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Proposal for new dues structure for 2014

Update: This proposal passed by membership at our April 12, 2014 meeting.

Currently our annual dues are $25 and we charge meeting fees of $20 (includes lunch). We waive fees for first-timers at our meetings (but new members still pay $10 for lunch). It has been noted that some institutions will pay for meeting fees, but not membership dues. To account for this, the following structure is being proposed:

  • $25—Corresponding Membership—Designed for people who wish to be members, but don’t come a meeting in a given academic year.
  • $45—Fee for Fall Meeting—Includes membership + lunch ($10 discount for first-timers)
  • $45—Fee for Spring Meeting— Includes membership + lunch ($10 discount for first-timers, $25 for people who attended Fall)

Sample payments:

  • $25 if you don’t attend any section conferences, but want to support our Section.

Current members:

  • $45 if you attend one section conference (includes lunch)
  • $65 if you attend two section conferences (includes lunch both times)

New members:

  • $35 if you attend one section conference (includes lunch)
  • $55 if you attend two section conferences (includes lunch both times)

Reimbursements:

Under this plan people will be charged the same amount they are now, but may be able to get a larger reimbursement from their institutions, if your institution reimburses for attendance but not memberships.

Decision making

We will discuss this change at the Spring Meeting (at the Exploratorium!) and hold a vote for approval.

Please leave your thoughts, concerns, appreciations, etc. in the comments section below:

11 Comments

  1. Lee Trampleasure Lee Trampleasure

    Here’s a sample comment 🙂 I like the idea because I think it will increase the number of members who will be reimbursed by their institution, but is “cost neutral” (no member should be paying any more or less under the proposed system).

  2. Ken Meshke Ken Meshke

    Please consider taking credit cards and/or paypal…… we have been using http://www.authorize.net successfully and it doesn’t cost too much. I think you’d get more money in the long run since writing checks is a dying art.

  3. jrobert jrobert

    Why does it look like it is 90$ to come to both meetings? Oh – I see now. That is a little confusing. Somehow I got the idea that membership was now well over a hundred dollars – maybe that was a discussion of national membership? Anyway, that idea has kept me away from meetings for a while…

  4. jrobert jrobert

    Since the meetings are in such different locations by season, why not just make it $35 or $40 per meeting and give free membership for 6 months with meeting attendance. I’ve never paid membership except when I’ve gone to a meeting. I’m not sure what is the difference between being a member and not being a member…

  5. Lee Trampleasure Lee Trampleasure

    Ken, thanks for the suggestion. We have been taking credit cards at meetings for the past two or three meetings, and plan to add an online payment option for both membership and registration before our spring meeting (we’re working on seamlessly connecting membership records with a registration process).

    We continue to be surprised by the number of people who do write checks for registration. It would seem that the announcement of the death of checks is premature 🙂

  6. Lee Trampleasure Lee Trampleasure

    jrobert: While many members only pay dues when they attend a meeting, we do have a significant number of members who only attend every few years, but want to remain members (since we’re not making any profit, this essentially helps to underwrite the cost of mailing programs, and lessens the cost of meetings for everyone who does attend).

    We appreciate our “Corresponding members,” and want to continue to make it easy for them to be remain members.

  7. Lynn Cominsky Lynn Cominsky

    It is hard to know in advance if one is really going to attend the meeting. Therefore I like JRDobbson’s idea, that if you do attend, your membership fee is waived for the rest of the year. Otherwise, you should pay the dues.

  8. bc bc

    Suppose one pays in advance and can’t show? A rollover or are $$ lost?

    BTW, whose the host, so I may contact regarding power and AV for the S & T?

    bc

  9. Lee Trampleasure Lee Trampleasure

    bc,

    Good question. We would have to have a policy on no-shows who have paid. One thing that seems clear, if you don’t show up and don’t let us know, we’ve bought your lunch, and had to feed it to the underpaid grad students, so they’ll get your undying gratitude 🙂

    Around Power and AV for Share and Tell, I’ll check with Pablo and see what we have. We usually don’t promise this as you only have 5 minutes to share, however we will likely a projector set up and 110 V, but Share and Tell is not designed to be a place for large scale presentations.

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