Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 18 February 2010 11:32, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
<snip>
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