Re: [GSAS-board] Joining Member Chat

[Paul Wallace <pwallace@u.washington.edu>]

Susan:

As per your request I will refrain from telling non-members about the mailing 
list. Instead I will recommend GSAS.org as a resource for schedule, directions, 
events and mailing lists.  I agree with Eric in that there are enough barriers 
to signing up to the list that limitation to current membership.

Eric:

The current state of membership is a problem of my doing as I was not able to 
provide Susan with membership cards until recently.  The amount of money 
collected in November was due in large part to people renewing as I added a box 
to the sign in sheet and printed a list of current members which was cross 
checked prior to issuing a new card.  (I would like to commend Matt and all 
that helped for the new cards as they look great!)

Now that cards are available, I will absolutely support one more notification 
and a purge.  We have two chances to get our members up to date before the 
must-be-a-member-to-auction rule hits in February.

-Paul


On Fri, 30 Nov 2007, Erik Olson wrote:

> On Fri, 30 Nov 2007, Susan Welenofsky wrote:
>
>> Member chat is supposed to be reserved for members only. I've been on the
>> board for three or four years, and you are the only president to allow
>> people to join email chat without paying. I would like to suggest that for
>> interested people, you tell them to come to one of our meetings. Email chat
>> is supposed to be one of perks of having a membership.
>
> Hmm...
>
> As the one who started the list back in 1999, I can say that it was
> *never* the intention that the member chat be reserved for members only.
> The thought was that it would help encourage more people to come to one of
> the meetings, possibly join, because people would read of goings on, what
> sort of fish folks were breeding, etc.  The archive has always been open,
> and signup has always been accessible via the GSAS page.
>
> When you look at how much money comes in from memberships yearly (perhaps
> $750 is a liberal estimate... 50 paying members -- see footnote**) vs. how
> much is raised by the two big auctions + the meeting auctions... I think
> it's pretty clear what keeps the rent paid.
>
> Now the intent may have been modified by later boards to be more
> exclusive, just as an attempt was made to make THIS list exclusive of all
> but current board members.  I don't remember a conscious change, though.
>
>   - Erik
>
> ------
>
> **FOOTNOTE: I was curious just how large the membership actually WAS these
> days, so I took a look at the database.  Wow, there's 60 active single
> memberships and 27 active family memberships.  That's pretty good,
> actually way better than it used to be.  But then I looked at the expiry
> dates on these members via the show/purge function -- itself pretty
> liberal, giving 3 months grace period. And 30-50 "current" members are
> past due, some over a year and a half past due.  So 30-50% of our current
> membership (receiving the newsletter and everything) is actually not
> paying.  Looks like nobody's been using the purge function on the
> database every month.
>
> ...but of course, if those people are getting the newsletter
> electronically, it's not really a big cost, and maybe sending them
> newsletters for an extra year might encourage them to come to a meeting
> or an auction again...
>
> --
> Erik Olson
> erik at thekrib dot com
> _______________________________________________
> GSAS-board mailing list
> GSAS-board@thekrib.com
> http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/gsas-board
>


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