[rfu-membership] Call for Caucus on Facilitating Collection of Membership Income Proposal

[Mike Lehman]

Hi Ray and Aaron,
I've not heard from either of you after sending out an explanation of 
what the current status of membership income needed to pay for internet 
streaming licensing is in order to facilitate accomplishing its 
collection in the future, as well as to facilitate this important source 
of income for basic station operations.

Since you are the two who had the blocking concerns at the last general 
meeting on the RFU-Membership proposal that would have increased 
membership to $24/year and collected it from everyone as it becomes due 
as of Sept. 1 each year, I wanted to check to see if either of you have 
any suggestions to modify the proposal to collect this income based on a 
once a year basis.

I think we can all agree that collection of membership income on a 
rotating basis is just not working, because it imposes an unnecessary 
burden on volunteers working in the Membership group. It is also 
impractical to change the studio lock code once a month in order to 
exclude those who memberships have come due, but who haven't paid, if we 
continue on the ineffective and impractical rotating monthly collection 
basis we have been unable to accomplish up to this point. There is no 
other practical way to enforce collection of memberships. As we're all 
aware, voluntary collection is generating nowhere near enough income to 
sustain essential station operations, let alone funding the streaming 
copyright fees.

I have no problem with dropping the part of the proposal that requested 
an increase in membership to $24/year in order to make easy calculation 
of a prorated membership possible. I'd suggest that we adopt Dan's 
proposal to drop membership to $18/year to facilitate calculation of the 
proration at $1.50/month.

As I noted in my explanation of the current situation, neither of these 
rates (either $24/year or $18/year) is actually high enough to implement 
paying for the streaming copyrights with the current size of the 
membership -- or perhaps even to maintain essential station operations. 
I would welcome a counter-proposal that is high enough to do both, but I 
am trying to come up with something that will address your concerns. Not 
having the rate too high, while apparently counterproductive to your 
ultimate goal of helping fund streaming, seems as if it is still 
important to you both.

The one thing we have to do is move forward on this. We can't afford to 
simply wait and hope that some magical solution will solve this problem, 
as funning for even essential station operations runs out at the end of 
the year. In the absence of any other plan to fund those and streaming 
copyright costs, there is no alternative. We need something we can all 
agree on and meets the concerns of everyone.

Under the way consensus is practiced at the IMC and in IMC-affiliated 
groups, those with blocking concerns are obligated to caucus with others 
and formulate a proposal that addresses their concerns after blocking a 
proposal. Otherwise, the proposal moves forward at the next meeting. I 
wanted to remind you of this opportunity so that we can accomplish this 
before Tuesday's meeting.
Mike Lehman