In the past, the cost of the international Group's membership has been a barrier for some local chapters. Organizers have felt that their members would not be willing to pay the additional charge for the international Group's membership. In order to overcome that barrier, Richard Light, our Treasurer, has developed a new fee schedule as reported in Issue 31 of this Newsletter. Originally, we had thought that we would substantially drop the cost of membership, but retain a per-member charge to the Chapter. However, the administration overhead of such a plan seemed unweildy. The new funding schedule proposes bans for fees. For example, a Chapter with between 75-99 members would pass US$1,875 per annum to the international Group. This would equate to between US$25-20 per member. This compares quite favorably with the current individual membership fee of US$62.
When we discussed these fees at the AGM in Gmunden in May '95, the bans were generally thought to be a better idea than a per-head cost. However, at the lower bans, the cost per person, was not attractive. In the proposal, Chapters with 10-24 members would pay US$750 per annum, a per-head fee ranging from US$75-32. Based on this feedback, we feel it would make more sense to either create narrower bans for the lower memberships (such as 10-14, 15-19, 20-24) or work on a per-head fee structure (with less members, the administrative time is lower by default).
By expanding the total number of members to include those within each Chapter, the level of services could be maintained with this significantly lower per head fee.
