National body

nzLARPS
#1

So, we’ve voted to allow the formation of regional branches. It’s likely that those branches will have committees resembling the existing committee - although that has yet to be determined. Presumably those branches will have their own regional AGMs, which will probably be able to happen on a separate day from the national AGM, although again that isn’t codified yet.

The function of the regional branches is very clear. Almost everything that NZLARPS has been doing in Auckland in the last 4 years has been regional functions, and it can be replicated elsewhere. Funding events, maintaining gear for loan, helping event arrangers, forming local alliances, etc. The regional branches “keep their own accounts”, so presumably they at least get funding from the profits of local events they run.

The outstanding decision is what the national part of the society should look like. There were two options that we didn’t get to voting on, but I’d like to take a step back and ask: what function does the national body serve? Once we identify the function, we should be better placed to decide what structure will perform it best.

Larp itself is a physical, localised activity. The function of the regional branches is to support the actual larps with their localised needs. So what do we need that is national, not local?

[size=150]National body functions[/size]

Here are some thoughts on what the main functions of the national body might be:

  1. Coordination of regional bodies.
  2. Online presence and services.
  3. Communication to all members
  4. Organising national AGMs and SGMs
  5. National promotion of the society and larp as a whole
  6. Making national and international alliances with other groups
  7. Possibly national events? In practical terms these are actually local events with a national appeal, but managing them at the national level might provide the national body with a source of funding - see below.
  8. Managing member information (thanks Dave)

Thoughts for other national functions?

[size=150]National body funding[/size]

Some of these functions will require funds. Where will these funds come from? The bulk of society funds come from membership fees and profits from events.

When members pay their fees, will it go into the accounts of their local regional branch or the national body? I think this is an open question, and it needs some financial analysis. We need to make sure the national body is sufficiently funded to perform its functions.

Will the regional branches fund the national body with profits from events at all? Will the national body fund regional expenses at all?

It might be best if national conventions (i.e. Chimera, at this stage) report to the national body. That would be one source of revenue for the national body. Note that this doesn’t mean that a national committee member has to organise these national events. It only means that the national projects are funded by and report to the national body.

[size=150]National body structure[/size]

Personally, when I look at the functions I listed above (and there are probably others too) I imagine:

President
Secretary
Treasurer
Information Technology Officer

I don’t see the need for a national Marketing Officer, I think this role is something the President should handle at the national level, as promoting the society is a key part of their role. Note the national IT Officer role. We have a lot of national IT needs, chiefly in terms of web hosting and services such as a user & event database with booking capabilities and services such as content management for individual larp websites, but also in terms of audio/visual conference calling at national meetings. Our IT services need to be improved and then maintained, and because of their largely virtual (not physical) nature I see this as a national function. I don’t see the need for General Officers at the national level either. Best to keep the national body trim, there will be plenty of regional committee officers that tasks will often be able to be devolved to.

It’s my opinion that these functions would be best handled by a national body that is separate from any of the regional branches. I think that members of regional committees could also serve on this national committee, if they have time for the additional meetings. But as the society grows, this overlap will probably decrease and the national roles could become increasingly filled by members dedicated to just that role.

NZLARPS National AGM 2024
[Public consultation]: Regional structure
#2

Perhaps the best option for this is some sort of percentage split. Membership fees could all go to the central account so that the new member’s membership can be confirmed and documented at the national level, and then a percentage of the fee could be forwarded to the account of the member’s local branch.

It would then be a matter of deciding the percentage that the national body retains, in order that it has sufficient funding for its functions. That’s where the financial analysis would come in again.

#3

This could be an addition to the list you’ve already presented - management of the membership. NZLARPS is a national entity, and because it’s members are spread nationally so to should their subs should be used for national endeavours. A percentage split has merit, but I would think having all/the majority of these particular funds going into the “big box” as it would be one of the few sources of revenue which wil be needed for most of the other things on the list.

#4

Thanks, have added that to the national functions I suggested.

On the money front, I think it would be nice to see a budget for the national body’s forecasted spending. If the financial report was correct then income from membership fees in the last year was about $600. Does the national body need this much?

In terms of IT, at the moment the society won’t be spending more than around $100 on domain names. Craig donates hosting, saving us another $100-$200 perhaps. Emails are free. And that’s about it, unless we wanted to hire a developer to do work, which is probably prohibitively expensive.

There are some print costs, including the membership card. I’m not convinced those cards are useful at present.

AGMs and SGMs may cost some money, especially as our need for more sophisticated IT for them grows.

National advertising is a case of “how long is a piece of string?” Would have to be careful that any spending was result-oriented not just peacocking.

Many of the other national functions just involve people time.

My only concern with giving the national body a lump of money is that people know should that money has a valuable purpose. If not, it should go to the local branches where it can fund actual larp activity.

#5

This does open up a whole can of worms related to resource allocation.

Should there be a National Annual Budget (generated after budget requests and predictions from the Regions) allocating capital expenditure to the regions (and central) for the year?

Are all Project funding requests from all regions treated equally - and hence have equal rights to use the society’s resources? Otherwise should there be a National treasurer who mediates conflicts in requirements form the Regional treasurers?

Gear is owned by the society, but when it is locate din different regions it is difficult for Region A to use gear located in Region B. So who decides how much capital expenditure can be used to buy gear in Region B if 90% of the membership is in region A?

It looks very much like an annual Region budget needs to be made by a National committee immediately after election that states (a) capital expentiture budget per region, and (b) permitted use of funds, such as to initially finance a game, per region - so that no one region can disproportionately monopolise the society’s resources.

This may get a bit beaurocratic. You’ll end up with a uber-committee of al the regions’ presidents and treasurers, arguing about the spend allocation for the next year… And if you have to plan it all out so far in advance it may make other problems. Maybe there should be a quarterly teleconference between the regional committees to approve ‘large’ resource requests or capital expenditure?

#6

I think that when it comes to gear, each collection should be owned by each individual branch of the society. So Auckland would have their own gear collection, Wellington would have their own gear collection, etc. Some lending or hiring gear between branches might occur, but given the geographic distance I would guess this wouldn’t happen very often.

I also think that the revenue from games should be ploughed back into the region that they were held in. Chimera could be an exception and could be a source of funding for the national structure as stated before.

This makes the beauracracy a whole lot more simple, and would mean that each branch could operate their own accounts and would not have to have funding approved by the central committee or person (whichever form the national organisation takes) any time they wanted to invest a fair bit of money into a game.

Drawing up a rough budget of how much the national organisation would be likely to spend would be a good idea.

#7

I agree with Clare in regards to regional branches. They should be independently empowered to raise their own funds through projects or other means, and manage those funds and the gear they buy with them independently. This will give them complete freedom of action but also force them to help their projects to budget responsibly (because their regional account will be wearing the cost of any losses from their projects). Regions that attract more local players will naturally increase their income, and presumably increase their spending proportionately.

I don’t think it’s a can of worms at all, it’s basically just replicating what NZLARPS has been doing successfully in Auckland in different regions, with a local committee to manage it in each region. The only question then, as I see it, is what functions of the society are not local and are therefore best served by a national body, what form that body should take, and where its funding should come from. But the real work of the society (enabling larp) will mostly get done by the regional branches, as I see it, because larp is largely localised.

The other option of a centralised body allocating regional budgets would be a bureaucratic nightmare, it could never achieve the efficiency of proper decentralisation.

On the other hand, there’s no reason branches won’t be able to lend new branches startup funds if they need them, to be returned from the revenues of early projects.

#8

So, the various branches would be (almost completely) autonomous financially. All revenue from games (and memberships?) would be collected and used locally.

This still means, though, that Projects will have to be classified as ‘Regional’ or "National’, which will define where their funding comes from. Most will be regional, but things like Chimera may be classified National and so receive funding from all regions (pro-rata according to membership? Project to be approved by ALL regions?). Maybe Chimera would be a regional project though?

How about things like sponsorship (like with the Trailer)? I guess that would be Regional since it only benefits Auckland.

Finally, though, as a region starts up it will need funds to start a gear library and to provide a float for running games. Would this be a one-off transfer from the other existing regions, then?

Actually this way works out a lot better when the regions are mature and self-sustaining but it might be a bit awkward at the beginning unless sufficient funds are given to the region initially?

#9

The way I understood it is that the national body o fthe society (ie the pres and co) would be the ones inititialising any setup of new branches, and given the previous part of the discussion about national funds this is something that financially would be covered by the national accounts. Maybe it would eventuate that fund would be drawn from all existing branches to float the new one.

Either way, another key thing is to remember that NZLARPS is a non profit entity, so wherever the funds come from they should be going somewhere, and preferrably into the expansion of LARP throughout the country - however it is decided to achieve that.

#10

I think this might be the simplest way of working it:

[ol][li]100% of membership fees will go into the national account and be used to pay for the functions of the national body. At present this might be around $700 per year, and would grow with membership. I think this will be at least enough to cover the national functions I outlined above. [/li]
[li]Any funds from membership fees not needed by the national body will be redistributed to the regional bodies proportionately to their fee contributions, sometime prior to the national AGM.[/li]
[li]After a couple of years we should have a better idea of how much funding the national body needs, and we can reduce the percentage of the membership fees that it takes to match that, and distribute the remaining percentage of each fee paid to the relevant regional branch immediately. [/li]
[li]All other funds raised will be managed and stored locally. This includes Chimera, because although it’s a nationally-billed event it takes place locally largely using local resources. Sponsorship and grants would also usually be local branch matters, because they will typically be used to pay for local resources.[/li]
[li]The national body will arrange for interest-free loans to new branches to provide them with funds for expensive things like venue hire. These loans will be lent by other local bodies (for example, Auckland has spare currently) and will be repaid after the events have run and the expenses have been recouped through event fees. Once the regional branches have had some profitable events and built up their funds, loans will no longer be necessary.[/li][/ol]

The only risk I see with that approach is if the member fees aren’t enough to pay for the national body’s functions. But personally, that seems like a good way of avoiding wastage at the national level to me.

#11

On a separate note, this will of course mean a separate bank account in the name of NZLARPS for each region (and the National account). BNZ will let NZLARPS have as many accounts as it needs, of course, but I’m not sure how well they can manage access (IE, give Region A treasurer access to account A but not to account B). I know we asked once about ‘read only’ access and that was not possible, but I dont know about access being split at a account-suffix level.

But this is not my problem, it’s the society treasurer’s :slight_smile:

#12

I think each branch may be a separate legal entity, in which case they could perhaps have completely separate bank accounts?

#13

The easiest way to deal with a regional branch is to treat them (finacially) like a member larp with a few exceptions.

They put forward finnancial proposals to the national body for approval if they require additional funding.

They maintain their own bank accounts and use income generated by their members.

At the end of each financial year any “profit” is put into the national account for regional developement - for example the purchase of a trailor for the Wellington region - im sure that if they only had half of what was required to purchase it we would definatly consider footing the other half if we felt it would benefit them more than any other potential investments the society could make.

#14

Cn you clarify what you mean Adam, in comparison to the other proposals here?

Are you suggesting that all funds be managed centrally? That every regional larp project would have to be signed off centrally?

Wouldn’t that be rather off-putting for the regional branches, who would probably prefer to have a larger degree of financial independence?

#15

My initial thoughts on this are to be cautious about the level of complexity and bureaucracy created.

Inevitably there will be some. It’s a requirement when trying to create a continuous organisation.

Do we need a completely separate National committee? I’m not sure. Is it reasonable to say that the National president is ALSO the regional manager for their region. And the other members of the national committee are drawn from that region? Or even other regions? It seem to me that business can be done by members of the committee via email, phone whatever. How much extra work is it to do national work AND regional work? If it’s quite a bit more then perhaps there would need to be another national role for publicity or similar.

I’m just not sure I see the benefit of a completely separate National president and committee…

More to come…

#16

Money and conventions

I’m inclined to subscribe to the model of:

Join NZ LARPS.

Pay your money to NZLARPs.

NZLARPs works out the national running costs (including a portion to help conventions get started/bail out conventions) and the rest goes back to the regional groups.

THis is a bit convoluted. However, it has the signature advantage of having only one path for the money. People joining the central database (which I think is important) only have to deal with one account. Complication is at the back end with the treasurers.

For national funding matters, the money is either drawn from the national account, or if neccessary, the regions are asked to contribute from their funds.

In an ideal world, the regions will be financially independent fairly quickly.

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As far as I’m concerned, any LARP that has the potential to bring in people from outside its region can be considered a national LARP. And I think this could encompass any LARP larger than 10 people. Or similar.

So I’m inclined to just treat any LARP as a LARP, and not try to pigeon hole it as regional, or national.

Now, it may be entirely appropriate to have a National LARP Convention. And it be the official convention of NZLARPs. I expect Chimera is just that.

But I expect that Chimera makes its money back, so there’s no drag on anyone’s coffers…

#17

Advertising and Publicity

Im my experience in science fiction fandom, scattershot advertising has very little result. You have to go to where the likely recruits are.

Places like genre stores can often be helpful and accommodating. Increasing web prescence is good. NZLARPs is already top of google when searching new zealand and LARP.

Bill Geradts of Armageddon fame has in the past given us (SFFANZ) a table at Armageddons. But even from that, not that many results…

Perhaps a display at Armageddons? What if it was possible to do lliterally 5 minute LARPS? IN the middle of a crowd of people. Something like Who’s line is it anyway?

Anyway, I’m rabbiting ideas here. And that’s not the point of this thread.

I do think that most publicity is most effective at a regional level. It can certainly be coordinated at a National level, but the feet on the ground will be regional.

#18

These are being explored as the forum is going on :slight_smile:

#19

As I see it, when we go regional, the major centre’s well be Auckland, Wellington, and more then likely Hamilton.

While this takes away most of the responsibility of the central committee, it still leaves us with the AGM, any SGM’s we may need to call, Chimera, Diatribe, nzLARPS.co.nz, and the major equipment repository, and whatever powers I can’t remember or don’t know of vested in the central committee.

While a reduction in red tape would be nice, as it has been said is a little necessary.

All I can say is leave the central committee with what authority it does have at the moment, and leave the assets as is. I was thinking about this, and was wondering about something.

Now when we get the regional committee’s going, why not hold what a friend of mine terms as a SAGM or a Supplemental Annual General Meeting, prior to the AGM. Give the Regional Reps a chance to submit financial stats, Bank account details, paperwork, any motions they want brought up, and maybe even a basic state of the union report from the Regional Officers/President/Secretary.

Not sure how feasible that would be, or if it’s just a stupid idea, but it’s one to add to the table…

Also in regards to funding the central coffers, and again I’m not fully informed so feel free to slap me down on this one, but other then Chimera, the major drains on the coffers seem to be Diatribe, the website, and a couple of other pieces. Other then setting some initial funds for Chimera (since it can seemingly fund itself), perhaps the regional committee’s could maybe chip in for the resources, and any other funding the central guys may need to cough up for.

Anyways, there just some words to chew on. Take them as you will…

#20

i think we are talking about if they decide to be self governd - at the moment I am not sure if they want to have their own committie or not - I am hoping for ease of paperwork they don’t.

If however they do want it (no problems if they do) then it is easier from an accounting point of view to make them responsible for their own assets as well as their income at least from a reporting point of view - it makes life so much simpler when they can just hand over a yearly financial statement.

This way they can use what funding they get from membership fee’s, donations and fund raisers however they see fit and at the end of the year they can pass anything left over back to the main NZLARPS accounts department to process and redistribute or hold onto for the next fiscal year depending on forcasted spending: eg: Chimera.

Should they find they are at any point short on requirements for a pending event or need a little more money to buy gear / props that they require then they can submit a request for additional funding to the main account which can be reviewed by the National NZLARPS committie.

I would suggest that however due to the fact that we only have two regional area’s (officially) at the moment those being Auckland and Wellington - it might be advisable to not split away from a single society yet but instead have regional committie members responsible for larp in their area and treat the current committie as a national committie.

For example the new Auckland General Officer is a role that could become a position to deal with local matters- a position that could be extended to the wellington region perhaps as with auckland assigning two or three Officers - perhaps due to the remote location when compaired to the current committie a Chief Officer and two deputies.