USA Swimming To Increase Club Dues For First Time Since Mid ’80s

USA Swimming is proposing to increase the dues paid to the national governing body by member clubs, an increase USA Swimming says would be the first since the mid-1980s.

The dues increases appear in the latest USA Swimming Board of Directors meeting minutes from the April 26 meeting of the Board. The Board of Directors approved the proposed increases, and the House of Delegates will officially vote on the move at the United States Aquatic Sports Convention in September. The proposed increases would go into effect during the 2021 membership year.

The increases are pretty dramatic, with most clubs seeing dues triple and first-year clubs seeing their dues increase to more than seven times the current amount.

Category Current Dues Proposed Dues
Club Dues Per Year $70 $250
First-year clubs $70 $500
Seasonal clubs $40 $70

On the other hand, USA Swimming says that the services it provides to clubs have also increased dramatically since the 1980s. USA Swimming Chief Operating Officer Mike Unger passed along this list of new or improved services to member clubs:

  • Club visits/consultant services
  • Improved insurance
  • Safe Sport
  • SWIMS database – times tracking
  • Video review to athletes
  • Deck Pass
  • More competitions
  • Athlete Leadership workshops
  • Club Excellence and related funding
  • Club Recognition
  • Swimposiums
  • Club Portals
  • Swim Biz
  • Club Presidents’ Workshops

Unger said that while club dues have remained the same for more than 30 years, athlete dues have increased several times since then (in 2003 and 2014, for example), and that athlete dues were starting to approach the same levels entire clubs were paying. (Athlete dues actually increase every year, but in 2014, the rate at which they increase went from $1/year to $2/year).

Based on 2018 statistics which show USA Swimming with 3,034 year-round clubs (four of them new clubs) and 118 seasonal clubs, the new dues would constitute an increase of more than $500,000 in revenue for USA Swimming. Under the current structure, USA Swimming would have brought in $217,380 in dues from member clubs; with the proposed increases, USA Swimming would collect $767,760 in dues from the same number of clubs

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Marco Gomez
5 years ago

This might doom our club! We are a small rural club that has to pay big bucks monthly just to use a pool. We live month to month on dues and the coaches and the board pay out of pocket just to keep the club afloat. Swimming will die in this town if this happens

jojonv
5 years ago

Our LSC is going to pay out a substantial amount of dollars to assist with travel expenses to Olympic Trials and other National Meets as athletes attempt to get to OTs next year. Rumor has it that we will go onto the red next year… Which probably means they will significantly decrease reimbursable expenses.

justanopinion
5 years ago

The hidden gem in this is the fact that a lot of the LSC’s are already tacking on additional Surcharges to their Club registrations. In our LSC to register a Club, it’s already over $100. And I’m sure there will be no freeze on raising that up proportionally to double gouge the teams even with this significant hike from National office.
If we had some clear definitions of where exactly this money will go, both Nationally and at the LSC level, people might feel OK about it.
At the LSC level it seems it’s just an arms race to see which one can put the biggest number in the bank. I would like to hear about an LSC… Read more »

Admin
Reply to  justanopinion
5 years ago

For what it’s worth – and this is just context, not justifying the increase – but USA Swimming did cut “salaries and wages” by more than half-a-million dollars from 2017 to 2018. So, there does seem to be some concerted effort to reduce the spending on home office staff.

DaCoach
5 years ago

So no clubs have ever increased their fees since the mid-80’s? If clubs want USA Swimming to pro-rate the club fees based on the membership size of the club, then clubs should pro-rate their membership fees based on the size of a family’s bank account.

Coach
5 years ago

Sad part of all of this is that it doesn’t matter what we write here. In the end, USA Swimming is slowly ruining the sport that used to be accessible to families of all walks of life. They are making it an elite sport with ridiculous rules and regulations, driven by, yep, insurance companies. Sadly, people tend to blindly follow like a herd of sheep or are just discouraged by speaking up because it makes no difference if you express your disagreement. They will keep stealing your $ as long as they can.

swimcoach
5 years ago

when is enough, enough? how about, instead of taking more money, do a better job of budgeting. the website is still awful. OME is the worst thing ever. the list goes on and on….

Coach
Reply to  swimcoach
5 years ago

USA Swimming is such a joke. Thieves in disguise. They only have to say, contact your LSC. Slowly ruining the sport, becoming an elite sport, run by incompetent management. (I get FOUR rules book for many years now, 1 per member, but sharing the same house, my kids…they can’t figure out ONE per household will suffice?)

College swimmer
5 years ago

This is an increase of $120 per year for a whole club team. It doesn’t seem like that much in the scale of a club team budget.

Admin
Reply to  College swimmer
5 years ago

Not sure that I follow your math?

BGNole97
Reply to  College swimmer
5 years ago

Whatever the increase, the point is that it has a disproportionate impact on smaller teams, and there’s a question regarding what exactly the team itself is getting back from USA Swimming. The increase in funding seems to just be used to create a larger USAS organization (with nice offices!), which then needs to justify it’s existence via increased regulations and oversight. No bureaucracy will ever legislate itself out of existence, or vote to reduce their funding. Ever.

College swimmer
Reply to  College swimmer
5 years ago

Oops I made a typo I meant $180 and the $250 is a per year dues right

BGNole97
5 years ago

Oh man. First the MAAPP debacle and now this??? According to MAAPP, 18 year old swimmers on the same club team can’t even text the kid they carpool with to practice if they’re still only 17. Assistant coaches who are still training and thus still USA swimmers themselves can’t even meet alone with the head coach to discuss practice planning.

“USA Swimming is committed to safeguarding the well-being of all of it’s members, with the welfare of its athlete members as the top priority.”

Uhmmm…USA swimming is committed to covering it’s own arse and lining its coffers.

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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