Hi folks,
Thought I’d make some comments on the CBC fees increase situation given the discussion on Spond. I’m posting it on the forum, but it’s a response to a Spond thread.
Some background:
CBC has gone through some periods of deep dysfunction over the years. This is not totally surprising given that it serves a lot of different constituencies who each value different things (recreational riders, racers, people across 8 cycling disciplines, urban vs. rural, club vs. not, etc.). The board used to be operational (they directly managed staff) but it was often populated by single-issue-driven people and there was a lot of infighting and poor coordination--too many cooks in the kitchen, each wanting to serve up something different to the membership and often giving conflicting direction to staff. Tripleshot’s Craig Bosenberg served on the board and was among those who advocated for switching to a governance board that would supply strategic direction plus a CEO who would handle the operations side of things (implement the strategic vision of the board—more like one chef broadly directed by a committee). This was contentious because some of the single-issue folks wanted to keep their control over operations and push their pet projects. One board member at the time even secretly rallied proxy votes against the bylaws changes in 2019 that a majority of the board had voted in favour of (a bit like what’s happening today—where one board member has lobbied votes against the 7-1 board majority recommendation for the 2024 fee schedule and disseminated documents that may have violated staff privacy).
The 2019 Bylaws changes were approved by the membership at the AGM and now we have a governance board. That means the Board tries to agree on where the ship should go, but we turn it over to the CEO to plot the course and direct staff to get us there. If the CEO directs badly, we can fire her. In my little over a year on the board, the board has mostly governed by consensus. In my view, the advantage of the “governance board” model that we currently have is that we can bring all of our own individual perspectives to the table, but the staff has more consistent direction and expectations as a result of having a single manager.
As Tripleshot president during the Covid outbreak, I was often in daily communication with Erin Waugh, the CEO then and now. The province had shut down our rides and as a large club bringing good ideas to the table, Tripleshot benefited from a cooperative relationship with Erin. I’m pretty sure we were the first large club in the province to re-open our rides and that’s largely because we were on the phone to Erin and talking, not yelling. In 2021 (after I stepped down as TS president) I became less happy with how Cycling BC handled the 94Forward situation that Lister mentioned on Spond. In that case, I felt Cycling BC and Cycling Canada were trying to maintain control over things that would have been better managed by a club—in that particular case, Tripleshot (who had an innovative proposal to use 94Forward funds). That’s a whole other story, but suffice it to say I became a person frustrated with CBC (I even did some yelling at Erin back then, which I now regret—more on yelling later). Based on those frustrations and others noted by Lister on Spond I decided to run for the board.
Unfortunately I’ve barely been able to spend any time on those concerns. 90% of my time spent working on my CBC board duties has been crisis management dealing with the 1% of members who accuse Erin and the board of being crooks or incompetent. I’m the treasurer and while I don’t sign the cheques, I do review Erin’s expenses on a monthly basis, and there’s nothing untoward about them (it’s pretty boring stuff). I sometimes ask questions about some of those expenses, and thus far I’ve always gotten satisfactory answers. I review the budget line items with Erin a few times a year and I sometimes have criticisms or suggestions, but as Craig reckoned on Spond, there’s nothing nefarious in the books. I’ve met privately with the auditor (a routine end-of-year process) who tells me we keep excellent books and everything is in order. Different people have different priorities and would want the money spent differently no doubt, but what Erin is doing is sensible given the broad direction she’s been handed by the board.
I’ve learned several things since joining the board.
1) A little humility goes a long way. I came in from my little corner of cycling thinking I knew how things should be done, but then I realized I was just bringing one point of view and needed to learn a bit before trying to convince everyone to do things my way. Asking questions and learning why things are done the way their done makes it easier for me to propose changes that are actually feasible. It also sometimes makes me realize the flaws in my original idea.
2) There are pros and cons to a big tent. We’re a diverse organization (sadly not yet in the socioeconomic sense, but along many other dimensions—number of disciplines etc.) and lots of people want the ship to sail in different directions. There are some key advantages to a big tent. Purchasing insurance is much cheaper for 6300 people together than for multiple groups of several hundred (road racers, recreational roadies, MTB downhill riders, etc.). Go Google individual bike insurance and see what you can find that’s equivalent to what CBC offers. Another advantage to a big tent is that the government would rather give a couple big grants to “Cycling” than dozens of smaller grants to small sub-disciplines. And having one organization lobby for grants takes less administrative resources than having 8 different disciplines writing their own minor grant proposals. The downside of a big tent is that you end up with multiple constituencies with highly divergent priorities. This means every member is likely to want to see different priorities than what the CEO actually implements. If the CEO ever perfectly pleased one constituency, all the others would likely revolt. Holding the family together is challenging and requires a spirit of compromise rather than “my way or the highway”.
3) Talking tends to be more productive than yelling. We had a yeller on the board for a short while, and productive work ground to a halt. I suspect many of the current yellers among the membership and I agree on some things that we might be able to work together to change. But they’re so busy yelling that they haven’t bothered to try to speak with me. If there’s something you want to see done differently, talk to me about it. Remember, coffee is the best way to sort out differences among riders.
4) Erin is probably underpaid. Especially given the verbal abuse she receives from a small handful of our members. She’s been subject to pretty appalling harassment at times (some of which is on tape). Not only is that poor behaviour, it’s a financial liability to the organization and its members. CBC used to be dependent on a few rich Vancouver donors because there was no willingness or capability within the organization to make the effort to be accountable to government for grants. That has changed under Erin, so now a significant portion of our revenues come from government grants which tend to be more a more stable source of revenue than wealthy donors.
5) Getting members to engage is really hard. I’ve pushed for greater engagement especially with clubs, because clubs are aggregators of what many cyclists in the province want. But when we schedule townhalls, very few clubs send people. And when very few people show up, it’s hard to know whether the views expressed are representative of the larger membership. There were two townhalls held specifically about the 2024 fee schedule starting in early November, very few people turned up, and a couple of those who did yelled at Erin for most of the meetings. It didn’t make for a very productive exchange of information.
6) There’s lots of room for improvement. Cycling Canada and Cycling BC both fail to recognize the value of what happens in clubs. Both sports organizations engage in reinventing the wheel when they could turn to clubs like Triplehot to help them improve the sport. Want better youth development? Give grants to clubs to do that rather than hiring a provincial coach to poach talent from youth programs. And treat HopOn as a recruiting program for local youth clubs. Want to promote socioeconomic diversity? Give grants to clubs to recruit in underserved communities and provide clubs with training and best practices to facilitate that. I have no doubt we can do better. It’s just that improvement is not going to originate in a bunch of people yelling at the CEO and hollering about financial impropriety where there is none. And blowing up the organization will almost certainly make all but a handful of members worse off.
Happy to talk to people more about this over coffee.
Best,
Martin
Hi All,
In response to some of the comments...
To Rolf’s point, there’s no doubt that the value-for-money of a Tripleshot membership will seem greater than for a Cycling BC membership even at multiples of the current $30 TSC cost. But it’s an apples-to-hand-grenades comparison. In one case you’re mostly buying insurance (yawn!) and in the other case you’re mostly buying rides with your friends (yay!). But you can’t do the latter without the former. If Tripleshot weren’t affiliated with CBC, then Tripleshot would have to supply the insurance as part of its membership and charge a lot more for membership. Or they’d have to force you to buy it from someone else and the insurance would almost certainly either provide substantially less coverage or come at a higher price than what your CBC membership buys you (risk pooling lowering insurance costs is a real thing!). If Tripleshot riders were uninsured or underinsured, then Tripleshot Directors and Officers insurance would probably become much more expensive and lawsuits between members could become a more regular part of the ride landscape. Races, the Women’s Clinic, and other events that we’ve held historically could also become much more expensive to insure. Of course, I wouldn’t begrudge a Tripleshot board member looking into alternative arrangements, but I’d urge them to take any broader implications into account carefully.
There’s also a question of how much coverage people want. Do you want to be protected when riding home from a club ride, or just on the ride? Different members will reasonably have different answers to that question. CBC has tried to get insurance that allows members to choose their level of coverage, but insurance companies won’t offer those mixed contracts. CBC could go with lower coverage for everyone (we honestly struggle with this point on the board), but that raises its own accessibility issues. Maybe some riders can afford $100 a year for insurance but they can’t afford $70 for cheaper insurance plus the risk of thousands of dollars of uninsured physical therapy expenses in the event of a crash.
Regarding Todd’s email which Dave posted:
Todd’s claim that “[sic] there were a couple of us that voiced serious concerns for this and has resulted in an EGM” is problematic on two counts. 1) The calling of an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) is a standard annual requirement of CBC’s bylaws and would never be triggered by an argument at the board level. It happens every year whether the board is unanimous on fees recommendations or not. 2) Given that the board vote was 7-1 (it would have been 8-1 if I had been able to attend) either Todd is exaggerating the level of dissent, or he’s violating his Non-Disclosure Agreement by relaying information from in camera discussions. It's also worth pointing out that Todd’s social media campaign against the fee increase was made without informing the board of his intent to do so, and that he made social media posts using the Cycling BC logo and advertising his status as a Board member while campaigning against the Board’s recommended fee increases. These are all ethically uncool things for a board member of any organization to do.
I honestly don’t understand why Todd did this. It’s a small fee increase that doesn’t even keep up with inflation (I think our insurance costs are rising on the order of 10% next year while the typical membership fee is rising by 5.5% under the proposal). His email is short on specifics and logic (How do we put more resources into what he wants without raising more revenues? How is it fair or sensible to charge less to the riders who use CBC services the most?). I do wish he’d clearly explained his agenda to the Board before launching this attack on the whole organization. Now, instead of talking about important concerns like those raised by Lister and others, we’re left trying to decipher what it is that a relatively small but very loud constituency wants and how to meet their demands without endangering our grants and sponsorships, or without taking so many resources from other member-constituencies that they go on strike too. It’s all made worse by a small handful of members who have been highly abusive—especially toward Erin who has put in incredible hours and energy of late.
Both Todd and Dave are confused about how to calculate “administrative costs” of a not-for-profit. Both are assuming that all labour is “administration”. But most staff at CBC are providing services, and only some are doing administrative work (primarily the CEO). Also, things like rent and office services should be counted as administration, and Todd and Dave seem to leave these things out.
Dave’s claim--that, because 60% of CBCs revenue goes “to pay people”, spending priorities are out of whack--is flawed. First, the labour share of the Canadian economy (the percentage of income that is paid to labour as opposed to other means of production) is around 65%, so there’s nothing inherently out of whack about the number 60%. Second, payments to people are not inherently less valuable than payments for rent or staplers. Third and most importantly, staff providing services (e.g., helping with an insurance claim or license upgrade, organizing coach training, or facilitating events) should not be counted as "administration".
The CBC staff labour costs to revenue ratio was 40% for 2023 and is budgeted at 37% for 2024. Dave might get to 60% by adding in things like payments to HopOn coaches and race officials (who are not regular staff). We can’t fairly expect people to provide these services for free, and these payments to labour are also for services to the cycling community so shouldn’t be counted as administrative costs. Sure, count Erin’s salary as administrative (i.e., not supplying services directly), but even there I have to say that during Covid Erin spent a lot of time on Zoom and the phone with me supplying valuable services to Tripleshot members in the form of advice on how to thread various regulatory needles and get our rides and youth workouts up and running again ASAP.
Dave has referred to “contractors” as an example of wasteful spending and I presume he’s thinking largely about HopOn. This is a program financed through a mix of earmarked government grants, sponsorship, and donations that teaches kids bike skills in schools around the province. It doesn’t make economic sense to fly staff members around the province to run these programs directly, so CBC pays local coaches to do so on a contract basis. I agree with Lister’s point that HopOn is not being used nearly to its potential to create a pipeline of young riders into youth cycling programs. But the money that goes to HopOn contractors to provide coaching to kids 1) is not coming from your membership fees; and 2) is not transferrable to give discounts to event organizers or do other non-HopOn things to support racing. These are earmarked funds which go away if we don’t run HopOn.
I’m happy to vote proxy for people at the EGM if they’d like, though I’d slightly prefer if you found someone else attending who could vote for you (I’ll be juggling a lot going into the meeting). Each attending member can bring up to 10 proxy votes to the meeting. Information about how to vote proxy (you need to organize your vote a week advance of the meeting) can be found here: https://cyclingbc.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Dec-18-2023-EGM-Proxy-Form.pdf You need to submit your intent to vote proxy by Dec 11 at 7pm. The EGM is Dec 18.
Cycling BC currently has a membership of around 6200 people. Several dozen highly motivated members are currently trying to drive the whole organization. Their views are not representative of what the average CBC member wants. As a board member trying to act in the interest of the whole organization (not just lower mainland racers and not just Tripleshot members), my first wish would be that all members read the materials put out by CBC (and others) and turn up to vote. Given that’s not a realistic wish, my second wish is that lots of Tripleshot members turn up and participate in the conversation.
Best,
Martin