Participation Membership Proposal
Plan B. (created 30 January, 2003 -- still in rough form.)
This is an alternate plan for reorganization which follows the basic philosophy of the PMP. It is phrased as a series of modifications of the original PMP, designed to give an alternative implementation while maintaining the basic philosophy. (If you follow links to the original proposal and other files you will have to use the "Back" button on your browser to return to this page; I'm sorry, but it is beyond my programming skills in HTML to tell which page you came from.)
1. All persons who attend an SCA event or two meetings of a group (such as business meetings, guild meetings, and the like) are eligible to become members of the SCA. As with the PMP, waivers would be signed at the gate and maintained in-Kingdom as at present.
2. Membership would be recorded by filling out a form and forwarding it, together with a copy of the receipt for the events or meetings and a nominal processing fee to the Corporate Office. The processing fee would be set to recover the cost of the membership card and the cost of processing it. (My calculation is that the processing fee should be on the order of $3; certainly it should be no more than $5.) These forms would be available at meetings and events and at the SCA web site. Recorded memberships would be counted for things like determination of group size, but would not be necessary for holding office; the receipts for attendance would be sufficient for that. (Local groups could issue local membership cards based on those receipts if they wished) It should be possible to easily implement recording of memberships on-line, since there would be no attached waiver. On-line recording of memberships should greatly reduce the processing cost. All memberships would be good for two years after the qualifying participation (event or second meeting). All people with recorded memberships would be required to be included in pollings and those with local memberships could be included by local option. It would be the responsibility of the member to continue his/her membership. The Corporate Office would not send out renewal notices. (This is necessary to keep the processing fee down.)
3. Kingdom newsletters will be run by the Kingdoms, on a subscription basis to recover costs. T.I. and CA will be run on a similar subscription basis by their editors. Subscriptions to Kingdom newsletters, T.I. and CA would be handled by the Corporate Office, acting as a subscription fulfillment office. Prices for the publications would be set by the Kingdoms (or the editors of T.I. and CA), who would notify the Corporate Office of the fee. The Corporate Office would handle the mailing labels as is currently the case, and disburse the funds for the newsletters and the Corporate publications on a quarterly basis. (The disbursements would be ¼ of the subscription price each quarter times the number of subscribers, not the fixed fee currently used.) This method of subscription would reduce Corporate liability slightly (in terms of subscription fulfillment) at the cost of sending the money on a round trip from the subscriber to the Corporate Office and back to the Kingdom. The processing fee for subscriptions would probably be higher than that for simple memberships, but still should not exceed $5 in a well-run office. Subscriptions combined with membership recording would only be charged the higher of the two processing fees. The subscription form (properly updated) would be available via the usual channels of the Kingdom or through the SCA web page. Ordering on-line would be a good option (and is currently under implementation). On-line ordering should greatly reduce the processing cost. Membership would not be required for subscription.
4. The Corporate Office would be reduced in size as in the original PMP (PMPproposal.html and links therein). It might need to be slightly larger than I originally calculated in order to house the clerks for subscription fulfillment, but this would be reflected in the processing fee for memberships and subscriptions (i.e. that fee would contribute towards rent as well as the salaries of the clerks).
5. The costs of the SCA, Inc. would be financed by the event franchise fee proposed in the original PMP. (PMPproposal.html and links therein). I have come to the conclusion that my initial estimates of necessary franchise fees is more than is needed. I believe that a schedule of $1/attendee/event for regular events, $3 for the large/long wars and $7 for Pennsic should be sufficient. (This is based on recent conversations which lead me to believe that my estimate of an average price of $10/event is too high, and the 2001 Form 990 which shows that the gross "program related income" for that year was $2.9 million, up substantially from the $2.6 million for 2000.)
Discussion of Plan B.
I don't like this as much as I like the original PMP, mostly because of the relatively costly round trip that money (and mailing labels) has to make for Kingdom Newsletters, and the increased overhead on recorded memberships. However, it still has the inclusiveness of the original and follows the philosophy behind the original. Please see the Discussion of the original PMP for cost estimates and "worked examples" of how the event franchise fee would work.
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