new-groups-msg – 10/17/11
Procedures and advice on starting new SCA groups.
NOTE: See also the files: households-msg, fundraising-msg, recruitment-msg, SCA-land-msg, SCAguests-msg, SCA-meetings-msg.
************************************************************************
NOTICE -
This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.
This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.
The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.
Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s).
Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
************************************************************************
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: rayturne at cln.etc.bc.ca (Raymond Turner)
Subject: Re: starting a chapter...
Organization: The Education Technology Centre of British Columbia. (Canada)
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 17:54:50 GMT
Greetings from Olwen Pen Aur, An Tir Kingdom Chatelaine,
In a previous article, jschmalh at bdm.com (Joseph Schmalhofer) says:
>Based on personal experience, I'd recommend getting in touch with any local
>Shires/Baronies/Colleges/etc and ask them for assistance. In Meridies when
>we formed our new Shire we were required to have a sponsoring group as well
>as 5 dues paying members. Since all officers of a group are required to be
>SCA members, and there are 5 officer positions which need to be filled,
>this made sense. We eventually worked up to 15 paid members. Don't know
>what the status of the group is these days as I left the area almost a year
>ago.
>Dante
>mka Joe Schmalhofer
What Dante describes are not only the requirements for forming a branch
in Meridies, they're the requirements for forming a branch anywhere.
These are set down by Corpora, not individual Kingdom law. Only 3
officers are specified as required by Corpora: Seneschal, Herald, and
Arts and Sciences if you ahve no fighting, Master of Stables/Marshall if
you ahve fighting. Kingdoms may require additional officers, but those
three are the absolute minimum.
As Dante also says, a new branch MUST have a sponsor branch during the
probation period known as "incipiency." This usually the closest branch
geographically, but not necessarily. Who your sponsor branch is should
have no bearing on your future status. So, for example, if your sponsor
branch is the nearby barony, this does not mean you MUST become a canton.
If your sponsor branch is in a particular Region of the Kingdom (An Tir
ahs Regions, and we just got our first Principalities. I don't know if
other Kingdoms do as well), nothing requires you to belong to that Region
once you attain full status.
My advice would be to get hold of your Kingdom's newsletter, find the
address for your Kingdom or Principality Seneschal, and write to them. If
they wish to refer you to a neighbouring branch or a seneschal farther
down the food chain, they can do so. But these are the people who will
ultimately make the decision on your fate anyway, and they have to know
you exist sooner or later. And you also know they will give you the
straight scoop on what you need. I'm a Kingdom Officer, and my lord is a
Regional Deputy to the Kingdom Seneschal, and you wuld be amazed at some
of the truly bizarro things even branch seneschals will tell people. We
have one branch in our Kingdom that owns multiple copies of Corpora,
Kingdom law, every document known to man in the Known World, and they
read 'em. They just get it wrong every single time.
So go straight to the top. Most likely, your Kingdom or Principality
Seneschal will forward your request for info to someone closer to you,
because they're busy people.
Your branch will be incipient for a year, and for no more than 3 years.
IN that time, you must submit a name and device to the College of
Heralds, hold at least one SCA-designated event a year, and continue to
fulfil the other requiremtns for a branch. Forming a college or otehr
institutional branch has the same requirements, but the Board will aloow
for seasonal variation in membership due to college schedule or for some
minor irregularities in how you set up your branch relative to the
mundane institution (for example, Canadian Forces Bases require that any
"clubs" operating on the base must have no less than a given percentage
of military members. This means you may have to have a waiting list for
non-military people who want to join officially. However, that doesn't
mean they can't play or come to events). This is the kind of specific
information your Kingdom or Principality Seneschal, or their deputy, can
provide for you.
If your group can't fulfill the requirements of full branch status within
three years, it will be dissolved.
New branches also have a great preponderance of new members, so I'd also
suggest very strongly you get in touch with your Kingdom or Principality
Chatelaine, or the chatelaine of the branches closest to you. These are
the officers charged with the responsibility of helping new members fit
in with the customs and social structure of the SCA. In my Kingdom,
written into the job description is the requirement to provide "accurate
and favourable infomration about the SCA." Or as I tell my branch
officers, creative faking is not permitted. :-) Chatelaines can give you
plenty of information and guidance on how to integrate new people into
the group and the SCA at large, and perhaps even recruit new members to
get your branch to a viable size.
Good luck!
All the best,
HL Olwen Pen Aur
Kingdom Chatelaine, An Tir
From: "Robbin L. G. Long" <c638414 at mizzou1.missouri.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: starting a chapter...
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 17:24:27 -0700
Organization: University of Missouri
Raymond Turner wrote:
> What Dante describes are not only the requirements for forming a branch
> in Meridies, they're the requirements for forming a branch anywhere.
> These are set down by Corpora, not individual Kingdom law. Only 3
> officers are specified as required by Corpora: Seneschal, Herald, and
> Arts and Sciences if you ahve no fighting, Master of Stables/Marshall if
> you ahve fighting. Kingdoms may require additional officers, but those
> three are the absolute minimum.
>
> As Dante also says, a new branch MUST have a sponsor branch during the
> probation period known as "incipiency." This usually the closest branch
> geographically, but not necessarily. Who your sponsor branch is should
> have no bearing on your future status. So, for example, if your sponsor
> branch is the nearby barony, this does not mean you MUST become a canton.
I have deleted much of the above, for space, but there is one further
consideration to add to the above. There is a rule concerning how far
away from an existing group you must be to start a new one. I don't have
my copy of corpora near me, but the mileages that come to mind are 25 or
50 miles; in other words, you cannot found a new _independent_ group
within an xx mile radius of an established group. There are exceptions
made to this in areas of dense population, but these have to be approved
by the BoD. Some groups have been doomed to permanent canton status by
this rule. Just one more thing you might want to check... :-)
Brianne
From: jdoucet at bud.peinet.pe.ca (Ken Doucette)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: starting a chapter...
Date: 27 Jun 1996 15:49:20 -0400
Organization: PEINet, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada
Kevin Greer <keg at traveller.com> writes:
>peterscc at whitman.edu (Chris Petersen) wrote:
[...]
>>I've been told that we would need 10 dues-paying members to become a
>>shire, but is there anything else (college?) that would allow fewer
>>dues-paying members, as we are all poor college students? We have the
>>support of the closest barony, Wastekeep, so matters of that sort should
>>work out easily.
My Lord, way back in 1992, I leaped in where fools fear to tread
and took upon myself the task of starting the cantref of Ynys y Gwaed, in
the Barony of Ruantallan, way out on the Eastrealm's northern frontier.
Suffice it to say, it was not easy. No matter what type of group you
intend to establish, be prepared for a lot of paperwork, a lot of
reluctance, and be ready to devote a significant amount of your time, in
and out of the SCA, to make the thing work.
>If you have a barony close-by that will support your group, then how about
>forming a household within that barony? When we have a new group forming
>in our area, we suggest that they form a loose household for a year or two
>to see if there is enough interest over a long period of time. Households
>are a lot simpler to form and disband than formal groups and they have a
>lot fewer requirments to fulfil ( very improtant when the members of the
>group only have a limited amount of time to play in the SCA). In general,
> it is better to take it slowly and build a good group than to rush into
>getting a fancy name, big status symbol, and lots & lots of paperwork.
>Good luck, Gavin
This is an excellent suggestion and I can not recommend it more!
It is infinitely more desirable to take things a bit slow and build a
solid foundation than rush things and have it all come crashing down --
makes it harder for the next group of folks that come along.
My advice is to discuss the situation with the Curia and Coronet of
Wastekeep. I would say that your best options are either a) form a
household for now and see if you can build a decently solid core of
people, or b) seriously look at forming a college (much less restrictions
on membership levels :) IF you think you have the population base to
support it. Yet a third option might be to start with a household and
then move to a college after about a year or two once you've established
a reasonably solid core group of folks. But whatever you do, make sure
you maintain open and *crystal clear* lines of communication between you
and Wastekeep.
Good luck, and feel free to e-mail me any time with questions or
just to bitch :)
Slan,
Conn
jdoucet at cycor.ca
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: ug510 at freenet.Victoria.BC.CA (Tom J. Pilcher)
Subject: Re: starting a chapter...
Organization: The Victoria Freenet Association (VIFA), Victoria, B.C., Canada
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 15:45:38 GMT
>peterscc at whitman.edu (Chris Petersen) wrote:
>
>>I got to college last year and was heartbroken to find only one other SCA
>>member among the student body. Since then, we've been able to amount a
>>decently sized group of interested people (students and otherwise), and am
>>wondering how to go about starting the SCA back up in our area.
>
>>We used to be the shire of Perilous Gard (m.k.a. Walla Walla, WA), and I
>>guess it "went under" about 3 years ago (whatever makes this year the
>>first available year to start things back up on a trial basis).
>
>>I've been told that we would need 10 dues-paying members to become a
>>shire, but is there anything else (college?) that would allow fewer
>>dues-paying members, as we are all poor college students? We have the
>>support of the closest barony, Wastekeep, so matters of that sort should
>>work out easily.
>
>My Lord,, contact the Kingdom of An Tir's seneschal. According to the
>Page, the newsletter for the Kingdom of the West... the seneschal is
>Elisabeth de Rossignol (real name: Lisa Mohr) her telephone number
>is (206) 277-0763. The seneschal can fill you in on the ropes...
Countess Elizabeth is indeed the Kingdom Seneschal, however she is
stepping down at September Crown.
Calling her may indeed get you all the information you need but since you
state you have the support of Wastekeep why not call them? Their
Seneschal should be able to assist with anything you need including
contacting Kingdom for you. They should also put you onto your Regional
Seneschal and Chatelaine who would be the ones you will eventually deal with.
As for members, a shire requires 5 sustaining members. You state that you
are in a college though. Mundane institutions such as Universities,
Colleges and Military Bases or Stations may form Institutional Branches
such as Colleges, Ports or Strongholds. These require 5 sustaining
members as well but differ in that if you drop below that number you
become dormant and do not cease to exist as a shire would. This was
designed to reflect the transitory population inherent in these types of
institutions. (Summer comes, students go)
The one other alternative that you might consider is that of a canton to
Wastekeep. You would be essentially a shire under their dominion. This
type of branch usually provides a much greater level of involvement from the
Barony which you would then be a part of.
--
HL SGT James the Tormentor PO1 Tom Pilcher (604) 363-4946
ug510 at freenet.victoria.bc.ca Canadian Forces Fleet School
Incipient Port of Laighe na Greine CFB Esquimalt, Victoria, BC
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 21:37:50 MST
From: jonwillowpel at juno.com
Subject: Re: ANST - New Question...
To: ansteorra at ansteorra.org
<deer_kief at hotmail.com> writes:
> First I would like to say I mistyped...Cantons require 5 sustaining
> members not 3 as I typed...
>
> Since it takes a paid membership to become a officer, how many paid members
> do you think it takes to sustain a healthy group...(one that puts on events,
> travels, has more than just the same members trading off offices to keep the
> group alive, and is active on a local, regional and kingdom level and is
> able to revive itself from burnout) barony/shire/canton/college?????
>
> Lorraine DeerSlayer
For a shire or canton
You should have enough people to fill all the offices and have spares in
the wings. That is about 10 to 15 people. If you are doing two events a
year you need autocrats for the events. To be the head autocrat you need
to be warranted and that means having a membership. That is another 2 to
3 people. A healthy group should have enough people that they don't have
to double up on jobs. To have good event that doesn't wear everyone out
you need all your officers in place plus autocrats. I would say you need
almost 20 working members. This is on top of your "retired" SCA member.
Some of your "paid member" are the people who have put their time it and
now just watch. The amount goes up for a barony. I know this is more than
what the BOD ask for but you wanted to know how many for a Healthy group.
One of the things about people who are too poor to paid 35.00 dollars is
they often try to make up by working hard in their local area. Most of us
have a social conscience . We try to do our share. Remember when dealing
with volunteers you need not to confuse them. What is more important?
Someone paying 2 dollar extra at gate or someone working 4 hours at gate.
One of the binds volunteer organizations get their selves into is looking
too much like a market organization. Our sites fee are donations that
keep our local chapters going they aren't an admission ticket that covers
all the cost. We couldn't pay all the people that work at our events with
our site fees. We need to very clear that we need more help. If we get
to caught up in this "paid" "not paid" we might lose a lot of good
workers
Willow
From: Sir Lyonel Oliver Grace <sirlyonel at hotmail.com>
Date: February 17, 2009 11:15:56 AM CST
To: "Kingdom of Ansteorra - SCA, Inc." <ansteorra at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Ansteorra] Student chapter?
<<< I plan on attending Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, TX. The meetings of the local shire are, unfortunately, rather far away. I was doing some reading and noted some "student chapters" are around. Several of the students there DO attend the Renaissance Fair and I am sure there would be some interest in the group. Does anyone know about who I would contact or such about starting such a group when I arrive?
Giertrud Gyldenstierne >>>
In the past twenty years, I've seen many attempts to start a College (an SCA branch organized within the students and faculty of a college or university). I started one, myself, at Idaho State University several years ago. It didn't survive two years. In fact, it only lasted as an "official" group (after recognition) for a semester. Currently, as far as I can tell, Ansteorra has only one incipient College (Three Bridges at UT Arlington). I know that, within Bryn Gwlad, Laszlo was trying to get a group started at UT Austin, but I don't know if it ever took off. Earlier attempts there did not fare well.
I believe it's possible to get a College going--especially in an area like Sequin where the distance to the nearest shire or barony is great enough to be difficult for students.
If you want to start on such a project, I'd say do the following:
(1) Familiarize yourself with Kingdom Law (available at Ansteorra.org)
(2) Make firends with the neighboring seneschals (Ffynnon Gath, Bryn Gwlad, and Bjornsborg)
(3) Get to know the regional and kingdom seneschals
(4) Start thinking about how you'll go about recruiting, where you would hold populace meetings, and where you would hold fighter practice. In my experience, no college survives without a strong martial base. No fighter practices usually means eventual death for the group.
(5) Find at least one and preferably two more students who feel as strongly about this as you. If you try to be the sole source of energy behind the group, it will die any time you're unavailable.
(6) Know what your college requires from a student organization/club/society.
(7) Talk with Laszlo about his experiences, they're more recent than my own.
I really don't want to scare anyone away from the attempt, but if you're going to do this, you should be aware of the obstacles. Essentially, the problems are
(1) Your populace is temporary. Most students are there for just four years. Four years goes by pretty fast. Every year, populace members will simply disappear. This is especially hurtful when they're active members.
(2) Your populace is concentrating on something else. Students really don't have that much spare time, and that tends to disappear around term paper and exam times.
(3) Large chunks of your population disappear in the summer. The structure of a College is supposed to allow for that, but people who are away for three months occasionally come back with other interests.
(4) Your populace can't afford a lot of travel. That means they don't attend a lot of events outside of your group.
(5) Colleges often have weird little rules that make it difficult or even impossible to hold events on campus. Many, for example, will give an SCA College a space to use for fighter practice, but anyone practicing there has to be a student or staff. Some schools won't allow fighter practices (safety concerns, lawsuit concerns).
En Lyonel
From: HerrDetlef <herrdetlef at gmail.com>
Date: February 17, 2009 11:34:18 AM CST
To: "Kingdom of Ansteorra - SCA, Inc." <ansteorra at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Ansteorra] Student chapter?
Need you limit yourselves to the student population at TLU? You might
explore the possibility of forming a canton of either Bjornsborg or Bryn
Gwlad, or even forming an incipient shire. Such a group structure would
allow reaching out into the community at large....local members who will not
move away after four years, are not gone during the summers, and will
not drop off the face of the earth come midterms and finals week, can go a
long way in establishing stability.
I know that Raven's Fort owes a huge part of its success in the 1980s in the
integration of a student population at Sam Houston State with the community
at large in Huntsville and Conroe. It is hard to believe that Raven's Fort
would have become a barony in 1989 if the group had started out as a
college. Fynnon Gath originated as a canton, and not a college, of Bryn
Gwlad, and I cannot imagine that what is now TSU had nothing to do with that
group's development.
Just some thoughts. Organizing a local SCA group in the context of a college
campus should not exclude the possibility of other structures in addition to
the college structure.
Good luck with your explorations there! Speaking only for myself, I quite
like the idea of an SCA group in an area with some German colonial history.
Detlef von Marburg
Tir Medoin
From: robert segrest <aumbob at yahoo.com>
Date: February 17, 2009 6:15:11 PM CST
To: ansteorra at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Ansteorra] Student Chapter?
As Sir Lyonel pointed out, I took a shot recently at (re)starting a College at UT recently. I failed. I did, however, learn a few things in the process. Among them:
1) There are a lot of barriers to starting a college successfully. Some come from the SCA, more come from the school, and many more are simply factors of time and energy
2) The SCA cannot really do much to help, in an official capacity. Since you will have to demonstrate that you have the framework of an SCA organization before getting even incipient status, your organization will not have any legal connection to the SCA during the first key months of your process. Therefore you will not enjoy status as a recognized non-profit until you meet the SCA's criteria for incipient status. This makes it difficult to convince Student Organization officials that you are not out of your mind.
3) Schools tend to have very stringent rules covering student organizations. They are different for each school. At UT I was not able to find a legal pathway by which a student organization might become part of an international non-profit. This might have been surmountable, we never got far enough to find out. I think you will want to get a good understanding of your campus' rules before deciding whether you want to be affiliated with the school or not.
4) Weapons rules may be particularly hard to get around, if you want to have fighting. At UT, anything that might be construed as a weapon had to be cleared by the campus police, carried by a specific individual, have a detailed form filed for exactly what was going to be done with it, where, when and by whom, for every instance that the weapon appeared on campus. I was never able to talk to anyone in a position to get special dispensation on this issue, thus effectively shutting down any hope for fighter practice, or even fighting demos.
5) You will need a core group of people who are strongly motivated to make this happen. If you are a non-traditional student (especially one over about 30) you will face social barriers to recruiting. Presumably you will be in school, and therefore your first priority will be schoolwork. If you are also working or have family obligations, it will be difficult to make the time to do recruiting, cheerleading, organizing, etc. for your group.
6) The story of most colleges has been, "we got it going, then the officers graduated and it fell apart". The first two priorities of a college group are going to have to be recruiting and leader development if it is going to keep going.
Please don't view this as a laundry list of reasons not to try to start a group. Instead, please do look at it as a set of concerns that you will want to address, or at least consider. I still think a group could be successfully started at UT, and I regret that I was not able to put all the pieces together to do it. I think that a smaller school farther from another group will have some advantages and some drawbacks in the same process. I encourage you to learn both the school's rules for student groups and the kingdom's rules for new group formation. If there is anything I can do to assist, please do not hesitate to ask me. I would be happy to share the things that I have learned, and I wish you success in spreading our dream.
Ld Fatthiopap Laszlo
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:11:36 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Here we go again- that old rotten meat myth
<<< In my experience University based groups often have fluctuating
membership as it logically will ebb and flow as new students come and go.
As a result they are often part of a bigger group but you rarely find
members attending the college in once place for 10-20 years as they will
often graduate or move on to the next level of their academic career
elsewhere. That's not to say the it in anyway means that the group is set
upon be meanie heads bent upon historical food poisoning, it's just the
nature of that type of group.
Raffaella >>>
I've seen two models that provide continuity for university groups. The
first is affiliation with a permanent group in the broader community. The
second is a permanent core group consisting of university staff and
instructors, who have a far lower turn-over rate than students and can act a
sponsors.
Bear
<the end>