UPA ideas

  1. Entrepreneurial grants
    The UPA provides startup money for people who have ideas about how to make money in Ultimate by producing valued commercial products, and in return we get some share of the proceeds. Another model for this is the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grants by the govt to small businesses to do applied R&D on some particular task the govt needs (usually for the armed forces) but that also can be developed into something commercial down the road. There is almost nothing out there that you can buy that is tailored to ultimate.
    Possibliities:
      1. Clothing (jerseys, hats?, shorts, padded socks, maybe playing pants for brushburny fields)
      2. Equipment (cleats, braces, protective padding
      3. Teaching/coaching stuff, maybe camps for coaches, seminars
      4. Instructional videos, individual or team
      5. Books, either instructional or stories
      6. Calendars
      7. Travel accessories (luggage with, say, special compartments for cleats, discs, raingear, wet/dirty clothes).
      8. Improved drinking accessories (Buzzy once made a "Gunbelt", a leather sash/belt for doing shotguns. It had holsters for 6 beers, a "craw" for making a hole in the can. He could have made and sold a lot, I think). (Of course, I am merely joking about the possibility of funding something like this, but it DID happen, and it is a real-life example of something "useful" that disappeared and made all of our lives a little poorer.) I bet there are many entrepreneurs out there who have good ideas about these things but never pursue them because they either don't have the money or don't feel like they can risk the money they do have on something speculative.
    1. What we get: More specialized products for our members. Possiblity for cash inflow. In the event of a sudden explosion of players, we would be able to exploit the fad and sell tested merchandise. Or perhaps an individual could provide the cash under the UPA's name.
    2. Online rostering subcontracting (and sub-contracting in general)
    3. Cost reduction initiative (incentives to volunteers to improve systems, maybe give them a % of money saved by reduced labor)
    4. Increased volunteerism/charity
      (give away old cleats/discs/shirts for Boys and Girls etc. ("Discs for Tots") Speaking of money, for the 2001 World Games team, we should consider providing funding for the players. One way would be to set up some "Help Us Show the World Our Best" charity boxes at tournaments. The last time the WUGC was in Japan (1992?), we did very poorly since it was expensive and NYNY decided not to go. Theoretically, I think the UPA ought to provide some funding for the teams that represent it in international competition, but in practice, there are too many teams and players and any amount that we could give would only be a token amount.
      Another idea would be to charge an extra $5 per person at all big UPA Coed events and earmark the cash for this.
    5. Increase, eliminate, move, or merge Masters.
      There is no division to speak of. There are no masters tournaments outside of the JUFCS. Many or even most of the teams get together merely for the fall season.
        1. Increasing the number of teams at Nationals: gives more incentive to teams to get together as there will be more games guaranteed over the year, making it more worthwhile to play.
        2. C’mon, please.
        3. Move it to spring or summer, allowing more people to play it.
        4. Lower the age requirement to WFDF levels.
        5. Make it Coed.
    6. Number of teams at Nationals and Wildcards
    7. Summer league membership numbers, related to Coed/Open/Women’s teams. Is there a relationship?
    8. Do a statistical analysis of the membership as it applies to the Divisions: retention rates, new recruit rate, recidivism rate, variability, etc. I think this is needed for the Coed v Women debate.
    9. Something has to be done for the Div 2 people (we'll call them). Most don't make Regionals. Few make Nationals. Fewer still have any dreams of winning Nationals. Why play?
    10. Have a spot on the rosters for people to vote on non-binding referenda.
    11. PROJECT A: MARKETING PLAN
      This will require up to 60 students, maybe 10-20 hours each. Each Region has 1 or 2 Coordinators, others will be in-the-field Activists. The Coordinators (along with official UPA reps) will map out a plan to conduct marketing surveys at tournaments. The Activists will carry it out. It might be as simple as having the Activist print up a one-page survey that will be handed out along with the roster and waiver, with a spot for each player to cast a vote. Or it could be that the Activist sets up a booth near tournament central with a nice color poster featuring the topics at hand. Or the Activist could wander around with his brand new "UPA Activists Making It Happen" hat upon his head, conducting random surveys with players. Whatever is done, it should a) be easy for the slug-like player to offer his opinion, and b) be representative of the group that is present (current methods we use are too self-selecting and don't really catch an accurate sample of the population). The surveys themselves could be as broad or narrow as we want. One could be about member benefits (e.g.., how much are the following worth to you: 800 number, insurance, newsletter, Jockey festivals, travel agent, merchandise purchases, etc.), another could be about hot issues (Coed in Fall or Summer, what to do about Masters, Callahan/X Rules, Observers, summer league support), another could be very general about the UPA (how do you think your officials are doing?), another could be a knowledge test (who is your Regional Coordinator? How would you find out whether you are college eligible? What are the steps you have to take to host Sectionals and when do you have to take them?), another could be product oriented (how many pairs of cleats do you own? where and when do you buy them? what sort of socks do you wear? Could your shorts be made more functional?)
    12. PROJECT B: TECHIES UNITE
      This requires students or professionals who know stuff about computers and the Internet. This project would be organized more functionally. Again, we'd need some Coordinators and some Activists. There would need to be up to 5 top-level members of a Coordinating Committee who had vision of how the Internet functions. Beneath them would be Department Coordinators in charge of broad topics like e-commerce, rostering, member communication (like Web site updates), documentation, archiving (putting old NL's or Meeting minutes online), public relations, etc. Then there would be the Activists who work on the details, like how to make sure players' info remains secure or how to structure the page that shows all the products for sale through the UPA (old videos, discs, shirts, etc.) or updating the addresses for Admin contacts on the Web site.
    13. Policy on roster violations: admin/admin, onfield/onfield. Reference: Troy’s memo.
    14. X Rules—what’s up?
    15. 10th edition: SRC is working on this. Is any Board action/direction needed/useful?
    16. Membership for Overseas people. Charge the same, but pay for their postage such that there is a good chance it will get there. We’ll spend more in postage and in labeling, but they will not be using the other UPA services. What is the marginal cost of a member? Maybe call it an Overseas Membership and make it the same cost as a college membership, entitles you to an NL mailed overseas. Have to make sure US residents don’t write down some foreign address. I guess the within Region requirement would limit it to 5 players per team.