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Dues Going Up, CEO Change, World Rugby Gets More Involved
USA Rugby’s Board of Directors quarterly open letter and it’s a long report on what needs to be fixed and how that’s done.
Quick summary: Dues will be going up; World Rugby is going to have a heavier hand in commercial rights and events; Ross Young will be transitioning to working on the Rugby World Cups. This article is a rundown of what was said in the letter as well as some commentary.
USA Rugby engaged a volunteer group of Harvard Business School alumni and others with management, consulting, and community experience in USA Rugby to undertake a strategic review of how the National Governing Body operated.
The recommendations were summarized as follows (with some GRR commentary in parentheses):
Communities: USA Rugby needs to be very clear about the value proposition explaining what USA Rugby does and what communities handle themselves. In addition, USA Rugby should embrace a customer service approach toward the various rugby communities. (This has been a cause for many within the game for decades, and certainly in these pages we have called for it. Basically it means USA Rugby has to work harder to sell membership as a benefit, not just an obligation, and the organization has to treat the members like customers, not subordinates. This will certainly require more people at USA Rugby to do unexciting work, rather than relying on just a few who are willing to take on those tasks. It’s the “I’m not too good to answer calls and fix problems and be nice about it” doctrine.)
Finance and Governance: USA Rugby should prioritize financial stability and sustainability, retaining an effective CFO and an effective Compliance Director, and restructuring the governance to reflect NGB best practices. (This points out that if you want proper financial management, you get what you pay for. We talk a lot about the CEO … but it’s the CFO who can make or break this organization.)
High Performance: Focus on growing participation and pathways and invest in HP management and infrastructure. (This summary is meaningless to us at GRR World Headquarters. Growing participation? That’s wonderful, you know we’re all about that, but growing participation is not a High Performance task. Invest in HP Management? Yuck. that’s been a major problem for USA Rugby. Invest in HP execution. What USA Rugby is doing now—getting age-grade teams good competition and good, unified coaching across the board is the way.)
Equity and Safety: Implement equity and safety throughout the organization to promote safety, inclusion and wellness. (Before you roll your eyes all the way to the back of your head … there is an issue here. It’s worth asking the question: “Do USA Rugby’s hiring practices reflect the playing community?” If you’re Polynesian that answer is a resounding “No!” Membership of the organization’s inner circle has often been insular and circular. In addition, it’s long been true that the men’s 15s team has had more pay and reimburement resources than the women, and that needs to change. We know, many of the words in this section have started to lose their meaning—wellness?—but there are some things to look at here.)
So after all that the USA Rugby National Office had a think and came to the various Councils with some ideas and initiatives:
Communities
To help improve services to its members, USA Rugby has established a new call center, through Focus on the Field, to respond to member inquiries and include a tracking system to ensure these inquiries are resolved promptly. The organization is also looking to hire (if they can find the money) three new positions to serve the Communities. Members looking for service or support may call the new provider at +1 720-263-2433. (There has to be a cultural shift here, too, but this call center is a very good start.)
Finance
The National Office wants to raise dues. With a membership that is missing dues from about 14,000 collegiate players that are members of NCR and don’t pay USA Rugby dues, the organization is short about $160,000 (estimated). But even if a dues compromise is reached with NCR, there are expenditures the National Office needs to cover.
US Collegiate Rugby Membership By The Numbers
Currently an organization of nine employees, USA Rugby needs a Senior Financial Officer, a Compliance Director, and three Community Liaisons. Meanwhile, they have been operating some aspects of the High Performance programs on a bit of a shoestring—mostly to do with finding additional staff.
So they need more funds, ad they’re addressing that in two ways:
1. Increasing dues by $10 per person effective in August, 2023. (It’s fair to say that USA Rugby dues have always been relatively low compared to other sports. We’ve discussed that —Dues Breakdown in 2020. So while no one likes an increase, it’s not unexpected nor is the increase massive. The open letter implies that USA Rugby expected to top 100,000 members relatively soon. Right now it’s closer to 90,000 despite COVID and the NCR separation.)
2. Entering into a commercial rights agreement with World Rugby by which USA Rugby’s commercial and event rights will be promoted and executed by World Rugby in exchange for a guaranteed annual minimum commercial payment from World Rugby. So basically World Rugby gets to use USA Rugby’s platform, such as it is, to promote their sponsors and partners. World Rugby also can execute events, which is something USA Rugby has never been especially good at. (USA Rugby says this will increase revenue. It probably will. It will also provide a more predictable income flow for the organization. Could it be a cash cow? We’ll see.)
