benefit of the crewing being better equipped, so in the end the benefit likely evens out across the two groups, and thus this idea is perhaps of little help. It might also encourage GMs to add costs for gear only onto the crew price, which would be a bad outcome, as crewing is the cheaper option for those without the spare money to afford to play (e.g. students).

Fee per ‘time block’ gear is used
Most weekend events could be divided into roughly five or six ‘time blocks’ that the gear would be used over, roughly: Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, Sunday morning and, if play continues over into it, Sunday afternoon. A fee for each of these ‘time blocks’, could be charged, so that instead of a fixed fee for an event, or daily fixed fee, the charges could be broken down to roughly match the usage patterns of a game, so that instead of charging one $500 fee, five $100 fees are charged, leaving open the possibility of a game altering its usage of the gear to suit the budget – although if most events use the same format for the time then it arguably becomes the flat fee option. It could also be very hard for many games to not use the gear on Friday night or Sunday morning, and it is really nonsensical to say that a game won’t be charged a fee so long as they don’t use any gear on Saturday morning (and unreasonable to expect them to).
Alternatively a fee per time block per person could be charged, say $1 per time block per person, which would mean that for an event like Chimera where a person might only turn up for one session out of six, the event only incurs cost for that one session for that person, but someone who participates in the entire convention would incur a $6 fee. Both these approaches might also suit something like the first Sabbat, which only took place over Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, and (I think) Sunday morning.
Pros
• Matches more closely to the actual usage in terms of time gear is used and perhaps number of people using it
• Fits reasonably well to the model of an event like Chimera
• Gives event organisers some flexibility around when they use gear to minimise cost
Cons
• More bureaucracy for someone, trying to keep track of which ‘time blocks’ a game took place over, and how many attendees there were at each
• Possibly doesn’t fit so well to less standard event models, such as night-based weekend events like Witch House
• Could be very hard to predict cash flow in advance, if the latter approach is used
• Last-minute drop-outs might mean that an event doesn’t pay as much for gear that is taken out and used, even though nothing else is different

Percentage of revenue fee
A percentage of the total revenue of an event is ‘charged’ by the society to a project, e.g. 5% of the total revenue of an event must be considered as an ‘NZLARPS overhead’ cost that projects must meet as one of their costs.
Pros
• Works well around different pricing structures for different events, and scales well for events of different sizes. Also should fit well to different lengths of events. In some ways at least, more ‘equitable’.
Cons
• Could be relatively difficult for non-financially-minded people to understand
• Could be hard to predict cash flow in advance
• Last-minute drop-outs might mean that an event doesn’t pay as much for gear that is taken out and used, even though nothing else is different
• Doesn’t take into account differences in amount of gear used, and wear & tear to gear

#25

Maybe something simple like $2 per player per day if you use gear from the gear shed.

Also, if we need to move it again, I’m totally up for it.

#26

I vote for Derek’s approach (although the exact price may need to vary).

a) it’s simple, you don’t need any calculations other than # of days.
b) it can be added as a separate line item onto a game cost:

e.g. for a daygame,
Game Fee $10
Gear Fee $2
TOTAL FEE: $12

Point b) is important because it socialises the fact that we ALL need to support the gear library; it is not hidden behind a complicated costing structure, and the participants all know that they are personally contributing towards the cost of gear storage.

We’ll likely raise around $2000 p.a. from this approach, leaving about $1500 to $2000 p.a. to be raised by alternative means.

I advocate trying this approach first, and only moving to a more complicated approach if this really does not work.

#27

[quote=“Mike Curtis”]I vote for Derek’s approach (although the exact price may need to vary).

a) it’s simple, you don’t need any calculations other than # of days.
b) it can be added as a separate line item onto a game cost:

e.g. for a daygame,
Game Fee $10
Gear Fee $2
TOTAL FEE: $12

Point b) is important because it socialises the fact that we ALL need to support the gear library; it is not hidden behind a complicated costing structure, and the participants all know that they are personally contributing towards the cost of gear storage.

We’ll likely raise around $2000 p.a. from this approach, leaving about $1500 to $2000 p.a. to be raised by alternative means.

I advocate trying this approach first, and only moving to a more complicated approach if this really does not work.[/quote]

We could go for a $2 gear fee per day for members and a $5 gear fee per day for non members.
That would automatically build in a member discount for events.

Maybe have a minimum and maximum game fee ($20? and $500?) if people think that’s worth doing.

#28

Can you clarify this point?

[quote=“Derek”]We could go for a $2 gear fee per day for members and a $5 gear fee per day for non members.
That would automatically build in a member discount for events.[/quote]

This is going to get complicated for Chimera. We have people that come for all sorts of random combinations of times and events, and there’s a notable portion of attendees that have trouble with the matrix where they match up the number of games they are playing with a dollar amount. If I have to start getting them to calculate a gear fee on top of that, as well as membership variables, I’ll be spending half my life answering emails along the lines of “I don’t understand how much I have to pay”.

If someone builds me a ‘calculate your Chimera fee’ gadget for the website, I’ll quit my whining :wink:

Edit: A ‘per day’ model also doesn’t work well with the Chimera structure. If someone comes on two days but plays one game each day, they are paying twice as much and getting only two thirds the value of someone who comes for one day but plays three games. If this approach is adopted, I’ll be respectfully petitioning the committee to be charged on a ‘per game’ scale rather than a per day scale.

#29

Alternatively you could make Chimera a special case given its unique nature, and perhaps just have a bulk charge to the event that gets lost in the rest of the costs, but for single game larps, run with Derek’s idea.

#30

I think that’s overthinking it. I’d run with the logic that Chimera as an event uses the gear shed so I’d calculate it based on the total number of members and non-members attending Chimera and not for every individual game.

It’s not ‘fair’ in the true user pays sense, but it’s manageable at a high level budgeting level which is probably as important.

#31

The “percentage of revenue fee” was my suggestion.

In this approach events that are using gear are charged a small percentage of their total income (e.g. 5%) as an overhead fee. It is up to them how they distribute this cost to attendees.

Charging a percentage of revenue is the simplest option for the Auckland committee and for the events to implement. That’s what makes it the best option, in my opinion.

From the committee’s perspective, they will set the percentage at the start of the year, based on their forecast of revenue from all games across the year. If the committee thinks there will be $60,000 of income from games using gear, and they want to raise $3,000 to cover costs of overheads such as gear storage, then they can simply set the fee at 5% of revenue (5% of 60,000 is 3,000).

As the revenue for Auckland increases (assuming the cost of storage does not increase proportionately) then the committee can gradually lower the percentage fee from year to year. This is economy of scale, and it will be easier to achieve with a percentage fee, as it’s a single number to adjust on spreadsheets.

One problem with other options is that it becomes more complicated for the committee to predict how much extra will be raised from them across the year. They would have to forecast how many games of different sorts there will be. With percentage of revenue, they only need to track previous year’s total revenue for Auckland, and forecast roughly how much growth they expect based on new and larger games.

From the perspective of a person running an event, percentage of revenue adds almost no additional work. It is simply one more cost line in their overall budget, that they will have to counteract by raising attendee fees as they see fit (just like they do for every other expense). In most cases they can simply raise all prices by the same percent, e.g. 5%. It’s their event, why should the committee be telling them how to cover a cost by forcing them to make specific price increases?

I really don’t think we want to take an option that makes life harder for event runners. Adding a fee that is a percentage of revenue creates almost no extra work for them.

Personally, I object to the idea that special transparency is needed in this case. Why must attendees be able to see their contribution to the cost of gear storage in particular? What about all the other costs that make up the price? Note that events are already contributing to a $500 cost of gear storage (the koha) per year.

Examples of prices increases that would cover a 5% fee:

A $20 event would become $21.
A $60 event woud become $63.
A $100 event would become $105.
A $120 event would become $126.

All of these options need to raise the same amount of money to cover gear storage. If they all have the same result, why not take the option that is easiest to implement?

#32

[quote=“Derek”][quote=“Anna K”]Edit: A ‘per day’ model also doesn’t work well with the Chimera structure. If someone comes on two days but plays one game each day, they are paying twice as much and getting only two thirds the value of someone who comes for one day but plays three games. If this approach is adopted, I’ll be respectfully petitioning the committee to be charged on a ‘per game’ scale rather than a per day scale.[/quotI’m

I think that’s overthinking it. I’d run with the logic that Chimera as an event uses the gear shed so I’d calculate it based on the total number of members and non-members attending Chimera and not for every individual game.

It’s not ‘fair’ in the true user pays sense, but it’s manageable at a high level budgeting level which is probably as important.[/quote][/quote]

If it’s as simple as $2 per day per person that’s true. Especially if Chimera is being charged that fee, not the players.

If I’m asked to separate it out as a charge as per Mike’s post, then people are going to see it and ask questions. When a non-member wants to come for two days and suddenly sees an extra $10 fee to pay while a member is paying $2 to attend three games on one day, that’s going to impact people’s decisions about attending. I’d rather a system I can just throw into the budget and not have to worry about my players doing math because that’s always going to end in confusion and confused emails.

I’m happy to do my bit to fundraise for gear storage, I just don’t want it turning into a complicated hoopla.

#33

If I add a IsNZLARPSMember field to the Chimera app, and some fee calculation structures, then it can automatically calculate their gear fee for you. Actually, why don’t I add the full attendance fee calculation while I’m at it :wink: Consider it in scope for this year’s release !

While you will always get people who don’t RTFI, I think if you add a section to the game allocation results email that breaks down the gear fee for them (again, put this in the app), then I think most questions would be answered up front.

It does not have to be transparent, you can still hide it if you want. The reality is that we face a brand new significant game cost (gear storage). Considering the minimal numbers that attend rationalisations and load ins / load outs, most people are quite happy to let the Gear Faeries do the heavy lifting when it comes to the gear. As I said above, I think we need to change our cultural attitude to the gear, and specific transparency was one suggested way to achieve this.

I’ve attended daygames where there are a lot of crew (40+) who are not charged for their attendance (i.e. zero revenue for 40+ attendees). That’s a lot of gear that is being used which, under your model, has zero impact on the total gear fee for the game. Is this fair ?

It will always come down to a trade-off between competing factors such as ease-of-use, amount of gear user, days used etc. I prefer “reasonably simple” and “pay for what you use and how long you use it for”.

#34

I’ve attended daygames where there are a lot of crew (40+) who are not charged for their attendance (i.e. zero revenue for 40+ attendees). That’s a lot of gear that is being used which, under your model, has zero impact on the total gear fee for the game. Is this fair ?[/quote]

If they have 40 free crew, chances are they have a fair number of paying players. The fee would apply to that revenue. In fact, aren’t the day games you’re describing the ones that make NZLARPS the most profit, because they have no venue costs?

If the Auckland committee was presented with a budget that had no revenue, for a game borrowing gear, the committee can just say no.

Forget complete fairness, it’s not achievable and difficult to measure besides. Is it fair that a game that only borrows a few items gets charged the same as one that borrows lots? No, but it averages out across games and the alternative is too complex. Rough fairness is good enough.

I would actually prefer that this overhead fee is charged regardless of whether a game is borrowing gear or not, so as not to discourage games from using the gear. That will work best with the percentage of revenue, as most games that don’t use gear have tiny revenue so their fee would be tiny. This fee can be used not just for gear storage, but any kind of regional overhead costs.

#35

I’m starting to favour Ryan’s solution.

#36

This is budget talk:
Weekend game $50
gear fee (member) $6
gear fee (non member) $15

This is event notice talk:
Weekend game $65
nzlarps member discount $9

#37

That works great for your average weekender. It still doesn’t work for Chimera where the entire payment matrix is based around number of games attended not number of days.

#38

Split it into 50c per game?