Membership Dues
Membership Dues
- Subject: Membership Dues
- From: Glenn Chase <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 01:14:47 -0600
Hi Elsa,
- Does your group charge dues for membership? How much do you charge?
We recently voted to lower membership dues for Capitol Macintosh.
During a recent recruiting drive I noticed there appeared to be some
"sticker shock" in the eyes of many Mac users I approached when they
asked "how much does it cost?" and I replied "just forty dollars a
year." So after close examination of our operating costs and revenue
projections we decided to lower our regular annual membership rate to
36.00 a year ("just three bucks a month") and our rate for students and
educators reduced from 30.00 to 24.00 a year ("just two bucks a
month").
The overall effect (without any change in membership totals) is about
ten percent less income per year. So essentially we are betting that
the four dollar a month reduction will be offset by an increase in
people deciding to join who otherwise might have been put off by the
cost.
- What benefits do dues-paying members receive?
50 megs of personal web space on our Mac OS X powered server, 15 megs
of email space with their own capmac.org email address, access to
special vendor discounts posted in the Members Only area of our forum,
a ticket for the raffle held at every monthly meeting, a listing of
their web site on our member sites page if they wish.
- Are there different membership levels with different benefits?
We have different rates for regular memberships and educators/students
but the benefits are the same. We are also developing a business class
membership for local businesses who want to show support for our group
which we have priced at 50.00 per year. Those benefits will include
listing on a special "supporter" page but otherwise will be the same.
We try to keep things as simple as possible.
- What does your group use the funds used for?
Our group stopped publishing a monthly newsletter several years ago due
to the complexities involved with rounding up content, finding
volunteers to write, edit, and arrange printing, postage, and mailing.
We send postcards to remind members of upcoming events.
The bulk of our monthly budget goes towards our ISP for colocating our
server. We rent a PO Box, pay for a domain name, occasionally buy
raffle prizes for our monthly meetings. We also pick up miscellaneous
expenses incurred by the people who teach our free classes for
Beginners and Switchers and other SIG expenses. This year we bought
awards for members who have been with us for ten years.
We're very fortunate to have the use of a great meeting space with
built in audio/video system and internet access at no cost, courtesy of
the University of Texas.
We hope to provide instruction to local teachers on how to get the most
from their Macs and plan to donate helpful books to the school
libraries so they will have an onsite reference guide.
Any other insights or wisdom on the issue of dues is much appreciated.
We expanded our student rates to include educators (teachers,
technology assistants, librarians - anyone who works in education)
because we plan to launch our "Tutor a Teacher" program shortly and
making membership more accessible demonstrates our commitment to
helping keep Macs in schools.
Glenn
-----
Glenn Chase <email@hidden>
President, Capitol Macintosh - Austin's Macintosh User Group
http://www.capmac.org
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