Your National Slate

Reorganization of the USFA National Office and Budgetary Responsibilities

Over the last several years it has become obvious that the USFA does not have the structure or processes in place to ensure efficient operation, either from the standpoint of serving the needs of the membership or from the standpoint of managing expenses.  Though there are many reasons for these problems, some of them come from the structure of the USFA national office and its interaction with our volunteer committees.  We are currently a very volunteer driven organization.  Volunteers are, and will continue to be important.  However, as we grow, we believe the USFA needs to further professionalize our operations by giving the staff the responsibility for making decisions within the context of well defined strategic plans and job descriptions.  In addition, staff members should be directly responsible for managing various programs.  They will need to develop budgets that they feel are appropriate and should then be held accountable for managing them, as well as for getting results.

This paper puts forth a series of suggestions that are designed to create a more integrated, and simpler, structure to manage those responsibilities.  It outlines a number of significant changes and will take a couple of years to implement.  Once in place, the Board of Directors (BOD) and the new Executive Director (ED) will have a direct line-of-sight to spending and to progress towards our strategic goals.  It will allow appropriate individuals to be congratulated for successes or held accountable, should future problems arise.

To start with first principles…  We title these individuals differently, but the ED is essentially the “president and Chief Executive Officer” of our not-for-profit corporation.  The elected president is more analogous to a non-executive Chairperson of the Board.  In most companies board chairs are responsible for leading the development of strategic priorities and for monitoring the performance of the corporation president.  Our organization should move towards the same model, with the BOD establishing goals and setting broad policies and the ED running the organization.

Of course the ED won’t be able to run the organization alone and will require able individuals to run our significant activities.  The key activities of our organization (not surprisingly mirroring the areas of the budget) are elite athlete programs, running national tournaments, and serving the membership – including the development and management of our burgeoning Youth programs.  Each of these activities should have a single person who is responsible for its management.  Attached is a potential organization chart for the key activities of the national office.

Our next ED should be a non-profit professional.  We do not believe that it is essential that the individual hired have a great deal of fencing experience.  Rather the person should have experience in the recruitment and development of high quality staff, should be an expert at the development and management of budgets, and should have proven communications skills, both to assist with fundraising and marketing activities and also to communicate with the BOD and the membership at large on the activities, direction, and success of the organization.

Day-to-day budgetary responsibility lies with ED and should be one of his or her primary performance criteria.  It should be made explicit during the hiring process that the ED will be responsible for reporting to the newly created Budget & Finance Committee any concerns about the budget, either a shortfall of revenues or an excess of expenses, in the broadly defined categories mentioned above.  This will allow that group to act as consultants to the ED to help address problems and will also act as a communications conduit to the membership.

However, the ED will have the ability to approve changes to expenditures within the aforementioned categories (elite programs, tournament operations, and membership) without consulting or receiving approval from any other group.  After all, that’s what we’re hiring the person to do.  He or she should have the power to do it.  If budgets get out of control or if the EC and BOD feel that the ED is not meeting the established goals that person will need to be replaced.

The ED will be responsible for hiring the rest of the staff positions.  In fact, if the ED feels that a different structure would serve the organization better than that outlined above it should absolutely be his or her responsibility to see that it is put into place.  As long as the strategic goals of the organization are met, the ED is in charge.

It is our opinion that many of the people already working for the USFA have the skills and desire to excel at the roles above.  Should the ultimate organization look like the above each of the three key director positions would have budgetary authority.  Further descriptions of these roles follow:

The Director, High Performance would be responsible for developing and maintaining a plan to develop athletes at all levels, would hire and monitor the performance of the National Weapons Coaches, and would select and manage the provision of staff for our various Jr., Sr., Veteran and Wheelchair teams as they compete in championships and Olympics/Paralympics.  The High Performance Committee would act as consultants to the Director, High Performance.  However, the ultimate decisions and responsibilities would lie in this individual rather than with the committee as they do now.

Approximately 40% of the total USFA budget goes to elite athlete activities.  Around 20% of the total USFA budget is provided by the USOC and the US Fencing Foundation.  They both mandate that some or all of their funding be spent on particular weapons and often for specific programs.  Obviously, this would continue.  Beyond that, the Director, High Performance, in consultation with the ED, would have the authority to move monies around between different categories of spending as they thought appropriate. 

In the fiscal 2006/2007 season spending on items that would fall under the authority of the Director, High Performance was over budget by around $600K.  A communication from the joint Budget & Finance and Audit Committees was prepared and posted to the USFA website discussing how this happened.  It describes a lack of process and a “death from a thousand cuts.”  Much of the problem came from a lack of direct accountability and oversight.  Were this problem to be repeated, we would have a specific individual to hold accountable, making it less likely to occur.

We anticipate that there would be a need for a separate person to manage and coordinate our burgeoning youth programs.  This person would be responsible for the continuing development of the Regional and Super-regional Youth Circuits.  The individual would act as the primary parents’ liaison.

The Director, Operations would be responsible for our national tournaments and for coordinating the volunteers that are required to staff and manage these massive events.  Around 35-40% of all USFA spending goes towards national tournaments.  Around ½ of this is spent on volunteers (airfare, hotels, meals, per diem, and honorarium).  Please note that, unlike in 2006/2007, when most tournaments lost money, thus far in 2007/2008, our tournaments are profitable.  This needs to continue and, ultimately, should be a source of additional funding to other programs of the USFA.

Putting a specific person in charge of the events and for management of these events should help to make them more consistent and will allow us to use them as a showcase for our elite and developing athletes as well as to provide competitive opportunities for all age groups and skill levels.  Budget responsibility and contract negotiation would lie with this person as would ultimate responsibility for the processing of entries and the posting of results.  One of the primary goals for this person would be to have online registration for NACs available by the beginning of the 2009/2010 season.  (Please see the separate technology proposal and roadmap posted at www.usfanominees.com for a discussion of the development of this system and the time required to develop a comprehensive, long-term solution.)  Again, should budgets get out of control or should our tournaments not have appropriate infrastructure to operate, this person would be accountable.

Reporting to the Director, Operations would be a Manager, Volunteers.  This person would have direct liaison responsibilities with those groups who help to staff and run our tournaments, the Fencing Officials Commission, the Tournament Committee, and our Armorers.  Staffing levels for various events would be monitored and negotiated with these groups, but would ultimately be the responsibility of the Manager, Volunteers and the Director, Operations.  Since they would have knowledge of entries to events they would be in the best position to manage these numbers.

At the current time, the groups listed in the previous paragraph contact volunteers to staff our events.  When a person agrees to assist, they ask the volunteers to arrange their own travel through an approved agent.  The National Office then approves those arrangements.  Instead of this, upon obtaining a list of desired staff for an event, the volunteer coordinator could contact them with a proposed itinerary, working to minimize costs.

Additional responsibilities for the Manager, Volunteers would be to manage the training and development programs that the committees above would put into place.  The FOC has wanted, for a number of years, to incorporate video into its training of referees, to bring individuals to tournaments with the specific responsibility of conducting advanced seminars and provide mentoring, and to assist in the development of local referees.  (Please see the separate referee training proposal posted at www.usfanominees.com for details.)  Unfortunately, the members of the FOC, though highly skilled referees, are not experts at video editing and do not have the time to manage and monitor local referee development programs.  Similar training issues for armorers and bout committee staff exist.  Having a staff person who is directly in charge of this development, working with the various committees, would help to ensure that it happens.

Having a person responsible for volunteers will help to improve the quality, quantity, and satisfaction of the entire membership.  Those with an interest in developing into a volunteer will have a defined way to do so.  Improving the skills of those who volunteer, at both a national and local level, will improve the fencing experience for all.

The Director, Development and Membership Services will have responsibility for the development of a comprehensive resource development program.  A resource development program is a long-term, fund raising program utilizing various methods of solicitation (personal requests, Email, direct mail, etc) for various types of gifts (designated and undesignated annual support, major gifts and planned gifts [bequests, life insurance, etc.]) from various kinds of donors (individuals, corporations, foundations, associations, etc.).  Such a program requires active involvement of various elements of an organization including marketing, public relations, the American Fencing magazine, and membership, all of which would fall under this person’s responsibilities.

Whether a staff position, outsourced to a third party vendor, or managed by a group of volunteers, the development and maintenance of an online membership database would be overseen by the Director, Development and Membership Services and would be a key responsibility.  This person would also be responsible for the USFA website, governance questions from divisions and sections, and working to expand fencing by working with all levels of schools and clubs.

Currently, and from the inception of the USFA, many of the functions and responsibilities listed above were housed with committees.  These groups of very hard working volunteers were appropriate for a smaller organization, as the demands placed on them could be handled in a few hours per month.  As we have grown, the limitations of that structure have become apparent.  In many cases, we will continue to need the specific expertise and experience of volunteers to do specific things (refereeing, bout committee, legal resource, etc.).  However, we need to put the infrastructure into place at the national office to allow these individuals to contribute without putting an unreasonable burden on their time.  In addition, as described in another paper on www.usfanominees.com we need to expand the number of people involved.  This will help to make the work more manageable and will not unduly burden anyone who wishes to help.

While acknowledging that volunteers will always be key to the USFA’s success, we believe that ultimate responsibility should lie with paid staff.  This will help us to professionalize the organization, providing enhanced services to the membership.  It will allow the BOD to hold specific individuals accountable should the agreed upon strategic goals not be met or should the budget get out of control.  It will also allow us to scale the organization through paid staff as we continue to grow.  It is our belief that the above is an outline of how that might work.  We welcome your comments and questions.