To not pay subs?

[PunkApple]

Less of a AIBU and more of a WIBU..
My daughter attends a local club, volunteers run the sessions but we pay termly to cover costs (hall hire, craft materials etc). She's been attending since September last year and really enjoys it.
Now since Easter the people running the club have been very inconsistent, cancelling due to their holidays (2 weeks before Easter hols, and another 2 weeks of holiday last month) there's also been one week (last week) cancelled due to illness and another week previously cancelled due to 'appointments'. To put it bluntly this term she's missed 3 sessions and the term before 4 sessions. Next week will also be the last session as the end of term party which was planned has mysteriously disappeared from the planning too. To total it, thats 8 weeks in two terms that haven't gone ahead. Which is effectively a whole term's worth of cancelled sessions!
A message in the groupchat appeared this morning asking those parents who haven't paid subs to pay them this week, I asked wether it will be a discounted rate due to the amount of missed sessions lately but was told no as its the same cost every term and averaged accross the whole year. This covers materials, rent etc which I do understand to an extent.
AIBU to be a bit annoyed? WIBU to make more of a point about it? Or shall I just pay and shut up as my daughter enjoys the club and the volunteers are giving up their time..?

There were always more than enough volunteers to cover illness etc and the troop was run incredibly well

And there's the point. Generally, sections that have plenty of volunteers will be able to cover holidays/illness/last minute emergencies etc. But if there are not enough leaders to cover, then the section will have to cancel a meeting when leaders are not available. No-ones fault, it's just the way it is.

And honestly, getting enough leaders can be like pulling teeth. It's a big commitment, and very few people want to take it on. It's not just rocking up to each meeting, but a huge amount of planning and admin goes into running a group. I'm a cub leader, and one of my biggest bugbears is having to chase parents for payments. It just adds to our already huge workload. My mum died last year, two of my leaders were away on holiday, and my young leader was taking exams. I had to cancel the meeting. A parent questioned whether they would get a refund for that session. It took every ounce of patience I have to not give them both barrels. I still don't really know how I held it together, but it really pissed me off.

OP, the volunteers have lives outside of the club - likely they have jobs, perhaps kids, perhaps elderly parents, they get sick like everyone else, they have family emergencies like everyone else, they take holidays if they are lucky.

If you don't like it, step up to help (actually offer to do the leader training) or vote with your feet. Don't question the already extremely cheap subs.

Why don’t you volunteer to help?

if they are having to cancel due to holidays and appointments then they clearly are short of help

filling in a form years ago isn’t putting up your hand.

and you are grudging a few quid a week

give your head a wobble.

Thanks for being willing to help, definitely worth repeating your offer, as some parents will say on the form they can help occasionally, but won't actually offer when 'we need some parent help on these three dates' is sent out.

In some cases being willing to help won't make a different unfortunately - in Guiding there needs to be someone with a level 3 safeguarding training, a leadership qualification and a first aid qualification at every meeting, so if there's only one leader with those, if she's off the meeting has to be cancelled. I'm sure it's similar in scouting too.
Please do bare in mind that leaders in both organisations aren't paid at all, and often give up annual leave to do things like take other people's children away, do the first aid training needed to run meetings, and they're fully within their rights to take their annual leave and holidays whenever suits them, even if it does mean there's no clubs for a fortnight whilst they're away, and that the community generally aren't entitled to these volunteers time, or to dictate what they do with it.

Guide and Scout units also don't have to run every week, or in accordance with schools - I know one of the first things which one of our commissioners suggested to a leader who was getting overwhelmed was to take some more weeks off - So their unit had two extra weeks off per half term compared to our unit for a while - this allowed the leader to actually run the unit those weeks, and the other alternative would have been that it closed for a while (and likely didn't re-open), and there were no meetings whatsoever. If parents had started complaining, or refusing to pay full subs (I realised you're not refusing, but I'm just explaining here), the unit would have simply closed, because she didn't have the mental space to deal with it, but the hall rent still needed payed, the girls still earned badges, and annual census is still a huge amount (compared to what parents pay to units.)

Just so you understand a bit more
Our annual subs breaks down as;
PAID 3 x £35 per term = £105 per year per child
COSTS
Census was £53 per head, which means girls paid about £66 each (as in Girlguiding, leaders have to be paid for by units too)
That leaves £39 per year for everything else.
Roughly £10 per girl goes on hall rent (exceedingly cheap compared to us hiring a hall on a commercial agreement)
so we've got £29 for activities, badges, leader trainings, ingredients, craft supplies, and everything else we do across the entire year (approx 37 meetings).
We don't charge a set fee per meeting - we work to a cost across the year, which is why we don't give discounts; there's nothing to discount if we miss a few meetings.

Yep, absolutely. When I joined Rainbows as a leader (mainly to get my oldest in as wait list was 2-3 years, but loved it and stayed) my oldest was 5 and my youngest was 2. My husband knew that at 5pm on Thursdays he had to have finished work to look after our youngest and he adapted his work around this.

And from 3 my youngest used to come along and join in.
When we ask for volunteers to help, we always get same excuses 'I work' or 'I have younger children'. I have to stop myself from replying 'yes I work and have younger children too, and i have a disability'. As someone said upthread, the people volunteering to run groups, PTA etc almost always are already very busy, but they are generally motivated people so juggle it all.

OP it's basically free. £25 a term is insanely cheap. Stop being so tight; it's run by volunteers!

But also your job and your husbands job did actually allow for you to do it, not everyone’s does. Having jobs that don’t allow for volunteering on a set night doesn’t mean you don’t care, it’s not always an excuse, some people just have different circumstances to you.

Yes, but it's made clear when signing up that parents will be expected to help at least once per term each. People can plan childcare for 1 time per term - this area is very affluent with lots of mums who don't work or work flexibly from home. Some sessions we say can bring siblings, especially if older.

And I had to cut my hours to keep doing the group, with a loss of pay, and husband had to adjust his working schedule, it wasn't easy.

They probably have a term that guarantees a minimum of x sessions a year, with the cist averaged out over the year across y payments

But also your job and your husbands job did actually allow for you to do it, not everyone’s does. Having jobs that don’t allow for volunteering on a set night doesn’t mean you don’t care, it’s not always an excuse, some people just have different circumstances to you

I appreciate that it may not be possible for everyone to volunteer every week - that's a big commitment that not everyone is able to/ wants to make. But most should be able to attend perhaps once a term. surely? Even if it means that they have to get a sitter for the evening, or bring their younger children with them. It's strange how they can do it if they want an evening out, but can't to attend cubs/brownies/rainbows etc.

At cubs, we don't currently run a compulsory rota, but we do ask for a couple of parents each week. It's quite noticeable that it's always the same few parents who step up.

For £25 a term, it’s not arguing over. Many sports clubs pay that a month, and then you have to buy kit etc on top that.

If it's girlguiding they need to complete a certain numbers of hours per term to get their badges, that works out at about 8 hours in Rainbows. We do about 10-12, and have a few things which are there just for fun, and not directly related to girlguiding programm.

In my experience, most groups would not guarantee a minimum number of sessions - they will provide them as often as they possibly can, but sometimes life just gets in the way. I would imagine that if it was happening too often, then their district might get involved to help get cover, but it's often not possible due to lack of leaders

We had this when DS joined beavers. I agreed to help but they wanted me to pay for a dbs check and fill in all these bloody forms as well as lose a days pay to do so. His dad dropped him off en route to work and I collected him on my way home ( this was done for DS. His dad could've kept him with him while he set up the gig and I collect from there so wasn't for childcare)

I also offered to sort out their Web page and any admin stuff also but the leaders were like awkward teachers who don't seem to realise that people have other work. His elder sister also offered to help out during sessions but they insisted had to be a parent .

I pulled him out at first half term due to this.

That's why I suggested upthread offering to volunteer from home/daytimes (doing admin, creating and collecting in forms for camps etc., doing the shopping, prepping crafts) and weekends (organising and taking girls on outings).

Volunteer DBS is free.
You need one for the admin side as well.

You should never have to pay for a DBS check and the online stuff can be done at the start of a meeting. I wonder if you have misunderstood?

Term started in April though, surely? So regardless of missed sessions, not having paid by July is late by anyone's standards.

It sounds like a unit that is struggling, for sure, and YWNBU to either offer to join the leadership team yourself, or have a word with the local commissioner in case they're not aware of the problems. Withholding payments is not going to help anyone.

I’m guessing it’s Brownies or similar.
the coat of the venue will be the same for the term, and the sessions are dirt cheap anyway so you should pay up.

They shouldn't have asked you to pay for a dbs. We only dbs our regular volunteers, not our occasional ones, and we pay for it. Why would you need to lose a day's pay? DBS check are now done online/video call. Our parent volunteers are for ratio purposes more than anything else, we have to have 1 adult to 5 children if we leave the hut, and with 2 leaders and 24 girls we just can't do it without them. They do have to be over 18 though, was his sister over 18?

We do ask parents for help with the banking/finances (have to submit accounts for audit each year, which is madness), admin bits etc, but no help is forthcoming. We also sometimes do things on weekends, which would think would be much easier for most to help, but nope.

Not everyone pays for a sitter to have nights out either, surely you can’t think that? Why would your job magically allow it once a month? What if you also help care of a friends kids or an older relative? Weird to assume everyone that can’t volunteer is just unreasonable.

I can see both sides. I volunteer at a children's sports club and I'd say that majority, of parents unless they have volunteering experience themselves have little understanding of quite how much time and effort volunteers put into running these things. But thankfully there's only a small minority who have totally unreasonable expectations about what their £3 a week entitles them to.
In my experience most voluntary groups are running on the lowest fees they can manage. But baseline costs have to be paid come what may and unless you're lucky enough to have a sponsor or some other kind of external funding that money has to come from members/parents either directly or via fundraising. It's not reasonable to expect volunteers to cover any losses - it costs many, probably most of us money to volunteer as it is.
There are different ways to do it of course. Our activity is weather dependent and we have to pay the facility hire whether we go ahead or not, so we have to find that money somewhere. We choose not to charge for cancelled sessions but the weekly rate is slightly higher as a result. We know roughly how many weeks get cancelled each year and factor it in. Charging a lower weekly rate but not refunding cancelled sessions would also work but is more likely to annoy parents. The bottom line is that if parents want their children to be able to participate in clubs they do need to cover the costs. If you want refunds for cancelled sessions you'll end up paying in a different way.
However, there are some people who seem to see "But I'm a volunteer" as some kind of get out of jail free card. Being volunteers doesn't absolve you from the responsibility to run your organisation properly and whilst it's completely unreasonable to expect 100% attendance from any volunteer, we do expect ours to be fairly committed and we have asked unreliable people to leave before now, even if that has meant reducing the number of members. I think members should be able to expect that most of the sessions they have signed up for will run barring unforeseen circumstances and I'd say that any group that is having to cancel regularly due to lack of personnel needs to look at whether that group is in fact viable in it's current form.
In the OP's circumstances I'd pay but I would be a bit irked and I'd probably be talking to the organisers about ways to increase the volunteer pool.

Not everyone pays for a sitter to have nights out either, surely you can’t think that? Why would your job magically allow it once a month? What if you also help care of a friends kids or an older relative? Weird to assume everyone that can’t volunteer is just unreasonable

Of course there will always be exceptions, I accept that, but I don't believe for a moment that out of 32 cubs families that only about 6 of them can manage to find the time to help out for one session per year! It doesn't have to be a parent that attends - it can be a grandparent, aunt, friend, older sibling (over 18). Very strange how they don't want to help when it's an evening of litter picking, but are available when we go to the dry ski slope. They are way too busy at a weekend to help with a fund-raising tombola because it's family time, but have no such problems when it's help needed on a weekend trip to an airshow.

Believe me, the vast majority (not all) could rearrange their schedule when it suits them, they just don't want to.

In theory, the group could pay for the babysitter for a parent to volunteer but I bet the other parents wouldn't want the fees to increase to cover that - even if it meant fewer cancelled sessions.

Just for perspective:
Our unit broke up "early" but we have a trip coming up this weekend which we decided was better for them to have the meeting off beforehand

Getting ready for this trip I have:
Emailed parents to invite them
Booked and paid
Read a pack of information to make sure I have all the details
Creates forms
Sent another email to parents with the forms
Completed a risk assessment
Booked travel after enquiring at a few places for quotes
Sent information to every other leader going
Answered questions off parents which have already been included such as when it is and where it is
Created a home contact list
Brought food and snacks for myself

All before you then consider the day I will give up for said event

And the fact that I work

They might have "missed" 2 sessions but I haven't been slacking off

Why would you need one to do admin. Nowhere near the kids.