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Re: [atlarge-discuss] Membership fees
Danny, with respect, you are comparing apples and rutabagas.
At the bottom, you say "you get what you pay for," but what do you get back
from belonging to any of these three organizations, or hundreds of similar
ones? Obviously it varies some from org to org, but, generally speaking:
1. Publications that are free to members, priced or unavailable to
non-members;
2. Discounted or free admission to certain programs put on by the
organization;
3. Because of group bargaining power, discounts on goods and services as
wide-ranging as travel, health and life insurance, etc.
And so on. In the case of ACM, many consider access to the ACM Portal to
be worth the price of membership by itself.
This organization certainly should not be "diversifying" into doing
anything remotely resembling my number 3 above. If there comes a time when
we do have regular publications and/or programs, one must question
seriously whether it would be antithetical to the reason for this
organization to charge anything for such matters, to charge non-members
more than members, or to limit availability only to members.
My own thoughts on whether this organization should charge something for
membership are not fully formed, there are arguments both ways. But
comparing this organization (even if it develops into what we would like to
see it become) to ALA, ACM, IEEE or many others does not advance the debate
meaningfully.
At 10:59 AM 6/2/2003 -0400, DannyYounger@cs.com wrote:
Responsible organizations understand the need for realistic membership fees.
Examples follow:
1. American Library Association: 64,000+ members
Fee structure:
$50 First-year Members Only
$75 Second-year Members
$100 Third-year+ Members
$25 Student Members
$35 Non-Salaried Members
$45 Trustee and Associate Members
$60 International Librarians
2. Association for Computing Machinery: 75,000+ members
Fee Structure:
$50 Student
$50 Hardship
$53 Retired
$99 Professional
3. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers: 380,000+ in 150
countries
Fee Structure:
$143 USA
$133 Canada
$121 Africa, Europe, Middle East
$114 Latin America
$113 Asia, Pacific
$35 Student
As these membership numbers demonstrate, a reasonable fee is not a barrier to
participation. Icannatlarge can continue to bury its head in the ground, or
it can decide to grow up and become a responsible organization that offers
its
members rights, benefits, and all those services that accrue from having a
proper budget in place.
You get what you pay for, and when you pay nothing that's usually what you
get...
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10736 Jefferson Blvd., #512 Culver City, CA 90230-4969
Co-founder, The Censorware Project http://censorware.net
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