A Note From The Cleveland Darter Club B.O.D.

The CDC is happy to announce that the league operations search committee has made a recommendation (after extensive interviews and proposal scrutiny), and this recommendation was approved by the Board of the Directors on January 9th, 2011. The outcome of this was to accept the operations proposal submitted by R.E. Operations (fronted by Rose Scott and Eric Belloma). Their proposal suggested not only process and accountability improvements but overall improvements to the systems we use to manage our Club as a whole. We feel that many of these improvements will serve to improve our Club as a whole. In addition to all these "positives", their proposal also offered a significant cost savings (30%) to the overall budget specified for League Operations and the League Management position. This allows us to further our quest to MARKET TO NEW AREAS, INCREASE PAYOUTS, and LOWER FEES.

They've already begun to "take the reins" and got us underway this session without any serious incidents. In fact, with their assistance, we've once again grown almost 10%. You will begin to see some of their many proposed improvements over the course of this session! As very active members of the Club, you might even see members of this team "out and about" over the course of this session! 

We'd like to thank all members/candidates that submitted a proposal. Every proposal was taken very seriously and judged based upon past experience with the Club, proposed improvements, deliverable items, and overall accountability. All candidates that made it through the first phase were informed of the Club's budget for this position - and therefore had to formulate a proposal that met this criteria. Cost was not the primary factor in the search committee's decision - more so - engagement, services/upgrades, and accountability in getting the job done. It wasn't an easy decision given the surprising amount of very active members/candidates that submitted resumes.
We're once again very fortunate to have such an active membership!

We hope that you offer your best (and support) to Eric Belloma, Rose Scott and the rest of their team. They've expressed a serious interest in getting feedback from membership on future improvements and seem very open minded. As always, our goal is to further the growth of our Club and the continued support of darting in our region through our continued support of "Promoting the Ancient and Honorable Sport of Darts".

If you have questions as you how the process for the selection was handled, we will try and publish this very thorough documentation from the selection committee here.  This Microsoft PowerPoint presentation covers how organized and objective the process was executed.

Welcome to the next generation of League Operations....

We'd first off like to thank the Club for allowing us an opportunity to provide a superior league experience.  Our proposal of upgrades to the CDC Leagues (30+ pages) was an integration of proven volunteer efforts in other areas with the overall commitment to systems and process improvements that will - in the end - benefit OUR CLUB and OUR MEMBERS.

The Club as a whole has found a new breath of life in these last 3-4 years.  With everything from rebuilding the Club's internal systems/processes to BRINGING BACK THE EXTRAVAGANZA AND QUAD CITY TROPHY TO CLEVELAND... we've got a lot to be proud about.  The CDC Hall of Fame is a great example of how we continue to respect our past but we must be optimistic and move forward.  The Club can't be stuck in a rut by doing things less efficiently and providing anything less than the best services to our members.  Some of these initiatives DO cost money and do require accountability.  Our initiatives will "farm-out" these tasks at a more comparable rate beneficial to the Club but allowing the accountability of this work to rest on OUR shoulders.  We also have technical and marketing upgrades to the overall League that WE CAN'T WAIT TO GET INTO PLACE!

The main parts of our initiatives depend on EVERYONE'S CONTINUED SUPPORT.  We've incorporated our efforts to build "vertical tiers" of services we'd like to operate and continue to upgrade as it relates to the CDC leagues and back-office operations.  Many of things you'll start to see improve is:

• Overall improvements to League Management through better communication methods and accountability.
  • We're much faster on voice mails / emails /etc. because our internal architecture is superior and team members share the workload.  There's true backups in effect.
  • We'll be setting up weekly "office hours" where you can click a link online and chat (audio & visual) with League Operations personnel and other captains.
  • We actually participate in the leagues we help run.
• Continued expansion of divisions and locations throughout the area through new marketing initiatives.
  • We feel that we only touched on some great ideas in our proposals to the Club.
  • We feel that focusing on getting the sport into the hands of "youth" is important and we've got ideas for this.
  • We feel that others who assist in marketing the sport and our Club with us should be rewarded for their efforts or AT LEAST reimbursed for expenses like GAS, PRINTING COSTS, ETC.  Our internal budget allows this to take place (something new for the league manager).
  • We feel that teams that... bring new teams... should be rewarded.  We've got some neat ideas for the future on this.
• Online upgrades through better integration of scores, schedules, rosters, write-ups, etc.
  • We've proposed new systems to significantly upgrade our back office throughput.
  • A new look to the league website is coming.  You'll be able to see more organized scores, write-ups, etc.
  • There will be an online portal integrated that will allow captains the ability to submit scores online and view/print ROSTERS!!!!
  • We're also looking into capturing team and individual games stats online... more to come on this.
• Better organization and management of our league finances.
  • Cooler prizes and CDC League stuff!!!
  • Continuing to increase payouts and lower team fees over time with the assistance of the CDC Finance Committee.

We feel that the transition efforts are going well and we're getting ourselves situated in well.  The league has shown more growth through a team effort over the last couple weeks, and we'd like that team effort to continue.  We're very open to new constructive ideas from everyone so feel free to submit your ideas. 

Submit your ideas

As a Club we're always trying to collect feedback from members.

Do you have some ideas on things we can to to improve the League?  We're actively engaging feedback from our members and want to do some new things.  We've heard all kinds of ideas:

• Scheduling suggestions.
• Game format suggestions.
• How to properly publish rosters.
• Prizes (Especially some upgrades to Summer prizes).
• Session End Tournaments.

Eventually we'll most likely have some online form to post your ideas, but in the short term, leagues@darter.org.

If you have website ideas you can always send them to webmaster@darter.org

Any other Club related ideas can be sent to the appropriate committees or the President.