response mostly to coupe (post #269):
I'll try to unconfuse you. Perhaps I haven't been clear enough, or blunt enough, about EDGE and educational initiative. I'll make two key points, and then probably move on to other things.
1) I can't imagine that I could ever vote for the PDGA to fund an educational initiative unless its participants were free to buy their equipment from any manufacturer.
Participants in EDGE absolutely are free to buy their equipment from any manufacturer or vendor the choose. I'm currently working with a private school that has done just that. By choosing to buy equipment from a different vendor rather than through EDGE, they voluntarily forfeited the not insubstantial equipment discount that EDGE is able to provide.
2) The PDGA is absolutely capable of staffing and funding a fabulous educational program. We are spending over $300,000 on a few top-end events, and we have a small army of staff people spending man-months of time running around helping to run them.
My argument here, as it often is, is that our priorities are very badly out of whack. We need to reallocate.
Not without:
A) gutting the support, both financial and administrative, for the current competition model;
B) either hiring additional staff or radically rewriting the job descriptions for current staff to run the program; and
C) dramatically increasing the dollars allocated to (wasted on) administrative overhead.
By continuing to vote in a majority of the Board who support the current model, the membership has expressed, repeatedly and overwhelmingly, that they do not think the priorities are badly out of whack, and that they do not think reallocation of resources is needed.