Types of Membership

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    • #1506
      Brian Lennon
      Keymaster

      Currently we have “MEMBER” and “FACULTY” (regarding Board Membership as a slightly different entity). Our present definition of “member” creates problems when addressing the question of “who can vote?” Here’s how I would see membership:

      VISITORS, general public, not really involved but visiting our site, not really members of course!

      REGISTERED – those who have registered on the site with a view to seeing more and getting more information (Kim says these already get our newsletters)

      ASSOCIATES – these would pay for membership (maybe $10) and would be entitled to a few extra perks, some free resources, participation in themed discussions, discounts in the shop (say 5%)

      MEMBERS – pay $20, need to have at least basic training (for example), entitled to special discussioins, free resources, discounts (say 10%), CAN VOTE!

      FACULTY – pay $70, have all of the above and access to faculty admin resources, faculty free resources.

      What do you all think?

    • #1514
      Avatar photoBette Blance
      Participant

      Yes, it is very clear. Check spelling MEMBERS discussioins. This gives access to those who have no training as REGISTERED member with a benefit. Hopefully being an ASSOCIATE will encourage some to the next level. I agree with this.

    • #1517
      Brian Lennon
      Keymaster

      Hi Bette – haven’t you heard about “discussioins” for people who don’t like spellling! [sic]

    • #1518
      Brian Lennon
      Keymaster

      Yesterday when GoToMeeting crashed I asked Conrad for ideas on membership (so that we could use it in the resusitated meeting) and I quote below what he wrote:

      Hi Brian,

      Thank you for your note. This is a good conversation in which to involve the whole marketing committee.

      What does member mean?

      Because WGI has chosen to be a corporation with voting members, there is no room for adjusting the consequence of being a member. That is, all members vote. So that leaves us with three questions for sure:

      1. How does someone qualify as a member?

      2. How does a member vote?

      3. What constitutes a quorum?

      Question #2 is easiest to answer. Members may vote in person or by electronic submission. This allows votes to be conducted at conferences, and by referendum.

      The mechanism for voting is Wishlist Member. It already has this functionality. A member logs into the site, casts their vote, and then cannot access the voting page again. It is then up to the member to ensure they do not share their login information with anyone else.

      Question #3 is slightly harder to answer. The difficulty is ensuring engagement with members so they want to vote. I recommend not even trying to define what makes a quorum until after we’ve had time to engage the existing membership in conversation via e-mail and the new site. Simply run with what’s working for now, and plan to do a test run of a new process in 2016 at the conference.

      Question #1 already has an answer. I become a member by going to the WGI site and joining. Simple – or maybe not.

      Rather than run through all the possible scenarios, let’s go straight to the heart of the matter.

      The ideal solution is for all issues of membership to run through WGI. Every time someone joins WGI, the transaction runs through the WGI site. This makes a person a member of WGI and a member of the applicable national affiliate. Where there is no national affiliate, all the funds remain with WGI.

      Two things are likely to be required to make this work:
      a. The fee for basic WGI membership will remain at $20, and perhaps be less

      b. WGI must develop other streams of income that include higher membership fees

      This is a good beginning for the conversation. Thank you for getting it started, Brian.

      For now, let’s have this starting point in our minds. There is quite a bit of other work that needs to be completed before we get into a protracted conversation about membership. Indeed, some of the other work is going to help fill in details for this conversation.

      Thank you to everyone for taking time to read this through. It’s an interesting conversation, and I’m sure we’ll have lots of discussion when it times to revisit this topic.

      Sincerely,
      Conrad Hall

    • #1615
      Brian Lennon
      Keymaster

      Here’s the Membership proposal by John and Jean

      Attachments:
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    • #1674
      Brian Lennon
      Keymaster

      An important issue with membership has to do with our move to an automated process.

      As things stand right now, anyone could go to our website, pay $75 and be regarded as faculty!!

      That means that people who have not signed an agreement, or people who have trademarked “Choice Theory” for their own purposes, or people who teach external control … all would have an easy route to our faculty status. What do we do about this?

      Your ideas on this are important … and have some degree of urgency before we launch the new site.

    • #1675
      John Cooper
      Participant

      Maybe we need –
      Supervisor and Instructor Renewal links which you cannot by-pass on a page which has the most recent agreement – and that needs acknowledgement before being able to move on.

    • #1676
      James Montagnes
      Participant

      another solution possibly is to have a disclaimer in there which states all faculty memberships are subject to review by our membership committee (Kim) before being accepted and put on the website. This process would I hope catch anyone who is not legit.

    • #1945
      Nancy Herrick
      Participant

      I think we want people to know something about CT and Glasser’s teachings before they vote on decisions about how the organization is run. For me, that is a minimum of some training; university courses, workshops, intensives, etc. So for the website, I would say that anyone who logs in is NOT a member until they take some training and pay fees for our teaching.
      1. Then they could sign up and pay a membership fee. These people would be classified as associates (those in the process of training. I don’t think their membership fee should be more than $10-$20. I don’t think they should have a vote on decisions or policy. They could have access to providing feedback or opinions about issues, but no vote.
      2. The first level of membership that should have a vote on policy would be the full member (CTRTC). That fee could be rather low, so that they would continue to pay and remain an active member for many years. Fee might be $30-40US
      If CTRTC’s become facilitators for TCOYL they will pay the fee for that. (Not a different voting right or membership fee.)
      3. The next level would be faculty who would pay $60US These people have more investment in the organization and we could say they have 2 votes if you want to, but one vote is ok as that would be more equal to the full members. We can be pretty certain that more faculty will pay attention to the voting opportunity and therefore we would have many more faculty votes on policy. This would provide them more strength in the decision making process by self-selection.

      This makes the structure simpler and easier for people to understand. I don’t think we will be cutting off income from fees that would make a difference in our operating costs. The new website with the log in passwords has already defined what people can access on the site.
      I think our efforts in the next couple years should be to make certification and faculty easier to acquire and that will increase our funding more effectively than changing all the fee structure.

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