Month: August 2018

Our goals for the next year

~ etobicokechessclub ~ Leave a comment

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One of our members dropped a bunch of money on us today, way more than we normally accumulate in donations in one night. He jokingly said that he hopes the money will go to a good cause, but that got me thinking … Does anyone else know what we plan on doing with it?

Well, we operate out of Woodbine mall, we’ve more or less paid off the boards and almost all of the cost of the clocks (another thousand or 1100 or so), so what’s in our overhead?

Nonprofit insurance $513 a year, and advertising on meetup $240 a year. But that should be coverable by scraping together a few bucks in donations each week, right? What would we do if we had more money?

Our plan, ever since we made the chess club a nonprofit a year ago, is to go after government grants to run tournaments in Toronto for as little money as possible, and to have our own free space that’s public but quiet. The CFC only charges $3 per player per tournament, so if we can start a tournament program that allows us to run tournaments with space that’s already paid for , without taking it out of an individual player’s pocket, we figure that’d be awesome.

Any surplus money we make after covering our bases over the next year will be spent trying to secure a grant that will set us up for a long time. We will also try to secure equipment and our own space to run weekly chess night in a quiet central location, as well as super-accessible tournaments so that even the most budget-wary parent can bring their child to a chess tournament, and so that anyone who’s starting out in the sport can get their feet wet without breaking the bamk.

Am I worried that someone else is going to read this, take my idea and run with it? Of course not. If someone else thinks this is a good idea, they should already be doing this! We wholeheartedly encourage what I just mentioned, but this approach doesn’t make any money. I don’t know how many times I can say this, though; we’re not in this for the money. We’re in this for chess.

Densil takes one of our newcomers and soon-to-be regulars, Nash, to task over the board.
Again, it was busy, and it’s only gonna get busier, so if you wanna play or learn chess, just come by.