[chapter-delegates] New Membership Level

[Dave Kissoondoyal]

I think with the paid membership ($75 fee) we will definitely move three
years backwards!

Best regards

Dave Kissoondoyal
ISOC Mauritius Chair

-----Original Message-----
From: chapter-delegates-errors+dave+40isoc-mu+2eorg at lists.isoc.org
[mailto:chapter-delegates-errors+dave+40isoc-mu+2eorg at lists.isoc.org] On
Behalf Of James M Galvin
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 2:33 AM
To: chapter-delegates at lists.isoc.org
Subject: Re: [chapter-delegates] New Membership Level

I've been watching this discussion unfold today.  There are many valid 
points of view and I do not want to discourage people from discussing 
those views.  What I do want to do is add some context to the discussion 
to explain how the new membership level came to be.  This note is long, 
and I apologize for that, but I wanted to be complete.

I accepted the position of VP of Chapters 3 years, just after the Board 
had decided to restructure itself.  A component of the ISOC strategy that 
emerged from that restructuring was to set aside temporarily paying 
membership and instead create a new membership that was free.  One of the 
responsibilities I had was to create a new membership program that 
included both free membership and paying membership.

The fact is ISOC members want a paying membership.  We know this from a 
survey we took more than 2 years ago.  Perhaps some of you participated 
in that survey, although the discussions would suggest that many of you 
either did not participate or do not remember doing so.  We also surveyed 
Chapters (through this list) on what they wanted from a membership system.

The results from both of these surveys were used as input (among other 
inputs) to create the RFP that was used to solicit for a membership 
system.  I will point out only for completeness here that several open 
source solutions were considered at that time.  None of them even came 
close (order of magnitude difference at least) to what was offered by the 
top 3 choices, from which we ultimately selected Go's Q system.

The member survey mentioned above also served as input to developing a 
membership program.

Several people have commented that $75 is too much money.  We discussed 
this issue at length for many hours.  There are several points worth 
noting from those discussions.

ISOC is not competing with its Chapters for members.  We will continue to 
encourage people to create and join Chapters.  But for those that want to 
contribute directly to ISOC, and there are people for whom this is 
desired, we are offering an appropriate membership level.

The $75 fee was derived from two principle sources.  First, a principle 
reason the paying membership was tabled 3 years ago was because it was 
not cost effective.  The problem was made worse by the fact that it was 
impossible to come up with a few schedule that met the needs of everyone 
everywhere.  ISOC had tried various methods of doing this over the years 
and none were successful.

The answer to the fee schedule problem was to use Chapters.  Chapters 
really are the principal means by which members contribute to ISOC. 
Chapters can set fee schedules (or not) according to their own needs and 
what is possible in their community of interest (which is usually a 
geographic region).  This matched well with the Board's restructuring 
since Chapters could now elect up to 3 members of the Board directly.

So, rather than trying to find a paying membership level that meets the 
needs of everyone everywhere, we are promoting Chapters to do that. 
Instead, we will focus on a membership level that we can provide, with 
benefits based on what members have requested.  Of course, since we want 
the program to be self-supporting, the second source of the $75 fee is 
based on a budget of what we believe we can provide for 1,000 members, 
which compared to other membership based organizations is a bargain. 
Note that we are not projecting tens of thousands of members.  Those 
members are for the Chapters to get.  We are just projecting a few 
thousand members over the next several years.

For those who want to be recognized by ISOC directly, not just through 
their Chapter, we still have the donor program.  You can contribute any 
amount of money to ISOC directly and you will be recognized for it.  The 
donations levels are named Contributor, Supporter, Benefactor, and 
Patron.  Any USD dollar amount under $125 is a Contributor.  So, you can 
give whatever you can and your name will be listed on the web site under 
Contributor.

Someone suggested that ISOC let the Chapters charge fees and then ISOC 
should take a percentage.  We thought about that.  We considered it quite 
seriously.  There are several concerns with that model.  First, some 
Chapters do not charge membership fees and do not want to charge a fee. 
If we do not require everyone to charge a fee than the disparity between 
those who pay and those who do not will continue to exist.  Second, 
suppose the Chapter charged the equivalent of $1 USD for membership. 
That dollar amount might be entirely appropriate for the Chapter.  Do we 
really want to take 5, 10, or 25 percent of that membership fee away from 
a Chapter that probably needs the money more than we do?  Finally, other 
organizations comparable to ISOC do not take money from their Chapters. 
This does not seem like a good way to distinguish ourselves from them.

And finally, the fact that ISOC Members (as compared to ISOC Associate 
Members) will get to vote directly for a Trustee is an easy target for 
discussion.  Many people are very passionate about this point, on both 
sides.

The new membership level was not created to support voting.  The fact 
that voting is permitted is completely incidental.  It is a "pro forma" 
benefit for all member organizations that take fees from their members.

Keep in mind that ISOC Members (as compared to ISOC Associate Members) do 
not get any more of a voice on the Board of Trustees than Chapters. 
Chapters get to select 3 trustees and Members get to select 3 trustees. 
And, Members are further constrained by the fact that there have to be at 
least 1,000 of them with at least 500 of them actually paying.  (Note 
that organizational members get complimentary memberships.)  We do have 
as a goal to attract at least the 500 paying members needed during this 
first year, but if we do not meet that goal then Members will not vote. 
In contrast, Chapters always get to vote and members always get to vote 
within their Chapter.

I have tried to say something about all the questions that have been 
raised so far.  If there are more questions I will say more, but we also 
need to move forward with the decisions that have been made.  Many things 
have taken quite a long time to come together, and they are finally doing 
that.  We really do have many positive changes and benefits to bring to 
you this year.  This new membership level is intended to be a positive 
benefit change.  If it does not work out then we will certainly change it 
but, like the membership models that have been tried in the past, we need 
to try this one too.

Jim


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