On 18 February 2010 11:32, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 17 February 2010 22:15, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@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.