This section describes how the CGA currently operates. This includes the administrative structure, a description of the services it provides, and an overview of it’s financial position.
The CGA is administered by the CGA executive. CGA executives serve for two years, and are elected at the CGA Annual General meeting held at the Canadian Open each year. The executive currently communicates mainly electronically, so the minimum requirement to serve on the executive is to regularly read and respond to email discussions, participate in Skype meetings, and vote on proposed activities. Beyond that there are specific jobs we ask CGA executives to perform
- President : Responsible for overall CGA administration
- Vice President: Someone who can fill in for the president if required.
- Treasurer : Maintain the CGA’s financial records
- Database Content : Responsible for content in the CGA Databases (Membership, ratings, club contacts)
- Secretary: Document the CGA executives activities.
One area lacking clarity in the CGA administration is what we require the general CGA membership to approve, versus what the executive can do on it’s own. The current executive approach is to report their activities at the annual general meeting, and if there are clear changes requested by the general membership the executive will try and implement these. Normally the membership only selects the executive, beyond that the CGA executive decides everything.
The CGA will have a minimum executive team of 5 members. If for some reason we are unable to fill the slate at the Annual Meeting, or executives retire before between annual meetings, the executive can appoint members during the year, to be ratified at the next annual meeting.
The overall goals of the CGA are:
- Co-ordination with the international Go Community and International Go Events.
- Promotion of Go within Canada wherever possible
To accomplish these goals the CGA is currently performing the following tasks:
- Coordinate the hosting of the Canadian Open, and set requirements for international representative selection.
- Maintain a CGA ratings system
- Register Go clubs active in Canada
- Provide grants to support go teaching and youth programs
- Run the CGA web site to document CGA activities, and Canadian Go activities in general.
- Organize the online Winter Cup for CGA members
The executive cannot accomplish these tasks on their own; CGA volunteers are responsible for much of the implementation. You can see the CGA executives and volunteers listed in the “Contact Us” section.
The CGA today is funded from donations of members who wish to support Canadian Go. As this is a fairly new model we are still confirming this model is stable in the long term.
A rough breakdown of our expenses is as follows:
- Dues to the International Go Federation: Approximately 700-800. This depends on the current YEN/CAD exchange rate.
- CGA grants. In 2007/2008 we have 1500 CAD budgeted, and we look to be on track to spend this.
- Miscellaneous (Winter Cup prizes, mailing costs): perhaps 100-150$
As of late 2012 the CGA has approximately 9000$ in our bank account. From CGA membership we might expect revenues as follows:
If the CGA adopts a constitution, it may subsequently take two further steps
- Incorporate
- Register as a charitable organization
Either of these may be done independently, although they share some underlying requirements on how the CGA should be organized. To allow this any proposed constitution should be reviewed to ensure it is compatible with incorporation or registering as a charity.Some of the advantages of incorporation would be:
- The CGA could own property. Today depending on the province the CGA may not be able to open a bank account in it’s own name (and thus may not be able to cash cheques made out to the CGA). It also cannot buy investments like GIC’s. When bank accounts are in the name of executives there are issues about tax payments on the interest.
- CGA executives will not be personally liable if the CGA is sued.
- The CGA will need audited financial statements. This is an advantage for the transparency of CGA operations, although it does require some extra work and cost.
The advantage of being a registered charity is the ability to issue tax receipts. For comparison the Canadian Chess Federation is a registered charity, whereas the The American Go Association has an associated foundation which is a charity, as does the Canadian Bridge Association.