Chess Victoria Inc

Founded 1938                       Incorporated 1983                Reg. No. A0000387H                            ABN 22 896 147 339

Notice of Annual General Meeting

Notice is hereby given that the 2011 Annual General Meeting of Chess Victoria Incorporated is scheduled to start at: 
Sunday 4^th December 2011at 4.30 pm

Venue: Melbourne Chess Club, 66 Leicester St., Fitzroy

Nominations for the election of office-bearers must be in the hands of the chairman, Mr Russell De La Lande, before the start of the meeting.

 1 Meeting Agenda

1.      2 Opening of Meeting 

2.      3 Attendance & Apologies 

3.      4 Adoption of Minutes of previous AGM held 28/11/10 

4.   5 Annual Reports  

a.      General Report – President

b.      Financial Report – Treasurer

c.      Questions relating to General and Financial Reports

d.      Adoption of Annual Report  

5.      Proposed Chess Victoria Calendar for 2012

 Note: The CV calendar will be launched following the re-election results of the AGM

6.      Election of Executive Members 

 a.      President
b.      Vice-President 
c.      Treasurer 
d.      Secretary
e.      Two other members of the Executive Committee (responsibilities to be determined by the Executive Committee) 
 7.      Election of General Meetings Chairman & Auditor
a.      General Meetings Chairman 
b.      Auditor 
8.      Notice of Motions 
a.      David Cordover – Frankston Chess Club
"That CV move a motion at the ACF National Conference as follows: 'That the ACF Ratings officer make the Rating Differential (RD) data used in the calculation of ACF Ratings public.'"
b.      David Cordover – Frankston Chess Club
"That CV move a motion at the ACF National Conference as follows: 'That the ACF Ratings officer provide all historical tournament data that he has available to Tornelo for purposes of displaying player and tournament results history on the AusChess.Tornelo.com website.'"
c.      David Cordover – Frankston Chess Club
"Chess Victoria run the School-teams events themselves (ie. in-house CV organisers, profits remain in CV) and NOT outsource these events to clubs, businesses or individuals."
d.      David Cordover – Frankston Chess Club
"Chess Victoria run the Victorian Junior Championship events themselves (ie. in-house CV organisers, profits remain in CV) and NOT outsource these events to clubs, businesses or individuals."
There may be additional materials in regards to the above motions, which will be available for reading at the meeting. 
Notice may be given at this time for motions intended for consideration at a future Chess Victoria Annual General Meeting. Verbal notification at this time does not remove the normal requirement for written notice of motion to be given before the meeting at which the motion is to be considered.
9.      General Business
10. Close of Meeting

Chess Victoria

 Treasurer’s comments to the 2011 accounts

 1.     The accounting year is 1/10/10 to 30/9/11.

2.     The statements are audited, by Olgerts Bergmanis.

3.     The bottom line of the P&L statement shows a cash-surplus of $10,630 rounded, representing a healthy addition to the Chess Victoria reserves and working capital. The main income for Chess Victoria is now coming from schools activities and this peaks around the closing dates for accounts; this means the P&L surplus is very sensitive to arrival of ‘schools money’ before or after the 30^th of September. Clearly there is a significant element of the 2010 schools programme appearing in the 2011 accounts due to late collections of 2010 monies.

4.     Cash reserves are in a high-yielding term deposits with the Westpac Bank; these were set up by the former Treasurer and have been recently rolled over by the current Executive.

5.     The growth in strength of affiliated Clubs continues with Melbourne Chess Club introducing new events, with Noble Park, Frankston, Croydon and Ranges developing substantial junior programmes, and with coaching organisations creating opportunities for Clubs to tap into a constant stream of newcomers to chess.

6.     Victorian schools have the best options for school competitions of any State in Australia. Many schools participate in both the Chess Finals system that has qualifiers from diverse coaching organisations that are licensed to Chess Victoria, and in the Chess Kids strongly branded high-cost qualifiers/Finals offerings. The result of so many opportunities to play school chess has helped Victoria to have an extremely strong showing in the Australian Schools Team Championship for many recent years.

7.     The licensing of coaching organisations, to participate in the Chess Victoria qualifying requires: Working with Children Certificates, Public Liability Insurance cover, and payment of a per-qualifier-event licence fee. Coaching organisations are left to their own choices of event structure, time controls, field sizes, and schools invited. The Chess Victoria Executive has long held the view that this diverse arrangement allows scope for innovation and experimentation in approach, while meeting the basic licence conditions.

8.     The traditional senior events (the Victorian Championship, the Victorian Teams event, and the Victorian Masters) continue to be supported by the Executive even though these events are not approaching break-even financially. The Executive has the view that chess needs events at the highest level of competition in order to present to newcomers that there is a ladder to be climbed to reach international competition. There are limited Club opportunities for high level chess (the Ballarat week-ender is pre-eminent, The Melbourne Cup week-ender is strong, and a Croydon week-ender increases in strength), but these opportunities are not as  frequent as the week-ender programme offered in New South Wales. The financial surplus (from the schools programme) achieved by Chess Victoria allows some cross-subsidisation of profits from junior activities to traditional senior elite tournaments. There is a contrast in this approach to the structures elsewhere in Australia

                                                              i.      NSW has a separate Junior Chess League, with separate financial accounts (and as a consequence the most significant cash reserves of any chess organisation in Australia.

                                                            ii.      The Australian Chess Federation has a formal offshoot called the Australian Junior Chess League which has separate accounts, budgets, and constitution.

9.     The Executive continues to offer events to affiliated Clubs to host. The Victorian Open week-ender, and the Victorian Junior Championship received multiple bids for 2012 and the winning bids will be declared by the President before the 2011AGM.

10.  Similarly, the Melbourne Chess Club bid (successfully) to the AJCL to host the 2012 Australian Junior  Championships; the Ranges Chess Club bid for and ran the 2011 Australian Junior  Championships; and the Geelong Chess Club bid (successfully) to the ACF to run the 2011-2012 Australian Championship.

 Trevor Stanning for Chess Victoria, 17/11/2011.