Becoming a member

https://community.resonate.coop/docs?topic=1288#h-10-admission-and-expulsion-14

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Hmm wait, why would this only apply to Fan Membership? If €1 of a Fan’s membership fee technically goes toward their share, wouldn’t this also make that necessary for the other two membership classes? Collaborators and Musicmakers aren’t expected to contribute €1 to cover their share… :thinking:

@Nick_M @peter

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We could of course simply issue the member share ‘free of charge’ in the same way as is done for music makers.

Membership share issue par value is not accounted for as income, and normally they are not subject to any sales tax.

However, I think there may be a legal requirement to collect a minimum of 5% of the par value as share ‘application money’. Not sure on this, need to check with RFS/CRO in Ireland.

Maybe it would be simpler if we charged all member classes up front (including the ‘free’ classes) to be refunded later, in credits, when the equivalent non-financial qualifying contribution… (an upload or labour contribution) has been successfully made.

The membership has to be underpinned by some form of KYC. For listeners we rely on a card payment to do this, with some proof that it is the card holder paying. For music makers we assume some sort of membership ritual that checks it is a genuine person applying.

Our community KYC rituals and checks are not in regular operation. They could be introduced as part of our TRUST community building processes … they could lead to the issue of a badge in Forum, backed by a digital membership share certificate that is portable to other co-operative communities that share our values.

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The Resonate model is based on typical worker/consumer coop models where workers earn their share and consumers pay for their share, with the remaining 4 euros going towards admin costs. The plan was long to make the 5 euros recurring once we were out of beta phase, which is happening very soon. (Fan motivation being access to co-op procedures such as voting and the potential for dividends, most likely taken in the form of streaming credits, for some yummy circular economy goodness.)

Once the User + Payments API is finished, and we’re looking at a stats dashboard showing everyone in all the various classes, this will all be a hundred times easier to manage and make sense of IMHO.

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Yes it will be easier to administer in future. We still need to recognise in the process that music maker and worker (collaborator) share applications are in a ‘pending’ state until KYC has passed and a valid contribution (upload or labour contribution) has been made. Those user stories and processes are outlined in the ‘memberships’ part of the user and membership API, but the ‘memberships’ part has not been delivered in the current version of the user API. For relaunch we will have to support and administer this using the objects and features of the Stripe dashboard more fully.

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The thought is so beautiful I want to frame this sentence and put it on my wall :joy:

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Understood!

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…the good news is that we CAN handle them all OK, I hope(!), by setting them up properly as ‘products’ in Stripe Checkout, then use this Stripe dashboard UI to administer them.

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Just curious, is there a place in the guides that lists the benefits/responsibilities/etc of being each type of member (or are they all the same?)

Things like surplus sharing, voting rights, etc.

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🥲…I’m starting to tear up over here lol, so I can’t even imagine what it must be like for you all who have worked so hard on Resonate for so long…thank you!

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@datafruits There’s some guides I’ve been working on that simplify the information in the Rulebook, but they aren’t finished yet.

The Rulebook has the essential info in it when it comes to core governance and membership questions, but the Rulebook really would need an overhaul to become a clear and comprehensible resource for the co-op. I’ve made my way through the Rulebook dozens of times now and would not describe it as reader-friendly lol.

The board just launched a new project which is gonna be taking responsibility for writing new guides and materials. Really looking forward to it.

If you have any specific questions, shout em at me and I should have the answer to you real quick.

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Has been burned in my brain for at least four years now. :exploding_head:

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@datafruits

There’s a section of the supporter shares rules that was rewritten for greater clarity, including a worked example of interest and surplus distribution.

See:

https://community.resonate.is/t/definitions-supporter-shares-donations/1634/3?u=nick_m

However, this is still a T’s and 'C’s doc rather than a friendly, illustrated explainer.

I wonder if all this needs to be this complex?. I have always been hoping for some further rulebook simplification.

Maybe later we could research an ‘off the shelf’ version of a co-op friendly decision-making framework… there are so many digital governance frameworks and DAO’s out there now.

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