Mandatory NSRA Membership Proposal

The NSRA have proposed a significant change to their Membership Structure, with Club Affiliations (currently ~£80-240/yr depending on the size of the club) being offered free in return for clubs signing up all their members as individual members of the Association (at much reduced rates compared to the current membership).

To participants in other sports, this may cause confusion. In most sports this is standard. Join an Archery club and you are joined up to ArcheryGB (at £47/yr). You don’t join the club and then decide whether to join the national body - no pay, no play. Shooting of course is a broad and varied church and a natural monopoly has never emerged. The target side has multiple sporting bodies in the NRA, NSRA, BFTA and CPSA whilst the hunting-fishing-shooting crowd have quasi-political groups like BASC and CA to join. Many countries have consolidated to two bodies (a Target Federation and a Hunting/Fieldsports Group) though few have consolidated to a single “Shooting” organisation (e.g. the French Federation de Tir and Federation des Chasseurs or Germany’s DSB and DJV).

This is not a new regime however, go back a couple of decades and clubs did indeed subscribe members to the NSRA. But this was dropped to make club memberships appear cheaper and lower the cost-of-entry, with the understanding that clubs would push new members to join up of their own accord after 6-12months. Most clubs did not bother. The falling membership and dwindling finances has forced a drastic rethink of how the body is structured.

The presentation made to Shooting Council runs to 22 slides and proposes that all club members be signed up to a tier of their choosing:

• Bronze - £20-25 (or £35, slides 14 & 17 disagree)
• Silver - £35-45
• Gold - £55-85

Under-21s would be free, after a £20 registration fee.

This is relatively ball-park for other sports:

• ArcheryGB - £47

• Swim England - £36 (low level competition)

• England Netball - £36

• British Gliding - £32

• British Fencing - £20-60

Why?

The NSRA and NRA each claim that their affiliated clubs have ~50,000 members. Whilst some clubs are multi-affiliated, others are firmly one-or-the-other. After the overlap and making an assumption for double-counting (as some people are members of multiple clubs), there are likely ~60,000 club shooters. Only 10k shooters have joined the NRA and 5k the NSRA. That leaves some 35-45,000 club shooters who have not bothered to join their representative body. That means a mere 25% of the club shooters are subsidising the sport for the rest.

Whilst many of those club shooters will confidently tell you that they don’t need the insurance or they don’t take part in NSRA competitions, this diminishes a great deal of the “non-revenue” work the NSRA (and NRA) engage in, including but not limited to:

• Representation of the sport in Westminster and to policy makers
• Coaching Schemes
• Range Certification
• Support of GB Juniors & sub-GB Development Squads (and non-supported GB Squads for Fullbore, which is not an Olympic event and not funded by UKSport)
• Working with MoD to continue club access to MoD Ranges
• Supporting clubs in planning applications and assisting with problematic landlords or councils

If you shoot in a club, you have a clear responsibility to support your governing body. It is undoubtedly true that the NSRA is in many ways dysfunctional (as was the NRA until recently) and £80/yr has been a steep price for membership. But to shirk a responsibility to the sport and benefit from the work of NRA/NSRA without contributing is clearly wrong and if a model with a lower fee can be developed, then all participants should pitch in. Club Affiliation fees do not cover this. To pick one example, Field Target has ~70clubs nationally. If an average affiliation is £150 per club then that is an annual income of £10,500. You can’t hire an intern for that money, much less full time staff. I don’t want to pick on FT - they are not at fault in any way. But that calculation shows how a couple of pounds per person via club affiliation is woefully insufficient to run a successful Governing Body that can administer the sport and fight bad legislation in Parliament. Club Affiliations are priced on the basis that clubs will encourage members to join individually. This has not happened, and we are now reaching a crunch point. The shortfall is currently made up by 25% of shooters paying £80 each. This is not reasonable and more importantly is not sustainable and I would hope the NRA look to implement a similar scheme - everybody should be contributing to their sport’s governance and future.

There are problems and details to work through

Without a doubt, there are some big implementation issues. The draft proposal would fail if waved through as written. This proposal is aimed squarely at the classic and core NSRA clubs - Prone Smallbore, possibly with 3-Position, Benchrest and 10metre airgun. Shooting indoors, maybe with access to a 50m/100yd outdoor range for the summer season if they’re lucky. There are however a lot of other groups and clubs with different arrangements.

Multi-affiliate clubs

The NSRA’s figure of 52,000 potential members is deeply suspect. Aside from double-counting members of multiple clubs, I can list many clubs who are affiliated to both NRA and NSRA and have 100-250 members. But in some cases as few as 30-40 participate in any NSRA-regulated discipline. Clearly they are going to offer short-shrift to the NSRA if they insist that all 200 members must be signed up. There are two outcomes here - either they drop the NSRA and stop affiliating, or some sort of compromise is brokered where the club signs up all NSRA-shooting members (e.g. “the smallbore section”) but separates out those who shoot exclusively NRA disciplines.

There also needs to be provision for NRA members to join the NSRA on a non-duplicating basis if they wish (i.e. a cheap tier which does not include things like insurance cover, since their NRA membership already includes this). Reciprocal membership arrangements have been in demand for years yet neither the NRA nor NSRA have taken the initiative. People don’t want (and shouldn’t have) to pay twice for duplicate coverage.

The is also a case to be made that the NRA and NSRA should merge and be done with it - one national Target Rifle Association. But that is a discussion for another post.

Field Target

FT occupies a strange niche in the NSRA. Several years ago the BFTA struck an arrangement for their clubs to affiliate to the NSRA for insurance purposes since negotiating insurance was turning into a hassle for the BFTA and the NSRA were able to negotiate a cheaper bulk deal. The NSRA have since supported the BFTA in endeavours including the development of an FT Club Instructor Course. However, the BFTA still administers the discipline in a cooperative-but-separate arrangement. Clearly it is not reasonable for the NSRA to expect FT Shooters to join the NSRA at the same rate as shooters of disciplines administered by the NSRA.

Bell Target

Bell Target is a popular air rifle discipline generally conducted in Pubs and Working Men’s Clubs. Relatively informal, with no hang-ups over Home Office Approval they are generally run on a shoestring, relying on the cheap (or free) use of facilities in local social clubs. Their assets run to the targets and a few club airguns and a levy of £35/head would wildly increase the cost of participation.

This is a key distinction from “traditional” NSRA clubs shooting the likes of Prone, 3P and 10metre airgun on a dedicated shooting range (whether freehold or on a longish term lease) and clubs like Bell and FT with minimal capitalisation - no property, no Home Office Approval or FACs to handle - just targets and a few club guns used on/in someone else’s land/building.

There’s a case here that Bell need to be spun out to a Bell Target Association so that they and Field Target can be handled as “Cooperative Organisations” with a fee of perhaps £10-15 which covers the insurance, legal, PR and representative aspects of an NGB whilst recognising that the NSRA does not administer the actual rules or conduct of the disciplines.

Proportion of U-21 members

As noted, the NSRA’s 52,000 claim is dubious. My own estimates (dangerously based on extrapolating one county’s census of smallbore and air clubs) suggests more like 30-35,000 shooters after duplicates and double-memberships are accounted for.

They doesn’t leave a lot of headroom to start handing out free memberships to juniors. Unfortunately the NSRA don’t split out Adult & Junior Memberships in their reports, merely reporting ~4500 “Full” members so it is difficult to quantify the numbers but if more than 10-15% of the 30,000 members are U-21, then that makes the proposal borderline viable.

Members	£25:35:55	w/15% U-21s	£35:45:85	w/15% U-21s
52000	£1.43m	£1.21m	£2.00m	£1.70m
40000	£1.10m	£0.93m	£1.54m	£1.30m
35000	£0.96m	£0.81m	£1.34m	£1.14m
30000	£0.82m	£0.70m	£1.15m	£0.98m
25000	£0.68m	£0.58m	£0.96m	£0.81m
20000	£0.55m	£0.46m	£0.77m	£0.65m
15000	£0.41m	£0.35m	£0.57m	£0.49m

2018 Membership income = £0.608m. Estimated Ratios of 85% Bronze; 10% Silver; 5% Gold

At the lower proposed price-points the NSRA would require at least 25-30,000 members to break even with the current membership income of ~£608,000/year (which is not in itself sufficient). The higher price points offer more head room, but do not generate ground-breaking income.

Probationers

Are the NSRA proposing that probationary members or those signing up to trial/taster courses should be enrolled, or will it be at the point of gaining full membership? An important point which is as-yet not specified.

Why always the stick, never the carrot?

A very. bloody. valid. question. The NRA have used stick and carrot in fair measure over the past 8 years (though the stick came first as I recall), leveraging their real-estate portfolio to raise rents but quickly pouring that money into range and camp renovations (carrot), which has resulted in membership nearly doubling and range utilisation increasing enormously. They have even attempted to move into regional ranges, bidding on land in South Wales for a new fullbore range (though were unfortunately outbid). Clearly they are actively trying to improve range access opportunities and have developed a sustainable model.

The NSRA has a limited portfolio to raise income against - the Lord Roberts Centre at Bisley and the Aldersley site, both of which they occupy as the primary tenant. Outside of these, income is derived from their commercial subsidiaries and through Memberships & Affiliations. Most of their flagship Competitions run at a loss, subsidised by this income. This is where a little business thinking should come in. The NRA has vendors queuing for retail space on camp. The NSRA has a building with a barely-used gym and changing rooms which could be reconfigured into a shooting-specific retail arcade. The cafe could likewise do with renovation, having an unfortunately greasy-spoon feel compared to the new NRA Cafe in the Pavilion building. Aldersley runs to some 11-13,000sqft of indoor space. It seems conceivable that local vendors like 10.9Tailoring could be tempted to take work and retail space if the site was brought to a presentable standard, providing increased value to the site, rental income and an improved “hub” facility whilst the tenants get access to a range complex for customers to try equipment. A mutually improved value proposition.

They have also been woefully slow to modernise - it is not possible to either enter competitions nor join/manage your membership online. In 2019 this is tantamount to corporate suicide. Their back-office functions appear (from an outside view) to be incredibly labour-intensive and outmoded. There are undoubtedly significant efficiency savings to be made.

But of course that is chicken-and-egg. The NRA started by hiking rates on lease renewals. The NSRA has no standing tenants (aside from Roller Hockey) from whom to raise income to fund the improvements and would have to find other means to finance such a project. Their credit is probably not good enough to raise significant loans or finance. It’s a legitimately difficult situation, albeit one they could have avoided by keeping up with the times…

In Conclusion

In principle, it’s time shooting got with the 90s, and it’s time that shooters supported their governing bodies. NRA, NSRA, CPSA or BASC: I don’t care - you should be supporting someone.

The NSRA needs to modernise their outlook and business strategy. They need to communicate. They need to be a 21st Century Governing Body with all that entails. They need to integrate their “fringe” disciplines into the wider community. Provide Public Relations and legislative representation as well as a quality legal unit. But this is a part of that - it’s the most dramatic proposal the NSRA have sought to implement in 15 years and is not the only change in the pipeline. It’s just the most controversial one!

Finding the right model that can fairly account for the disparate operating and financial models of different clubs will be tricky, but this is a transition that needs to be made. Somehow.