FRA Members ratio in races

[ba-ba]

WP - Here's a few relevant paragraphs from the summary of the recent RO meetings. I hope the entire summary will be made available on the FRA website at some point (though as it's not a GM/committee meeting I assume it doesn't have to be)

Introduction
FRA membership stands at around 7,600. There are many people who compete in fell races regularly (and have done for many years) without ever contributing directly to the FRA. Additionally, the FRA has no means to communicate with those people, which is a concern given that anecdotal evidence suggests strongly that non-members are more likely to fail to obey the FRA’s key rules for fair competition and safety.
Aspiration
The FRA would like to increase the percentage of people competing in fell races who are members of the FRA. It is important to stress that we do not wish to increase the number of fell race participants; the sport is healthy and the fells are already creaking under weight of numbers (e.g. the access problems discussed above).
Path into fell running
Historically, most people came into fell running through friends or clubs. Now there is a significant proportion of fell racers who come to the sport through social media. This brings a number of risks, since many people just search for the “longest” or “hardest” fell race when they have no suitable experience, or look at the distance/climb statistics with no understanding of factors such as terrain, navigation or self-reliance. For example, last year two people turned up to run Langdale Horseshoe as their first fell race (in road trainers!).

As explained above, the FRA is almost entirely funded by the subscriptions of its 7,600 members. Non-members gain all the benefits of fell races without contributing directly to the FRA. It is important that the FRA provides appropriate benefits to people who choose to join the FRA and support the sport.
Incentives to join the FRA
In years gone by, the FRA Handbook was a major “member benefit” of the FRA: it was the one and only place to find a list of all fell races with full race details. Now this information is available on the FRA website (and elsewhere), so runners are no longer as motivated to join the FRA for this reason. Of course we would like to imagine that everyone participating in FRA races would join the FRA to support the sport and its governance, but the reality is that many people need to see a personal benefit before they will join.

Discrimination against England Athletics members
Some ROs asked why people who are members of England Athletics (EA) but not the FRA should pay the same higher entry fee for a fell race as a completely unaffiliated and unattached athlete. They pointed out that because insurance is provided through UK Athletics (UKA), such people are already contributing to the FRA’s race insurance via their club subscription. In fact, FRA members contribute to the UKA insurance via both their UKA-affiliated club subscription and their FRA membership, since the FRA itself affiliates to UKA. The EA “registration” fee enables them to run road, cross-country and track & field disciplines within the sport, while FRA membership enables us to support fell running.
A similar query was raised by a club member of a multi-discipline club whose club championship includes three FRA races organised by the club. He queried why his club members should have to pay more than other club members to enter those races. We feel that this epitomises a problem discussed elsewhere in these notes, which is that many runners do not understand the special nature of fell running and that fell running is distinct from cross-country or trail running. Fell running is administrated entirely separately from other disciplines and we feel it is reasonable for such runners who are not FRA members to contribute directly to fell running. Equivalently, an unattached FRA member entering the same races (and therefore independently rather than for the club championship) would have to pay more (as a levy to England Athletics) to enter the non-FRA races.

We found that race organisers at the recent meetings were almost entirely supportive, often strongly, of the principle of differential entry fees. There remain some open questions such as whether differential fees are compulsory or optional and whether the extra cost to a non-member should be a flat fee, dependent on race type or variable at the ROs’ discretion. The FRA will continue to liaise with ROs on this matter throughout 2020 but at present the consensus is clearly in favour of introducing at least the option of differing member/non-member prices for 2021.

Personally I would prefer them introducing the option of a levy as opposed to blanket use.
I find some of the EA section needs a bit of work, but in summary the FRA does have costs that EA membership only does not cover

sorry for the tl:dr!