Here are some things I have been mulling over the past couple of weeks. I posted it on the USPSA Forum but seemingly it might get more discussion here Here are the top ten items that I see should on the short list of things the BOD should work on. Feel free to agree, disagree, tweak or flame. 1. We need a shooting professional to head USPSA as President rather than a professional shooter. The view is different than the status quo and the primary ability the candidate brings to the office should be professional business skills rather than shooting ability. 2. We indeed need more areas. The areas are too large geographically to expect ADs to be effective in growing clubs and memberships or even insuring that basic services are delivered. At the same time the primary method used to decide area boundaries should be shooting membership within each. We need at least 2 more areas but could well need more. USPSA should at least double the funds available for marketing and AD travel within areas as the amount has been the same for about 20 years. 3. USPSA should avoid COI and for any which are unavoidable they should be fully publicly identified. I disagree that conflicts of interest are unavoidable as we have a host of well qualified potential directors with great business skills who have never won more than a hat or a mug at a match. Candidates should be required to fully and publicly state their conflicts of interest and publish them before the election. But since the members elect directors, maybe it is inevitable that we are going to end up with sponsored or professional shooters which are going to have much more credibility with USPSA if their COIs are identified and publicly posted to the membership rather than hidden in a file cabinet in the EDs office. 4. We need to retool the Nationals. Currently we are shooting 4 of these and for all the talk we give to growing our sport, running 4 national championships (it would be 5 if the office did the IPSC championship), the office staff can not devote the necessary time to grow members and clubs when they are administering a national contest all year long or planning for the next one. There are lots of ways to do this from giving the range more local administration to combining them into one 7 day affair where a contestant might have the opportunity to shoot his pistol in a match and his long guns in another match. I am not saying that is the answer but I am saying it is worthy of consideration. Once upon a time there was a need for the match to be administered from the national office. USPSA rented the range and USPSA put the match on the ground with everything from props to staff. I get that was necessary at one time but times have changed. How many qualified worker bees that a range can deliver locally should be a large consideration in choosing a nationals venue just simply because it would save us thousands. Larger rangers tend to have more volunteers and without taking away from the range staff at the nationals, the notion that we obtain better range staff than is available locally is just not so or at least in the southeastern portion of the country. 5. We should expand NROI. We certify ROs, CROs, RMs and NROI Instructors. In so limiting that, we continue to give NRA a monopoly on pistol and rifle and shotgun instruction, personal defense and coach certification. We have the experience to add to our offering and what we do is much more dynamic than the the NRA who has in many cases failed to move rapidly enough to update their materials. NROI has the potential to do much more with the possibility of having more members and trainees than the 20K members of USPSA in the present organization.. 6. The BOD needs to have regular in person meetings. In some years the BOD had only one in person meeting and the BOD has yet to have a single in person meeting this year. My suggestion would be that the BOD meet in person no less than three times a year and that those dates be set in the Bylaws along the lines of something like the first Saturday following the first Friday in February and June and October or something along those lines. There is an inherent value that comes with a group sitting around the table looking at one another and you are never going to have a team develop effectively from just talking on the telephone. Bruce Gary and I do much better if we have the opportunity for a regular man hug. Directors should have a telephone meeting no less than every 60 days and I would not disagree with once a month. 7. USPSA needs a better financial plan and Bruce Gary identified this back in 2009. I was recently read into a truly new idea that might serve to create an opportunity where instead of clubs paying USPSA to shoot matches, USPSA would pay clubs to shoot USPSA events and potentially have a revenue stream that is larger than we currently enjoy. It is not my idea and I am certainly not the best one to present it since it is technologically based and anyone that knows me knows that is not a strength of Charles Bond. 8. USPSA needs to look at the leadership we are electing and see if that meets our needs. Else where on this forum was the idea of maybe the BOD should elect the President and that is an alternative way to do it which multiple non profits use. But that opens the more basic question of are we happy with the type of ADs we are electing? Only someone who has past BOD service knows that service as an AD is more about business management than it is about new handgun rules or match production. Any national BOD is going to be more about what goes on in a bank boardroom than what is discussed at the meeting of the directors of the local gun club. Yes, USPSA is shooting based and that is our product but having those serving who have management skills is more important than having shooting skills. USPSA is a bit inconsistent on our approach to this. On the one hand we require that those who desire to serve on the BOD be life members under the idea that these are people who are more committed to the organization. On the other hand, we do not require a member to be a life member in order to cast a ballot in the election. Should we not ask our voters to be every bit as dedicated to the organization as our candidates? The NRA requires that for a member to be a voting member that they either must be a member who has been an annual member for 5 continuous years (and if in year 4 your dues are late they restart the clock) or they have to be a life member or above. USPSA might be well served by adopting a model more like this. 9. The office is going to work best if those who work there have well defined areas of responsibility and they are professionally managed. By way of example, it you really want to grow membership whoever is going to be responsible for that might not be the best person to also line up the range staff for a nationals since it would be a large distraction. NROI if they are going to expand into new areas might need a person just devoted full time year round to their needs and the system needs to be such that you always call the same person each time as to specific questions for a club situation. 10. If USPSA wants to stay in the 3 gun game, they should begin to classify in rifle and shotgun as well as pistol. I know without a doubt I am going to get 3 gunners who will flame me on that but I say this not at all about the 3 gunners we have but rather about the 3 gunners we can potentially attract. Our ability to classify attracts new shooters to the sport in droves and has from the very beginning of the system. What we learned from SC is that a match that is always going to be just top down has a limited market and the BOD has wisely chosen to go forward with instituting a classification system therein. If we are not willing to do the same in 3 gun, we might as well abandon 3 gun to the other organizations who are currently dominating that market. I would certainly agree that there are some other ideas worthy of advancement but these are my ten. But whether it is my ten or someone elses ten or five or eight, it really does not matter. USPSA has gone through a long period where there have not been any goals. Until the organization sets a course, we are just marking time.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 13:29:24 +0000
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