Re: Membership dues
Re: Membership dues
- Subject: Re: Membership dues
- From: Jim Foster <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 20:22:29 -0500
On Tuesday, October 28, 2003, at 05:43 PM, Elsa Travisano wrote:
- Does your group charge dues for membership? How much do you charge?
Our group has charged $40.00 Canadian for many years, perhaps a decade,
and this year upped it to $45.00 with an incentive that people who
renewed their memberships before the deadline got to do so for the
$40.00 amount.
- What benefits do dues-paying members receive?
1) The more experienced club members are certainly prepared to spend a
LOT more time with a paid up member than with a member of the public,
in situations where the person has technical issues and requests help.
2) We publicize the User Group Vendor specials as applicable only to
paid up members.
3) While there is no charge for admission to our meetings, we make it
clear at the introduction to each meeting that if folks are finding the
meetings entertaining or helpful and wish to continue attending, we
expect them to join the club.
4) If a member prefers to have the monthly newsletter mailed, because
they have no access to email or for whatever reason, we will do that
for them. We do encourage as many members as possible to download an
electronic version and we make the newsletter available to the public
as an electronic download.
5) We have just started distributing Breen's Bungalow to paid up
members who have an interest in receiving it on CD.
- Are there different membership levels with different benefits?
No, we basically just have Paid-up Member status.
- What does your group use the funds used for?
We pay a monthly rental fee for our meeting location. That location
comes with a video projector both for the front of the room as well as
a second smaller projector which focuses to the back of the room. It
also provides us with DSL internet access as well as a storage room
where we are able to leave the many meeting items which we would
otherwise have to cart back and forth in our vehicles each month.
Presently, we are getting a break on the meeting room price as an
incentive to get our business, but I expect the rate to increase over
time.
We also pay to have a permanent PO Box mailing address, a web site
domain name, and miscellaneous other out of pocket expenses incurred by
the Executives and guest speakers.
- Do you have membership levels for print and electronic delivery of
your
newsletter? If so, how has this worked for your group?
We have not gone this route. We realize the rationale for doing so,
i.e. to charge those individuals who are causing additional expense to
be incurred, but we feel at the moment the administrative overhead
would be excessive.
Any other insights or wisdom on the issue of dues is much appreciated.
Our club over the past 5 years has reduced a lot of expenses and gave
some thought to REDUCING our fees accordingly. However, we ended up not
doing that because we feel a reasonable dues structure helps to foster
the notion that there is value in being a member. That is certainly why
we would never try to go to a zero membership fee situation.
Hope this helps.
Thanks!
Elsa Travisano
MUG ONE
Jim Foster
Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
Courtice, Ontario, Canada
_______________________________________________
augd mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/augd
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.