THSCC monthly meeting on Wednesday at Randy's Pizza (1/8/14)

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Sat Jan 11, 2014 6:25 pm

shawnwhipple wrote:

s. You are ok with the club eating those costs but it's too much to put on entrants? Since you are a club member you are paying it either way.

Yes. As I stated before, I support increasing dues to cover MSR operating costs. I am only one voice and may be the sole loony who supports that, but that's just me.

If we "pass through" all these costs to the drivers, especially the non-member "casual" drivers, we potentially diminish the event's value relative to its cost and risk further attendance declines in the face of a secular downtrend in motorsports enthusiasm. There may come a time when that is a necessity (increasing event entry fees because site rental goes up is the best example) , but I think now is not the time.

I do have a small issue with moving payment to MSR, as I don't understand what we gain by doing that move. Granted I don't understand the percentages James mentions...is it 3% for PayPal and 5% for MSR as a fee for each entry? What do we gain by that 67% increase in transaction cost? Seems to me I'd rather pay cash up front at a meeting for the events I know I will attend, then add on from there as my schedule gets clearer. That's why I liked the season pass....it excluded PayPal fees.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Sun Jan 12, 2014 7:05 pm

The percentages are purely transactional costs (paypal or CC/echeck payments on MSR). You are more than welcome to use cash or check at the events or meetings etc.

Without going to into granular details, MSR offers us ~70% of redoing registration, membership, event management, dynamic season points that are automatically tallied the instance Noah or Carlton drop our results in place. It handles the security (https/tls, secure credit card payments, authentication/authorization) and the back end database (schema/datamodel etc) and offers a robust API for our, now, simple redo of the website to utilize for redirects or parsing of content from MSR.

We are talking of $1000s of dollars saved (assuming and now the task of redoing the website and T&S is significantly easier and hopefully will not be offered to be done and then never accomplished which has happened numerous times before.

I really want to modernize numerous aspects of our operations. Carltons T&S app, plus his ongoing work to make season points automatic and results parsing automation along with a sexy website and the publicity aspect of MSR are all items to help accomplish this goal.

shawnwhipple · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2003 6:28 pm **Posts:** 603

Quote:

Granted I don't understand the percentages James mentions...is it 3% for PayPal and 5% for MSR as a fee for each entry? What do we gain by that 67% increase in transaction cost?

It is either paypal or MSR but not both. Paypal charges 2.8% when they process a payment for us. So when you paid a $25 entry fee online last year, the club actually got $24.30. With MSR the fee goes up to 5.0%. So in 2014 for a $25 entry fee the club will get $23.75. I know it's only 55 cents extra but, it's on every entry that is prepaid and it will add up. Add that to the fact that MSR will also process memberships, which we didn't do before, and those little nickels and dimes really start adding up.

Quote:

The percentages are purely transactional costs

When you say it that way it almost sounds like it isn't actually money.

Quote:

Without going to into granular details, MSR offers us ~70% of redoing registration, membership, event management, dynamic season points that are automatically tallied the instance Noah or Carlton drop our results in place. It handles the security (https/tls, secure credit card payments, authentication/authorization) and the back end database (schema/datamodel etc) and offers a robust API for our, now, simple redo of the website to utilize for redirects or parsing of content from MSR.

I'm sure their website is great and it may be worth every penny but given how lean the club seems to have been running the last couple of years I'm just worried that we can't really afford it. Maybe the $1000's of dollars we are saving will make it up.

Quote:

You are more than welcome to use cash or check at the events or meetings etc.

I really didn't get this message and it seemed to be actively discouraged when I tried to pay for my membership renewal at the Christmas party. The truth is the club should be encouraging this behavior. The discounts should be flipped so that when you prepay using MSR you pay $30 and if you pay at the event in cash or check it only costs $25. Actually the more I think about it, the more I like it. We should make it a club goal to use as many features of MSR as possible while paying them the least amount possible.

Having said all that, I'm going to try my best to chill out about this because the reality is we have decided to do it and for better or worse we are committed to it.

BriceJohnson · **Joined:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:33 am **Posts:** 2230

Shawn for President!

:lol:

Our homegrown payment/registration system was VERY time consuming. We have a ton of people who put in a LOT of work behind the scenes, our registrars over the years and Bowie in particular, that we can't expect to really be sustainable for generations to come. MSR relieving the burden somewhat on those VERY underappreciated staff positions is something that I think is necessary long term. A LOT of people put a ton of work into laying the groundwork for this club. I would love to see the spirit of volunteerism continue to grow and have more and more people step up like in years past to take on a lot of these labor intensive tasks, but realistically, we see more people retreating from responsibility rather than volunteering to take it on. The opportunity to monetize some of that work at what is a fairly reasonable price seems like a good win to me. It doesn't take much "additional publicity" to cover this cost either. 20 extra entries (over the whole season), and we have covered the added cost.

Not opposed to passing costs along as its reasonable, we need to see what our cost structure is once I get the calendar finalized this year first. It's always a balance of passing on costs yet maintaining sufficient demand and remaining cost competitive relative to our other local clubs.

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:41 am

shawnwhipple wrote:

As I sit here typing this I may have finally figured out why the whole MSR thing rubs me the wrong way. We are a non-profit club and the way I see it, MSR has found a way to take the work of all our volunteer club members and get themselves a 5% cut, right off the top. I don't mind getting out there and working so my fellow members can enjoy a fun event but, in 2014 I won't be working for THSCC anymore, I will be working for MSR. That's what every officer and event chair in this club will be doing, volunteering their time and their efforts to create events so MSR can make their 5%. I wonder if MSR will offer us health insurance since we are all working for them now?

Okay then, do you feel the same way about PayPal that we've been using for quite some years now for and paid thousands of dollars in fees? What about site rentals, are we THSCC volunteers "working for" Danville Regional Airport? What about port-a-john rental companies? And our web site hosting company hosting thscc.com? No, that's ridiculous, because we are purchasing with club money tangible things that the members want and use. The club belongs to its members, and the overwhelming response to MSR is that it is easier and more convenient for our attendees and for the staff who are the ones tasked with the non-trivial process of turning some names on an entry list into an actual event that our members attend.

You are throwing around some big numbers, and we need to remember that the track program has been using MSR quite successfully for several years, and the majority of money that goes through the club is track money. Several generations of staff have used MSR for the track and have been quite happy with it, so I don't see how that is relevant or even up for discussion considering the success of the track program. And PayPal was already taking fees from us on autocross & rallycross entry fees, buying us absolutely nothing except payment processing, and I never heard anyone complain about it (and arguably, there are multitudes more reasons to hate PayPal). As for memberships, yes you are correct we are going from 0% fee to the full MSR fee on that. However, at our first meeting last week since implementing memberships on MSR we had 12 new membership applications, and several of those were from out of state and mentioned "saw on MSR" for how they heard about the club. We also saw, possibly for the first time, one new membership application for lifetime membership ($200). I suspect that now that these people are members, they will attend our events as well, which will bring in more revenue we wouldn't have seen without MSR, so I see that as a huge return on investment already. We are spreading the word about the club and gaining new members, having a much better web presence, and reducing busywork for our volunteer staff so that they can focus their efforts elsewhere to improve our programs.

I am glad that you brought this up and that we are cognizant of how much we are paying MSR. I agree, we are paying them a lot. But we aren't throwing it away (like we were with PayPal), we are buying very specific services with it that are very useful to us. Before implementing this, we ran the numbers and decided it was worthwhile to go this route, and I still think it is best for the club.

Increasing memberships and/or entry fees is a different topic IMO, which we can certainly discuss. I don't think we've raised our rates in quite a number of years, so it is probably something we want to do for next year.

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Mon Jan 13, 2014 12:41 pm

BriceJohnson wrote:

.Our homegrown payment/registration system was VERY time consuming. We have a ton of people who put in a LOT of work behind the scenes, our registrars over the years and Bowie in particular, that we can't expect to really be sustainable for generations to come. MSR relieving the burden somewhat on those VERY underappreciated staff positions is something that I think is necessary long term.

Very good point about that. Many thanks to the underappreciated staff of volunteers that made it possible!

shawnwhipple · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2003 6:28 pm **Posts:** 603

Zack and Brice thanks for responding. Your input is very informative and I'm glad to see there was a lot of thought put into the decision. The truth is, when it was presented at the club meeting that we were changing to MSR I got exact opposite impression. The message I got from the cheap seats was "We are switching to MSR and it's great" and when someone asked how much it costs the answer was a vague "A little more than paypal". That somewhat evasive answer was what started me down the path of trying to figure out how much MSR was actually charging because I felt like the true answer was being glossed over.

I feel somewhat better about it knowing that you see value in their product.

Like I said earlier I'm going to chill out about this and move on.

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Mon Jan 13, 2014 1:51 pm

shawnwhipple wrote:

Zack and Brice thanks for responding. Your input is very informative and I'm glad to see there was a lot of thought put into the decision. The truth is, when it was presented at the club meeting that we were changing to MSR I got exact opposite impression. The message I got from the cheap seats was "We are switching to MSR and it's great" and when someone asked how much it costs the answer was a vague "A little more than paypal". That somewhat evasive answer was what started me down the path of trying to figure out how much MSR was actually charging because I felt like the true answer was being glossed over.

Yeah, it's a thin line between information-overload and not giving enough information at the meetings, and I definitely see how it could have appeared like we didn't give it as much thought as we did. We do value everyone's feedback and it's always good to get a second opinion, especially from someone who has been with the club as long as you have (not to mention your previous officerships). :thumbsup:

We will certainly look back at the end of this year and evaluate what we paid MSR, what we gained from it, and if it's worth continuing.

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