Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 18 February 2010 11:32, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
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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.
Wikimedians work on various WMF projects (I'm active on two) and if the chapter's work supports a project on which a member is active, that is certainly doing something for the member. No dichotomy here, therefore. In fact your argument is fairly horrible unless enWP is supposed to be the dominant project, because "Joe Public"'s interest is very largely in that site. And also would seem to undermine, say, having a newsletter. Please reconsider how you have framed this.
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.
Well, I was talking about people who know the value of money, and calling 10% of the budget insignificant doesn't qualify. The option chosen is basically a registration fee.
Charles