[chapter-delegates] New Membership Level

[Patrick Vande Walle]

Carlos Vera wrote:

Dear Carlos,

> 1. Next step is to stablish a relation between voting and membership. 
> (more members more voting or in other words more USD $$ means more 
> representation)

Paying members will get one directly elected board member when the 
number of paying members reaches 500. This is not going to happen 
anytime soon IMHO. And even if it did, there cannot be more than 3 board 
members elected by this "constituency" (for lack of a better word)

> 2. Paid membership means I get something for my money. 

We had this debate at the Board. The idea was that some people might be 
willing to give a small (by US/European standards) amount to ISOC, as 
they would to say, the Red Cross or another NGO, without expecting a 
direct return on their investment. Until now, they did not have that 
opportunity.

> 3. There are ways to be creative and make a real chapter development 
> inside ISOC using income from projects like PIR.

This is the goal of the Chapter projects funding to be announced soon.

> There are lot of examples where such type of income is used to cover 
> administrative expenses, luxury hotels and first class travel... and 
> finally what drop from table is used for real work.

Carlos, I can assure you that no-one within ISOC travels first class or 
has such-like advantages.

As for the impact of the paying membership, the 2005 budget says it is 
less that 1% and again this looks optimistic to me. 
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/fin/ISOC2005budget.pdf

As for the suggestion of Olivier, I like the idea of collecting fees at 
the local level and give a percentage to ISOC, although the logistics 
make the effiency of such a process difficult.

Best regards,

Patrick

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