Hello all,
Well all I shall happily say in reply is '*be careful what you wish for*'....
I shall consider myself to have been given a mandate To Nag (nicely, of
course) and (as far I can tell) there's no appetite to reduce the grace
period.
To come back on specific points:
- Now we have a separate bank account for membership fees its certainly
possible to set up a standing order for the fee - I'll look into direct
debits too and update you all with some 'How-to' instructions on wiki next
week. We've previously been cautious in setting this up because we have had
a problem in the past with standing orders with no useful reference number
against them, and therefore not being to identify who the money came from
and for what when it was all going into the same account.
- Yes, you can pay for x number of years in advance - we can record
longer terms on the database, and append notes to the contact record
explaining why.
- No, if someone's term ended due to, say resignation or expulsion, but
they paid for a longer period than that n advance, I don't' think we could
prudently refund the money (money laundering regs - yes I know, a bit of an
OTT application in this context, but still). So, people would have to
accept that in paying, say £10 for a two-year membership term that if they
resigned etc then the additional sum would be taken to be a donation.
- *At the moment* everyone who is approaching expiry will get an
automated email - however, as we've all identified, one isn't enough. It's
my intention now that each monthly newsletter email contain a field
indicating if the recipient's membership is current or grace and the date
of their term end. I'm hoping that improvements in our database hosting may
mean that members can check this online in the future - however, I need to
investigate the challenges this may present too, so I can't promise
anything just yet (but I'm aware it would be a good feature to offer)
- If you want to know if you membership is current, email
membership(a)wikimedia.org.uk and I can check for you! Or check your most
recent newsletter from this month on...
- Gift aid - yes, membership fees are eligible. I'm acutely aware the
online gift aid form is currently on the fritz and have requested this be
fixed - when it is, again, we can include mention in the newsletter that
members should make a declaration if they want their fees to attract this
tax relief. In the meantime, any keen bean who wants a paper form to fill
in, again, membership(a)wikimedia.org.uk
Thanks for the quick and helpful responses all :)
Kat
On 8 February 2013 14:12, Doug Weller <dougweller(a)gmail.com> wrote:
How do we check our membership?
Doug
On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>wrote;wrote:
I think this is already possible :) I actually
paid for two years at
once, because that was the amount of pounds I happened to have left over -
not sure if people will get mad at me now if I make their lives more
complicated, but asking nicely brings you a long way! :)
Lodewijk
2013/2/7 Tom Morris <tom(a)tommorris.org>
One suggestion: allow members to sign up for
multiple years in advance.
I'm perfectly happy to pay for two or three years of membership in one go.
There may be some practical issues, such as whether or not if one were
to, say, sign up for a three year membership but resign after a year, the
remainder would be refunded as unused.
If it were offered, I'd certainly be happy to pay for a few years in
advance so that I don't have the mildly irritating situation of wanting to
run some kind of outreach event and not being able to apply for a
microgrant because my membership has lapsed.
--
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>
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--
Doug Weller
http://www.ramtops.co.uk
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*Katherine Bavage *
*Fundraising Manager *
*Wikimedia UK*
+44 20 7065 0949
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