What is BCORMA and what do you really do with the trail pass money?

Questions from a fellow rider and BCORMA Trail Pass holder via email:

Q> What does BCORMA actually do?.  Are you non-profit?  How much of membership money goes to trail development/maintenance/signage and how much to administrative costs? Who does the actual work?  How are the funds dispersed and monitored?

A> All good questions.  I thought we have covered those off on the site, but obviously not directly enough.

1) As an organization, our primary focus is on making sure we have trails for dirt bikers to ride in BC.  Without quality trails to ride, there would be no dirt biking in BC.  See our mission statement on the front page.

2) We are a non-profit registered with the BC Government under the Society Act.  As the Provincial Federation representing dirt biker's interests, our basic core funding comes from the OHV manufacturers association COHV.  That core funding supports an Executive Director and most of the office expenses.

3) Please go to the BCORMA Trail Pass Q&A page: http://bcorma.geovisionenvironmental.com/node/47 for answers of how the money is spent.  The short answer is 100% of the funds stay in the dirt bike community, 66% goes directly towards on-the-ground trail stewardship, and 33% goes to BCORMA to support our work advocating to make sure we have plenty of places to spend the other 66% on trail stewardship.  As to administration overhead, the only administration overhead we have is a book-keeper who is paid a small nominal amount every month.  With vey big projects as we had last year, the Executive Director does spend some time in administrative duties, but it is a very low percentage of the project costs.

4) Depending on the funding situation for each riding area, work is performed by a combination of contractors and local volunteers.  The trail pass funds are used to support this work with mostly tools and supplies like signage, plus installing rider information kiosks, rebuilding access roads, fixing staging areas, producing maps from trail survey data.  Professional trail stewardship crews are funded from Government grants and contracts when they are available.

5) Managing field work is done by myself as Executive Director and contracted Provincial Trail Stewardship Coordinator(s) to make sure all trail stewardship is done to best practices and on budget.  Depending on the project size and funding, funds are either dispersed to the local trail stewards, or with larger projects as we had last year, we manage the crews and projects directly.

The aim of the BCORMA seems great but if the event I'm participating didn't require this pass I wouldn't have otherwise purchased it.

Thought it was worth mentioning.

Thanks for taking the time to mention it.  Often we are working so hard at things and are so familiar with the issues we forgot what it looks like from someone new to BCORMA.  All very good points, and hopefully I have answered you sufficiently.  If not, please feel free to call and discuss any of these points with me in more detail.  We are here for the dirt bikers of the Province.

Peter Sprague, MSc.
Executive Director