Here’s another resolution I’d like to float for the AGM. I’ve briefly discussed it already with both @brndnkng and @piper and am curious to hear people’s thoughts.
Resolution to sustain Resonate
WHEREAS Resonate almost exclusively relies on member support to pay for critical infrastructure
WHEREAS Cost of servers and other services has gone up in the past year
WHEREAS A monthly recurring payment makes it much easier for us to project our income month to month
THEREFORE LET IT BE RESOLVED that the Qualifying Contribution for Listener Membership be changed from an annual fee of €10 to a monthly fee of €3, or €36 annually.
THEREFORE LET IT BE RESOLVED that Resonate members can choose to pay a higher monthly membership payment, but that this will not impact their votes as outlined in the bylaws.
THEREFORE LET IT BE RESOLVED that the membership fee can be waived by the Resonate board for prospective members experiencing financial precarity
my suggestion would be to charge a higher monthly (2.5 or 3) and then discount for annual so you encourage more people to do yearly – strictly for reducing credit card fees. (cheaper to have one single payment than 12.)
side note… this strictly applies to the Listener class, so would this vote be only for them?
I really don’t like this, but more importantly, is it even possible to have membership be two different prices?
But yeah I’ve always hated the “have enough money to pay upfront all in one go? Then it’s cheaper for you!”. I know it’s very common and how must sub operate, but it still doesn’t make it good and for something like a membership, it’s ethically catastrophic.
“don’t like this” meaning my suggestion or the original post?
the co-op can set whatever membership prices it wants… the only “legal” requirement (according to the rulebook) is a one-time one euro fee for purchasing a single share.
I’d counter that membership is optional, so anyone who can’t afford it doesn’t need to pay. Ethically, there will always be trade-offs. Is it ethical to…
use a platform that wouldn’t exist without volunteer labor?
not suggest an annual discount, only to enrich a corporate payments provider through numerous monthly transactions?
use fiat currency?
Ok I threw in that last one because I thought two bullet points looked a little lame. (Ha! Forget the third point I was gonna make.)
I think the payment processor fees are a very good thing to bring up!
Here’s some math with the suggested amounts:
period
membership fee
stripe charge
what we get
over a year
monthly
2.00
0.36
1.64
19.68
yearly
24.00
1.00
23.00
23.00
monthly
2.50
0.37
2.13
25.60
yearly
30.00
1.17
28.83
28.83
monthly
3.00
0.39
2.61
31.32
yearly
36.00
1.34
34.66
34.66
^ The amounts are calculated based on the US Stripe fee of 2.9% + $0.30
I hadn’t really considered that annual fees would be significantly cheaper (a difference of 3 dollars with the current resolution).
One way of doing this that I notice that most not-for-profit places do is to actually put the cost of the fee on the user. They just add the processing fee after the actual transaction. I personally think this is a bit skeevy. I feel like we’re a bit better off just calculating that cost in.
Edit: we don’t need a discount on annual membership fees for it to be better for us and less money to stripe. We could just say that up front? We could even add a little calculation for folks to display how much goes to Stripe.
Please let’s just not devolve this conversation into whataboutism. I don’t think it helps clear the point. I was just making an observation that membership should be fixed fee and not cheaper for richer people.
This is my opinion also. Let people choose and explain to them we’re making more if they pay upfront despite not charging them more.
To the last point; many social/political organizations I’m a member of have what they call “solidarity based membership fees”.
It entails
Discounted membership fees for unemployed/students/other groups regularly experiencing financial precarity.
A tier with higher fees for people with higher incomes.
Members themselves choose which tier to pay for, and are expected to and responsible for choosing honorably.
The user experience is smoother and less shaming, and bureacracy for the coop is reduced; as compared to a model where every at-the-moment poor prospective member must send an application to have their financial precarity confirmed.
What do you folks think about employing this at Resonate?
This sounds fine by me and I think if we implement it that way even after the resolution is passed I think we could probably say “the board decided to implement it that way”.