Membership Fees 2025

Some History

• After its original incorporation in 2004, SCANZ membership fees were set with an intent to build an operating buffer. SC has not yet determined what original fees were, but it looks like about $11 p.a.. It's not terribly relevant to the following discussion.
• By 2008, the SCANZ operating buffer had accumulated to $8300, and the Kingdom fund to $7500 (fairly linearly with time). This was deemed sufficient for any reasonably expected challenges. The events at the Whangarei Hearing Association Inc were still quite fresh (see 2007 NZ Herald article on its liquidation after a committee takeover, and 2019 Herald article on its eventual winding up), and served as something of a warning of the necessary care and attention when holding large assets.
• The (interim) Treasurer (Peter Hyde) at the time assessed the actual corporate operating costs (quite small) and interest income from the buffer (respectable), along with the growth in membership. Look for an email for 18-Oct-2008 in the committee list archives, for details.
  • The fee for full membership could be wound back to $10 p.a., while still covering these costs and delivering a small surplus.
  • To encourage membership retention, this $10 annual rate would only be offered for a three-year membership.
  • A single year membership fee of $15 was intended also to encourage longer term membership.

Day Member -> Event Member

At the same time, the Day Member temporary membership option was renamed to Event Member, clarifying that the membership lasted for the full duration of an event, including multiple day events.

• The rate for Event Membership was set, more-or-less arbitrarily, at $2 for an event; large enough to be perceptible but small enough to be tolerable.
• The hope/expectation was that event members would tend to migrate to full membership, so that this amount was not important in the larger financial picture.
• Rationale for having this class of membership was never formally stated, but the general executive thinking had several threads:
  • By having everyone at an event being a member, any ambiguity in our liability insurance cover for a mishap at that event seemed to be largely removed. Whether this ambiguity was ever a real thing was a thing we preferred not to test.
  • It supported the "private event" nature of our (non-demo) events, clarifying that random walk-ups had no expectation of being automatically allowed entry.
  • By signing in to an event as members, everyone there could be taken as having agreed to our standards of behaviour. Hence, a potential lever to eject anyone from an event or even SCANZ, whose behaviour was objectionable. This was something of a background idea, since the formal Code of Conduct was not published for another 10 years or so.

These membership fees, struck in 2008, are still in effect in 2025.