Not very many members if you look at the size of our country and the number of horse owners.
90% are adults but a huge chunk of the USDF budge goes to young riders (not they aren’t important but maybe not as important as the USDF makes them).
28% with income of $150,000 or more, means there are a lot of members that either don’t report their real income or a lot make do with less when it comes to dressage/horses, which makes me wonder how 50% own WB’s or 37% own 5+ acres or more. I’d like to know where the cheaper WB’s and land is for those making less than $150,000.
I remember seeing a number in years past that said USDF membership was ~37,000. This was probably in the late 1990’s, so about 20 years ago.
Do the math…7/30=23%…
So this represents about a 20% drop in membership in 20 years…That represents about a 1% per year membership loss…
The 1%/year doesn’t sound like a lot…but maybe in another 20 years and with another 20% drop, USDF will be 40% down from the numbers in 1990’s.
Unless this rule change just accelerates the trend.
Anyone have historic membership numbers???..
Might be interesting to see changes and trends over the years…especially thru the 1980’-90’s when WB’s started to become the “dressage horse du-jour” for competition.
This is the time when the original USDF founders that had focused on education (Vi Hopkins, Ivan Bezugloff…etc) moved on making way for the current leadership who seem to be taking the USDF all about competition.
Works full time in a cube farm in the corporate world…is extremely talented when it comes to time management. Fitting in as much horse time as is humanly possible in a week, all the while remaining happily married (so carrying your responsibilities at home fairly) and not getting fired at work.
Horses may or may not whinny in a European accent, but they damn well will be well cared for and loved.
Tack will be equally well cared for and cherished. Matchy matchy probably doesn’t happen for horse or rider or there won’t be a fresh colour for every day at least.
Riding clothes will not be the $450 pair of blingy breeches in funky colours - more likely to have one GOOD sensible pair of full seats for clinics that were a Xmas present and a bunch of pull on riding tights for every day. Jackets will not be equestrian custom from a tack store, but on sale from TSC or Mark’s Work Wearhouse and a bit baggy, ditto gloves and work boots from a farm store or WalMart.
Lessons could be weekly or monthly and notes will probably be taken afterwards so not a drop of knowledge is wasted. Clinics will generally be auditing only…with a special one or two from time to time.
Money is an issue. Things are saved for and not too many impulse purchases on anything.
Agree 100%! And would point out, Germany is a SMALL, homozygous population - you just can not compare the two. Heck my state alone has about half the population that Germany has, and MORE square miles. Two totally different countries that can not be compared.
In this country, AA means anyone who makes ANY money or anything of value from horse training/riding - so sponsorships, sales commissions, teaching up down lessons, all the way to full time trainer. You don’t have to make a living - it can simply be a bit of extra money. Getting paid to exercise a horse makes you an open rider!
Would also point out - we don’t have government sponsored riding schools, so people are totally on their own when learning to ride. And good instruction tends to be expensive. Which means that wealthy kids have the advantage from the beginning, and that advantage follows them all the way through life (in riding, and just about everything else). Yes, Manni is right about one thing - our system is about money. Of course, Germany is not innocent of the money factor either - Americans buy a LOT of horses from Germany…
BTW, I know plenty of riders who are up-down trainers - I include them in the grass roots definition - they are not AA, but they are grass roots members. Many don’t have access to good instruction themselves, don’t have the money for a trained horse, are struggling to get their bronze medal, and so on…
Totally agree that comparison between USA and Germany is not useful in this circumstance.
But dressage zygosity is an unusual metaphor!
If, as we know, low heterozygosity reflects low genetic variability in a population and high heterozygosity can be evidence of a recent admixture of genetically isolated populations, then this means that German dressage may be the result of some sort of equestrian culture bottleneck, while (presumably highly dressage-heterozygous) American dressage reflects recent admixture of European dressage with other, more 'Murcan disciplines? I could buy that…
I was thinking more in terms of the horse culture in Germany - everyone is brought up with horses, and access to horses. But I like dressage-zygosity - I think we should adopt that as a new term!
Let me know when you find the promised land where equestrian properties are accessible to more modest incomes! But I’m not holding my breath that it exists, given the likelihood of sampling biases and survey error in the reported data.
I don’t remember ever providing any demographic information to USDF aside from age and gender, and though horse registrations provide some evidence of ownership, they’re an imperfect way of capturing what’s presented in this data. So I’m guessing this comes from a voluntary survey (98% of respondents say they read USDF Connection every month, so perhaps this is essentially a survey of people with time to read that publication religiously, cover to cover?). I wouldn’t be surprised if the dressage rider who’s juggling work, family, and equestrian lives is underrepresented in this data, among other categories who might slip through the cracks. So self-selection bias may skew this in a number of ways.
And then there’s survey design error. There’s a whole body of scholarly literature on the errors and biases in sampling income levels, for example. There’s lots of evidence that high income folks tend to underreport income, and low income folks tend to overreport income. So we can expect some reversion to the mean on both ends of the spectrum. Hard to know exactly how this might impact the figures when they only report a single binary division (+/- $150k), but I’d think it’s safe to assume that the income info they report isn’t a terribly meaningful description of dressage rider personal economics and that, yes, many riders do make do with less than that.
It also looks like USDF is using this data to attract advertisers, which might give them incentive to ask questions or bin data in ways that target what advertisers are after (top of my list of suspicions: getting a sample that says all American dressage riders read USDF communications religiously might matter more to them than sampling the US dressage rider population accurately). Did you notice how insane it is that 37% of riders reportedly own land at this magical 5acre mark that’s meant to represent equestrian properties, but 23% of riders are planning to install footing next year – if you believe their numbers, then 62% of dressage riders with land are planning to install new footing in a single year. The data look to be tailored to the desiderata of marketers, not to the actual makeup of the dressage community.
Which brings me back to my only position on this whole thread, which is that if USDF wants to engage the grass-roots, or if anyone else wants to understand the AA population, they need to do a better job collecting and analyzing information. Yes, AAs are, in many ways, diverse. Yes, the grassroots of dressage encompass a fair amount of variety in means and ambitions. But we can do a better job of understanding the diversity within our population, and doing so just might make it easier for our sport and its organizational bodies to serve everyone in dressage. Otherwise we can just continue to expend energy on squabbling about what is wrong with our sport…
I think this fits me.
Woke at 5am so I could ride before getting to my programming job at 10am. I’ll rush home to make dinner for my husband and spend a little time with him til I need to go to bed so I can do it all over again.
I wish I could live at the barn but adult duties call. Most days feel like an intricate game of Tetris.
My house cost $52K. It’s a manufactured home, but it’s on 4.13 acres of fully usable horse property.
Not having a mortgage is a massive part of why I am able to spend like I do on horses. Not having children also helps. I do have my mom to deal with and support, but I started planning on doing that before I even went to college. I saved for 15 years, then got back into horses.
If you want to discuss adult amateurs as registered AAs with the USEF, you get a totally different answer than if you look at adults who ride dressage to some degree, whether or not they are competing, breeding, or otherwise required to be members. The trainers around here who focus more on showing, are going to have clientele with overall higher quality horses and higher income. My trainer focuses less on showing, and the majority of his clients are NOT USEF/USDF members unless they go to a symposium - our GMO tends to price those so joining is beneficial to members who wouldn’t otherwise be a member. Charles de Kunffy and Gerd Heuschmann brought in their largest membership, because many riders who don’t compete were very interested. Laura Graves will attract more people who do compete, I suspect, but we’ll see later in 2019.
I reject the idea of USEF or USDF member as part of the definition of a typical AA. Then you have to consider what we’re doing here - how few active members there are on COTH and other discussion forums. Our interest level alone puts us out of the “norms” if you were to chart based on interest. Average income may seem surprisingly high, but remember there is no top limit. There are definitely multi-millionaires out there in dressage land. They skew averages higher, and you’re better off looking for a median rather than a mean. I suspect if you could somehow find all riders who considered themselves dressage riders or interested in being dressage riders, you would have an income level far below $100K.
There is no one single answer, but when you start looking outside of your own subset you see as “the norm” you start to see there are many more people out there who are different from you. I do not join USDF and USEF on years I don’t show, because it highly offends me that they take so much money from GMOs without really doing anything for me. Their mission: “Dedicated to education, recognition of achievement, and promotion of dressage.”
That translates to “awards for showing, and helping the elites.” I wish all my GMO membership money stayed with my GMO, because they actually do things to help educate. They have multiple local activities which are free for members, and as the board changes they find new areas they want to cover. There is no “GMO only” option for membership, though.
Since I am not showing, I haven’t renewed my USDF, USEF, breed registry OR GMO membership. I haven’t renewed the GMO membership because (a) their year-end do is usually uber-expensive,catering to the wealthier among its members (that changed this year - maybe they’re getting the hint); and (b) many, if not most, of their “educational” activities are scheduled for week days. Ummm… I work full time, guys. I’m not the confortable married lady with two incomes who can attend a Wed-Fri. clinic, and even then, could I ride, I would not be one chosen to do so, since I am not close TPTB. Interestingly, when amateur clinics were decided by a drawing (you had to do volunteer work to be eligible), my name got drawn twice over a three year period. A year or two later, TPTB came to me before the drawing and “suggested” that if my name were drawn, I should donate it back. Riiiiight. I, with my (at the time) $2,200 Appy should donate it back so the lady with the $40,000 WB would have a chance. (Moot, since my name was not drawn, but it left a bad taste. I haven’t missed not belonging.
There’s also the fact that income doesn’t really give a good picture of budget for something like a horse. Our household income is around 170K but SO and I keep our finances separate so that means my horse related income is 60K (my salary) and I have massive student loan debt so the actual amount I have to spend on horses is closer to some people who have around a 50K income. I make it work by boarding at a bare bones boarding facility with a tiny indoor and taking lessons twice per month vs. more often. I ask for my fancier horse gear for Christmas and save for years for the more expensive nice things I have like my bridle and saddle.
I do hope that as my income increases I’ll be able to take weekly lessons but it’s certainly tough to compete against those that have the ability to take multiple lessons per week and/or clinic regularly. The other thing that makes it tough to compete is not being able to afford a truck and trailer. As it is I’m at the mercy of other people and if they aren’t willing or able to trailer me to shows I can’t sign up. I work hard and ride 4-5 days a week and I’m normally at the barn 5-6 but I currently just don’t have the ability to show regularly.
My dressage participation is affected by many of the same financial and logistical constraints as yours (though my starting income bracket is laughable by comparison so I probably wouldn’t skew the stats :lol:).
The pendulum swings the other way, though. There are people whose salaries are modest, but who have other sources of support for their equestrian pursuits (examples from my own circle of dressage friends include someone who keeps her horses at her mom’s little hobby farm and doesn’t pay even for feed, someone whose salary is on the low end but who came into an inheritance several times as big as her annual income, and more than one young professional who live with parents and thus may have more disposable income than those of us who have rent/mortgage payments).
There’s definitely plenty of room for better understanding of the rider population and how to serve it!
Dang, @netg , I’m jealous. You’d be really lucky to buy any unimproved lot of that size at that price in the places I’ve recently lived, let alone a (manufactured) home or usable horse property.
I agree that understanding the grass roots of dressage means understanding more than just USDF membership. There are a lot of people out there doing dressage who aren’t members because they don’t intend to show and can’t or don’t want to participate in other activities (as @Belowthesalt mentioned, a lot of dressage activities take place when some of us are at work).
I don’t know that mean income has been tabulated across any dressage population – did I miss something? Median is pretty standard for looking at income averages (e.g. U.S. Census Bureau reports medians). But honestly I don’t think that reducing the distribution of a trait like that to any sort of average is useful when you’re trying to understand who is involved in dressage.
I think you have median and mean confused. Mean is the average, median is the middle point of a dataset.
Apparently in the stats given in the thread, the mean is over $150K. I suspect it’s skewed by the higher incomes, and a median would be more meaningful when looking at what “typical” is.
USDF has decided to leave many programs/education up to the GMOs. There are Grants available to GMOs to provide programs. Additionally USDF has developed a few “canned” educational programs for GMOs to use. Some of you indicate that your local GMO is not responsive to your needs… not sure how you want USDF to fix that. USDF themselves run VERY few programs - even the old “Adult Clinic” series is now a grant program for GMOs to run clinics. I know in my area a few folks broke away from their GMO and formed new smaller very focused groups - and they get to take advantage of the educational programs and $$ available to GMOs. But it takes involvement and commitment…
Frankly I am not sure just WHAT you want USDF to do for the “typical” AA.
ANd of course USDF does not separate adults into AA vs Pro. Programs are designated “Adult”… again, up to the hosting GMO to be responsive to their AA members.
(These grants were new in 2018 and are NOT the funds available through The Dressage Foundation. TDF has MANY options for GMO to fund educational programs of many types ).
Compared to what they spend on AA programs, which appears to be $0? The “education” budget is for all riders (including youth). The Adult Clinics has been disbanded. So essentially there is 0 spent on the AA rider, and $160k on youth programs. Interestingly, the vast majority of the budget is simply “General Administration” - whatever that means. They don’t appear to even attempt to allocate staff salaries to programs, which is really unusual for a non-profit organization - MOST NPOs hire for program, not overhead…
They charge us a pretty hefty annual dues - WHAT is that for? I think that is a fair question to ask - especially if they aren’t supporting the vast majority of their membership (the grass roots rider), then why do we need to pay them such a huge amount every year? I think it is a fair question to ask. Many of us pay both PM and GMO dues to USDF each year - so for that $110/year, what do we get?
And USDF has been asking - why is our membership declining? So, the inverse question they should consider asking - WHY should our members stay with us? At this point, the main (only?) reason appears to be to show. So if someone isn’t showing, why bother joining - and therein is the answer to USDF’s question about declining membership…
ETA - general question - WHEN did USDF gather this info? I have never reported my income, the number of horses I own or show, or any demographic info to USDF - technically, they don’t even know whether I’m male or female???
Mean, median, and mode are all “averages” or measures of central tendency in a distribution. I assure you that I understand the difference.
The USDF only published info on what percentage of their survey respondents report an income over $150k, not what the average (any type of average, be it mean or median) is.
again, note that USDF does not divide adults into AA and Pro. “Adult Programs”… Look at the budget lines for Educational Programs and Membership Activities. Between the two, close to 1M is budgeted (granted, other items are included nto just Adult programs). And as far as how much you pay, USDF gets only $20 of your GMO dues. And the PM membership is SPECIFICALLY so you can compete fro certain awards. (not all awards - RIder awards you can get with just a GMO/GM membership.) So, you pay for what you want.
AND NOTE I ALSO THINK MORE COULD BE DONE. BUT I RECOGNIZE THE DIFFICULTY OF “DEFINING” AAs, AND I RECOGNIZE THAT DOING MORE IS UP TO THE GMOs…
Regarding declining membership, again look to the GMOs. IF they are nto meeting the needs of their non-competing membership, that is not USDF’s “fault”.
Again, PLEASE tell me what you think USDF should do. I will be glad to bring those ideas to the convention and present them wherever appropriate. I sit on the GMO Council and am a PM delegate for Region 3, and I am carrying my GMO’s proxy votes. I also attend many other council meeting where there are “open mike” opportunities.
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Jackets will not be equestrian custom from a tack store, but on sale from TSC or Mark’s Work Wearhouse and a bit baggy, ditto gloves and work boots from a farm store or WalMart.
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