Some of the changes at the club have inspired discussions among members about the club's membership situation.
To help these discussions be well-informed and constructive, members may be interested in some recent membership trends, looking at both the joining dates of our current members and the number of lapsed and resigned members.
The joining dates of our current 607 members are as follows:
Recent changes have triggered some discussion among members at the club, including on the need for us to have registered for GST.
To help this discussion be more informed we have attached two papers that the ABF commissioned when GST was introduced and later when the GST thresholds were revised.
The club runs on the contributions of a large number of members. As we have been reviewing our expenses and the way we manage our activities, I am impressed at how much different people do to help our club be as good as it is. We don't yet have a full list of the different contributors and their contributions, but I am convinced that the size of some of these contributions are largely unknown to our overall membership. For some of the roles, possibly only the persons who have held the role previously can comprehend the amount of time, effort and responsibility involved.
Take for example the House Manager role, currently filled by Bill Fitzsimons. In recent months a sample of things I am aware that Bill has been involved in, completely on a voluntary basis, include:
We have received 203 responses to our member survey at the time of writing this article, an impressive 33% response rate from our 608 members. It is not too late. If you have not completed the survey or wish to update your response click on http://bit.ly/PBCSurvey2018. We want to gather as many of our members' views as possible to give us a good foundation for making decisions on your behalf.
A few of our members did not want to include their year of birth and remarkably were born in 2018. That is of course their choice but for some purposes these responses will need to be excluded. For instance it may not be possible to use their survey responses as demographic evidence to demonstrate to Council and other similar bodies our provision of strong community value to senior citizens, and could diminish our claim to stronger community support.
The survey will close at noon on Saturday 30 June. Printed responses will be entered online. The responses will then be augmented by postcode and other relevant membership data held and the results summarized and anonymized in a form useful to the committee and for inclusion into a club demographic and transport needs profile - and interesting summary results published on the website.
The club continues to support visitors and other players who find themselves unexpectedly without a partner at a number of its sessions: Monday afternoons (Green section only), Wednesday afternoons, Wednesday evenings, Friday afternoons and Friday evenings. We also welcome unpartnered players at all of our supervised sessions.
We have started keeping records of the unpartnered players at these sessions and there are many. While we encourage these players to proactively arrange for their own partners, we are glad when we can help those who unexpectedly find themselves partnerless.
Club members will have heard of the grant money we received as part of the federal Stronger Communities Program. We received $7,500 plus GST to be used to fund 50% of $15,000 in eligible spending on bridge equipment to improve the club. We are pleased to note (as we are required to do) that “This project received grant funding from the Australian Government.”
We would also like to note the huge voluntary time commitments that planning and implementing these purchases involved from the Committee and others, and particularly from Bill Fitzsimons, Ken Watson and David Farmer.
We have used this grant money as follows:
Many Peninsula pairs played in the State Mixed Pairs Championship on the weekend of 26-27 May, with Margaret and Michael Draper the most successful. Margaret and Michael, who were representing Manly Leagues Bridge Club, were 6th in the North-South field at the end of the Qualifying round and so earned a place in the 7 table finals. In the Finals they were placed a creditable 12th, with two pairs tying for first place: Kevin ROSENBERG - Susan HUMPHRIES and Warren LAZER - Pauline GUMBY. Some of us will remember Susan Humphries tag teaming with Liam Milne as our Swiss Pairs experts on Tue 22 May.
Other Peninsula members who made the top 20 in each direction in the qualifying event included:
76 Peninsula members played in the 2018 Australia-Wide Novice Pairs on Friday 25 May. Novice players (<50MP) in clubs all over Australia played the same boards and results were scored across the country. A booklet with expert analysis of the hands was provided.
Locally calculated results were published on our website. You can check the national results on the event coordinator's website. These are still provisional at time of writing.
Nationally Sue Evershed and John Simmonds are our best pair, coming 29th across the country with 64.5% according to the results processed at time of writing, ahead of Christine Egan and Dianne Agostino who are 35th with 63.9% and Karl Puse and Yumiko Tsuji who are 41st with 63.3%. Congratulations to these pairs who, once the results are final, need to claim prizes for being in the top 50.
