Re: membership

[Robert Pries <robertpries@embarqmail.com>]

Sue; I am back from digging and will try to answer your second question about
the Affiliation fee.



First I want to note that directors and committee chairs do not get their
travel or hotel paid for by AIS. Because it is somewhat of a financial burden,
when I was timed out on the board as a director I presumed I could miss a
meeting now and then. I believe the motion to change the affiliates fee was at
a fall board meeting. Previously affiliates had to have over half of their
members as AIS members. Many clubs simply require you join AIS to be a member
while others are reluctant to do this and had the problem of ascertaining
whether they met the 50% requirement. Each year this could be a real horror
for each RVP to verify the membership in all their regions clubs. It could
also be a challenge for the local club presidents to report. The AIS
membership lookup tried to help with this but still many RVPs and Local club
presidents complained it seemed like busy work. It is often hard to get people
to take these positions and so it was considered that maybe we should do this
another way.



In case you have not noticed there has been a real effort on AISs part to make
membership in AIS worthwhile. We would like to think that people want to
become members and not that they are coerced into doing so. Many clubs played
all sorts of games of paying for local club memberships for people they knew
were AIS members. I believe the board just reached the point that they felt
why encourage this dishonesty and why make officers go through all this work.
A simple lower fee for everyone seemed fair. The benefits in insurance
coverage, alone for each affiliate is much. much, more than this.



Maybe we can never win the hearts and minds of some people but the goal is to
create an organization that people want to be a part of and see the value in
doing so. B  If those people who are not members could help us make a better
organization than please step forward.



----- Original Message -----

Hi Sue,
Yes I have been following the various threads on Iris Lovers and am aware of
the concerns and have answered some of them individually. I'll try to answer
those that you bring up here by adding my answers in blue.


-----Original Message-----
>From: Sue
>Sent: Jul 16, 2012 10:56 PM
>To: aisdiscuss@aisboard.org
>Subject: [AISdiscuss] membership
>
>Good Day, I'm Sue Ann Barnes, RVP for Region 7.
>
>I've been reading AIS discuss posts for over a year now, but have never
>posted. But by "listening" in I've learned a lot. And have become aware
>of an issue that may need some attention.
>
>Today on the Face Book group "Iris Lovers" there was a question about
>having to be an e-member to have access to the iris register. So that if
>you also want to have a hard copy of the bulletin, you are talking about
>regular and e-membership. Some voiced the opinion that they might go
>just with the e-membership.


People have every right to choose just the emembership if that's what they
want. It gives them both Iris Register, Irises, our magazine in pdf format and
Basic Iris Culture in pdf format. We want people to choose what's best for
their lifestyle.

>Years ago, my husband and his mother got me a life membership, so that
>having to do an e-membership does mean I am back to having to remember
>to re-up, when I have not done so for more than twenty years.
>The reasons for these needed changes are understandable in light of our
>increasingly paperless world, but they are not well explained on the
>web-site and it is hard for people to accept that you need two
>memberships to AIS to get what you want.


As of today AIS has 4,537 members, of those 336 are ememberships. The vast
majority (92.6%) haven't shown any interest in having access to Iris Register.
In the 8 months since its start I've only had 2 complaints from those 4,537
people. One was a life member who didn't think he should have to pay for
access to Iris Register and one who thought he could only have one or the
other (paper vs print)


B Some members are not yet aware
>of the increase in the cost of the e-membership over the cost of just
>the register that they paid earlier. And when the register first became
>available we could pay for more than one year. We can't do that now.
>Some AIS members may have to keep track of two different renewal dates
>and of course pay two fees.

We sent an email to all Iris Register members explaining the change and the
difference in price last August, 4 months before it was implemented. There was
no hue and cry from any of the 240 Iris Register members at that time, in fact
there wasn't even a single response pro or con.
You can take out multiple years by changing the quantity of ememberships you
buy and as for keeping track of when your expirations are, I send out
reminders on ememberships about 2 weeks before they are due to the email I
have on record. The standard membership renewals are mailed to the address of
record 4 to 6 weeks before they are due.

>I wanted the board to be aware of the rumblings from the ranks. You
>might check out the Iris Lovers comments and get a feel for what you
>might do on the web or in print to clarify the changes. Many AIS members
>are not travelers. They do not go the Regional, let alone, National
>meetings, and so may miss information on these changes.
>
>There have also been some rumblings about the affiliation fee. Last year
>that caught many clubs off guard, and though, in many ways it is much
>easier for the RVP, there is now no incentive for a local club to have
>more than its officers AIS members and that may also eventually slow the
>flow of people who are qualified to become judges. Some clubs in our
>region had all or nearly all of their members AIS so that the club did
>not have an affiliation fee. Now there is no incentive for this.

Sorry, I can't speak to this, It's something Judy Keisling in her capacity as
Judges Chair has I'm sure thought about. She would have to speak to it.

>You may want to go to the Iris Lovers group and read some of the
>comments, questions and responses. It might also be useful to provide a
>guideline on membership to the RVPs so that we could be ready to answer
>questions and be a point of distribution of information. The new
>membership flyers have very little information about e-memberships on
>them, and people who have been members for years are not likely to pick
>one up and read it. Tom's information is printed on it, but I don't know
>if he has been contacted by those confused by the changes.


Unfortunately the flyers were printed before the implementation of emembership
and will be updated for the next printing. As I mentioned earlier I've had 2
people in the last 8 months who have called or emailed their confusion to me.
One I was able to resolve, the other not so much.
My guidance to the RVP's is that Emembership can be a stand alone option for
AIS membership complete with all the perks including voting B and judgeship.
Everything except a printed Bulletin.
For those who want a real magazine with slick glossy covers that they can hold
in their hands and refer to later, they should choose one of the traditional
memberships.
For those who want both, buy both

>
>Sue Ann Barnes
>205 Westwood Ave
>Jackson, TN 38301
>731-422-5253
>731-499-1396
>barnes-s@charter.net
>Success is: Being true to yourself.
> Loving what you do.
> Doing what you love.
>
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Tom Gormley
AIS Membership Secretary
PO Box 177
DeLeon Springs, FL 32130
386-277-2057
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