On 18 February 2010 15:57, Charles Matthews <[email protected]> wrote: > Thomas Dalton wrote: >> On 18 February 2010 11:32, Charles Matthews >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> > <snip> >>> If an organisation underprices itself in terms of membership, it affects >>> expectations (of what it will do for the members, of what the members >>> can agitate to have happen). >>> >> >> We don't do anything for members. We're a charity, we have to benefit >> the public at large, not members. Members are supposed to do something >> for us. >> > Wikimedians work on various WMF projects (I'm active on two) and if the > chapter's work supports a project on which a member is active, that is > certainly doing something for the member. No dichotomy here, therefore. > In fact your argument is fairly horrible unless enWP is supposed to be > the dominant project, because "Joe Public"'s interest is very largely in > that site. And also would seem to undermine, say, having a newsletter. > Please reconsider how you have framed this.
I edit the projects. I don't benefit from that. The people that read what I write benefit. I do it as an act of charity. A newsletter helps me benefit others better, it doesn't benefit me. >> Membership fees are never going to be a significant proportion of our >> budget. Even if we charge £12 and have 500 members, that's only going >> to be about 10% of our budget, and that's assuming we don't raise more >> in future fundraisers than we did this year (and we almost certainly >> will). The thought process that the board went through was to realise >> that it doesn't actually make any real difference to our finances what >> the membership fee is, so we should choose a membership fee that is >> likely to get us the best membership (which is a balance between >> numbers and commitment). We thought £5 was a good choice for that. >> >> > Well, I was talking about people who know the value of money, and > calling 10% of the budget insignificant doesn't qualify. The option > chosen is basically a registration fee. 10% was an absolute maximum. Realistically, it won't be anywhere near that much. Realistically, I would say reducing the membership fee will, at worst, reduce out budget by 1%. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list [email protected] http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
