Sun 25 Oct 2015 In: Our Communities View at Wayback View at NDHA
You can read yesterday's precursor to this feature, Inside the Ak Outgames fiasco, here. Let's recap a little... A month after it resigned en masse, and two weeks after that news became public, the Auckland Outgames 2016 Inc. board issued a statement saying it was requiring the organisation be formally wound up, saying they had come to believe in early July that it would be "extremely difficult to deliver a quality event in February 2016 and that more time was needed for the Executive team to obtain sponsorship." The board members said holding the Outgames concurrently with the Auckland Pride Festival was not going to be the advantage it was initially expected to be. They say they had told GLISA AP that the initial optimism regarding holding the Games and Pride at the same time "had not been supported by a number of potential sponsors who had been approached". They said GLISA AP would not accept their advice to delay the games until better funding could be secured. "Unfortunately, GLISA AP refused the board's request to change the date from February 2016 to a new date later in 2016. It was that decision by GLISA AP and the former board's assessment that the Outgames could not be successfully delivered within the original timeframe stipulated by GLISA AP that resulted in the resignations of all former board members." GLISA later advised that delaying the Auckland Outgames until November next year as had been suggested was not possible due to the timing of other international Outgames events Damien Strogen Damien Strogen, the man who fronted the original bid for the Auckland Outgames and was deeply involved in planning as a member of the executive committee, says three of the board members threatened to resign if the deferral wasn't granted. Within a week of the GLISA decision not to defer the entire board resigned. That was in July this year. Strogen says the decision to resign en masse was done by the board behind closed doors, without discussion with the executive team. "I knew nothing about this until I was called into a meeting with board members Phylesha [Brown-Acton] and Martin [King] one Saturday morning. Which sort of shook me to be honest," he says. “Why they did what they did I don't know. It could have perhaps been a conflict of interest or perhaps involvement with other organisations took precedence." Strogen now questions the board members' level of commitment to mounting the Outgames. “I don't think the buy-in was there all the way through, I don't think they were fully behind [it]. But going from month to month, having meetings and recording minuting actions from meetings it all seemed to be going very collaboratively. It was only at the very end, something happened, I don't know what it was or who instigated it, not sure what was behind it but something suddenly happened around May/June time. “Let's be kind here, the board members combined [did] no more than about a hundred hours of work over the eight or nine months, yet the executive put in thousands of hours over the same period... No one on the board actually 'invested' in the Outgames." Some on the executive committee had underscored their belief in the project by putting some of their own money in, according to Strogen. “Some are still owed money from it but I guess that's now a community donation." Does Strogen think the board members were given enough information at the start about what they as a board and the executive needed to do? That they went in with their eyes open? “Absolutely. They were talked through it. We went through with them our intentions for the games, and if they didn't agree with things why didn't they raise it back in December or January, February, March. Why leave it until June or July? “The whole point of having a board at that level is that they should be experienced in running community organisations, in running funding and that sort of thing. None of us on the executive were green, we've all been around the block a number of times, commercially and in the community." From the outside it's hard to escape the conclusion that the whole project may have been poorly managed from top to bottom. “From the top certainly,” says Strogen. “From the bottom up there was a hell of a lot of ground work being done, most of which will help deliver the replacement Auckland sports event. There was an incredible amount of work done from the bottom up." By 'the bottom' does he mean the executive committee? “Yes. But the board treated us like pond life really. I think they always looked down on us.” Why would that be? “Well, they were the board, the high-flyers in the community maybe, they were more experienced than us or considered themselves to be.” But surely someone on the executive committee should have been saying to the board that they needed to be engaging more? “We were so busy running things, and we were running the event fairly well. The funding hadn't come through but the applications were all in. But we did engage with the board... there were telephone calls, we thought we had done all the sorts of communication required but apparently we didn't so it came as a massive shock to all of us that the board wanted to defer then their resignation." It's now that the elephant in the room becomes apparent. “Maybe they were scared of liability,” speculates Strogen. “It's been raised with me that they were afraid of liability for costs incurred by the Outgames Inc. That could have been the driver.” It's time to bring GLISA, the international body which licenses organisations to run the various Outgames, into this narrative. GLISA-Asia/Pacific has confirmed to GayNZ.com that it extended a $20,000 seeding fund to the Auckland Outgames organisation. “There is a license agreement which details the arrangement and intent of the seeding fund,” a GLISA spokesperson has told us. “It is a fund to get the group going before sponsorship deals and registration fees start coming in.” GLISA-AP understands that the money was spent “on a range of preparatory work for an Auckland Outgames up until the middle of this year.” It says the license agreement requires the fund gets paid back following the event “and that budgets for the event should make allowance for this.” GLISA has not received that money back from Auckland Outgames 2016 Inc., “as it was not expected to be repaid until after the event.” GLISA says it has not yet fully considered options to recoup the money “alongside what is in the best interests of GLISA-AP member organisations and of the Auckland and/or Asia- Pacific LGBTI communities." If the Auckland Outgames 2016 Inc. board had not resigned would they, as a group or individually, have been liable to any extent for the repayment of that money? “GLISA-AP has not formally sought advice as yet with regard to liability related to the articles of incorporation of Auckland Outgames Inc. We understand that members of the board of Auckland Outgames Inc. sought advice about the implications of resigning and of winding up the organisation but we are not aware of the content of that advice. GLISA-AP will factor this in to our discussions with GLISA-AP member organisations in coming months.” If the money is essentially now gone, where does that leave GLISA and the next Outgames Asia Pacific host organisation? “That money was a legacy from the previous three Outgames. Each Outgames to date has made a profit which then pays back its seed fund and contributes a per/participant amount back to GLISA-AP which furthers builds the fund to support the future Outgames. Unfortunately the legacy for Auckland was that it was not able to do this. We will regroup and consult with GLISA-AP member organisation to set out our strategy going forward. There are a number of activities apart from Asia Pacific Outgames which GLISA-AP plans to work on such as addressing homophobia in sport across the region and supporting the move to one world event in 2022." Following the resignation of the Auckland Outgames board several people associated with the project attempted to pick up the pieces and see if it could be salvaged. They engaged in several weeks of discussions, ultimately fruitless, with GLISA. Was repayment of the seed money a condition, or expressed preference, that the rescue team would have had to undertake if they had been successful in re-mounting an Auckland Outgames? “Discussions with the 'rescue team' did not progress to a stage where the conditions of a new license agreement were negotiated,” GLISA says. And there the matter rests, for now. No Auckland Outgames, no $20,000 returned to GLISA to help the organisers of the next Asia-Pacific region Outgames and no public engagement with the glbti communities from the ex-board. We continue to invite anyone from the resigned Outgames board to engage with us and to help us create a clearer picture of what transpired for the glbti communities. Jay Bennie - 25th October 2015