On 18 February 2010 11:32, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 17 February 2010 22:15, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
The logic of soliciting donations is always that
if there is more money,
more can be done. Money doesn't make the world of the WMF go round, but
in the real world money tends to be given to those who show they know
the value of it.
Did you have a point?
It is not obvious to me that a fee cut will affect membership much. I'm
concerned that cutting fees is not actually a "membership drive" that
will increase membership and participation, but a soft option. I'm
concerned if there is unanimity that this move is a good thing.
While having a lower fee may not affect it much, the act of cutting it
probably will because it gives us an excuse to publicise membership.
And I'm also concerned about your continuing
rudeness on this list. I
have some experience in club organisation and a national voluntary
organisation, and I've been through the "let's cut membership/people
don't join because of the fee" discussion and its consequences in two
other contexts. I'm pretty busy on a project at the moment, and my
interest in participating as an active member of WMUK is not a given.
I'm sorry if you interpreted my question as being rude. I simply
wanted to know what your point was, since you hadn't made it. You had
just made some general comments that did not have an obvious
conclusion.
If an organisation underprices itself in terms of
membership, it affects
expectations (of what it will do for the members, of what the members
can agitate to have happen).
We don't do anything for members. We're a charity, we have to benefit
the public at large, not members. Members are supposed to do something
for us.
There was some talk of hiring admin help,
which is the first step in developing a more solid structure that can
actually fulfil tasks that involve more than a bit of emailing around
and wiki editing. If WMUK needs such support, which I would say was the
case, then dropping the fee is undermining the idea that funds can be
raised that can be hypothecated to having administration and routine
work done. If say 400 hours a year staff work is to be done, on behalf
of things the members would like to see move forward, then this needs to
be funded sensibly, and money should not be waved away. The reciprocal
relationship of members paying into an organisation, and things
happening, is actually healthy.
Membership fees are never going to be a significant proportion of our
budget. Even if we charge £12 and have 500 members, that's only going
to be about 10% of our budget, and that's assuming we don't raise more
in future fundraisers than we did this year (and we almost certainly
will). The thought process that the board went through was to realise
that it doesn't actually make any real difference to our finances what
the membership fee is, so we should choose a membership fee that is
likely to get us the best membership (which is a balance between
numbers and commitment). We thought £5 was a good choice for that.