[H-GEN] Constitutional changes I will be proposing at the AGM

[Matthew Franklin]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Russell Stuart
<russell-humbug at stuart.id.au> wrote:
>> If we feel that Humbug needs more money, maybe to cover some future
>> expense, then why not just increase the fee overall?
>
> As I said in the proposal, I specifically did not want to alter the fees
> Humbug receives.  That was quite deliberate, as I wanted to avoid the
> rather obvious trap of this proposal getting chewed up and discarded in
> because of some irrelevant discussion about the appropriate level of
> membership fees.
>
> If you want to have that discussion and to argue that we should _reduce_
> the fees Humbug gets (because that is in effect what you are proposing)
> then by all means lets have that discussion.  But I'd rather not get it
> tangled up with this one.
But to the person that is paying the fee it would look like an
increase. If by allowing people to pay online brings in more
membership then, depending on the break even point, the fees that
Humbug would get would be increased. Not decreased.

As to you not wanting to get tangled up in a discussion about the
appropriate level of membership fees I'm sorry but you already are.

Is it worthwhile going down the online payment model? Are there better
ways of doing it? Should we say that the value of membership changes
depending on whether people attend meetings or are just online
members? Is online membership really just a donation or is it more
than that?

You've opened up a can of worms here Russell. My opinion is that if we
get new members, even if they are online only, then that's a good
thing. That's provided that at the end of the day we have a positive
figure in the bank and that we aren't spending heaps of time and
effort managing the system.

I don't care about making money for Humbug. I care about there being a Humbug.

Matt.