Could someone give me a brief explanation of how Chess Trust free youth memberships work with online submissions? If I understand correctly, the players will bring a membership voucher to the tournament, which the TD is supposed to send to USCF. This is my best guess at how this works - please correct me.
I enter all the Chess Trust players in one membership batch and select age-appropriate membership types (regular? premium? unleaded?). I select From TD as the payment type.
USCF will immediately email me ID’s which I can use in the rating report. These will be flagged as non-members until USCF has received the vouchers, at which time I can submit the tournament.
Is that close? Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere; I have been unable to find it.
We have a new voucher program, whereby the organization issuing the voucher (in this case the Chess Trust) can either redeem the voucher directly or give it to someone else to redeem it, most likely the parent, teacher or chess coach of the recipient.
That person could fill out the voucher and give it to the TD at the event.
More information on the voucher program, which is an expansion of the pilot group membership program Jerry Nash has been working on for the past two academic years, is also available there.
However, the Chess Trust has not yet started using this program.
Does that mean that the link you provided currently can’t be used for Chess Trust vouchers? If so, then I’m back to my original question. To rephrase it, is there a way I can process the vouchers without holding up the rating of the tournament?
The school coordinator for the players in question has contacted the Chess Trust to see if they can redeem the vouchers directly, so we’ll have to see where that leads.
I do not know exactly what the Chess Trust is handing out at this time, but I don’t believe they’ve agreed to use the new voucher system yet.
Historically it has been necessary for the USCF office to process those memberships, which slows down the rating of that event, so I assume that is still the case.
The new voucher program is designed to speed things up by making it possible for the person who has the voucher certificate to redeem it online. As I said before, this can be the issuing organization, the player (or his/her parent, teacher or coach) or the TD.
It should also be easier for the organization issuing the voucher, because all they have to do is tell us how many vouchers to issue and who to send them to, but the Trust may not see it that way. The vouchers are good for a specified period of time, when redeemed the recipient will have a one-year membership.
At least one member of the trustees is active in the Forums. Perhaps we can get an explanation from that person as to what the Chess Trust’s plans are.
In the past few years, the number of free USCF memberships issued through the Trust has declined, in the 2007-08 fiscal year it appears that we processed 91 of them.
Thanks, Mike, that’s a good idea. My guess is that they want to avoid buying memberships for kids who aren’t really serious about chess and never show up at a tournament. This way, they know the child has actually played. Seems like they could still use the new system, but require the TD to be the one that submits it. I’m guessing someone at USCF still has to review the online form once it’s submitted, but it’s still a lot better than snail mail.
This thread has a happy ending. The U.S. Chess Trust was kind enough to purchase the memberships for the players directly and forward the ID’s to us prior to the tournament. We sincerely appreciate their generosity and cooperation.