[MR] Advice on organizing and forming guilds

[Signora Sveva Lucciola]

Well, I have looked through my old emails and I think the advice given
to me by others has been deleted.  But here is the jist of it...

First of all, as Master Andras pointed out, you don't really need to
form one in order to actively encourage your activity/art form. Not
only can you as an idividual demonstrate your thing, sponsor
competitions, and teach classes, you also can organize entire tracks at
Universities. (I have done this for both glass working and games).
However, some of these things are easier to organize on a larger scale
and help develop more of a Kingdom visibility if you have a guild.

The first thing you should do is figure out what exactly your purpose
is. (I'm going to use games and gaming here as that is whay our current
conversation is about, but those interested in forming other special
interests guilds can easily substitute their thing.)

Most commmonly goals are:
1) to further our knowledge and understanding of games and other like
pastimes in period.
2) to promote gaming knowlege and activities in Atlantia.
3) provide a source for research and education into period games and
both medieval and modern techniques and materials for creating them.

Then if you can, you take those nice lovely ambiguous goals and come up
with a few concrete action items, like organizing gaming tracks at
Universities, sponsoring competitions at Kingdom & local events,
maintainging a list of good resources...etc.

The next thing is to figure out your structure, if any.
Do you want a hierarchy or progression? Apprentice/Journeyman?
How will your Guild Mistress/Master be selected or passed on?
Will you have need to handle any money?

The guilds I have been involved with have been VERY low structure. We
don't really have any hierarchy system, as "titles" aren't why we are
in it, and merit should be being recognized through Kingdom and
Baronial awards anyway. So we just all are guild members on pretty much
equal footing, with a guild master/mistress to kind of act as an
information hub.

We've pretty much handled the Master/Mistress issue as the person
organizing it was the first, and then she choose the next person she
felt was active and would do a good job of organizing things. Some
times this works well, some times it doesn't. But, guilds don't really
follow the officer guidelines and there isn't really a warrenting
system. Of course if people don't like how things are being run, they
just take their dice and go home. (Reality). And, I assume the Royalty
(or Baronage on a baronial level) could suspend a guild if they were
displeased with how things were being handled.

Now we come to the biggy...Money! (Real money that is, you coin minters
are not what I'm talking about!)As always in our society, this is
really where you run into the sticky wicket! If you are going to handle
SCA money then it has to run through and be tracked through one of the
group's bank accounts. This is really the only place your are going to
run into SCA red tape. And as we are talking about games, often of
chance, you will put the fear of legal charges of gambling in your
exchequer and seneschal's hearts. My advice is not to have your guild
handle money. And I really don't see any real need for the GUILD to do
so. You can still organize group purchases through your individuals.
And host fund raisers for groups (then it gets tracked through their
books).

Well, that is either what I remember, or what I have learned. It
pertains to pretty much all types of guilds. Not really much red tape
once you get the ball rolling, and it can be helpful to have the
visible information/contact out there listed on the Guilds page and in
the back of the Acorn.

Signora Sveva Lucciola




=====
"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.
If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.
But I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world,
and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day."
---e.b. white

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