subscriptions for small non profit clubs

wendywearl

Can someone help me with subscriptions?  We have a club of about 40-50 people.  I am wondering whether we should waive our £5 annual membership fee and just increase the entry by £1 per month?  Can someone advise on the best way forward?

born_again

wendywearl said:

Can someone help me with subscriptions?  We have a club of about 40-50 people.  I am wondering whether we should waive our £5 annual membership fee and just increase the entry by £1 per month?  Can someone advise on the best way forward?

I think dropping subs of £5 a year & charging a extra £1 a month is going to lead to either a lot of complaints on the increase. Or people simply not bothering to turning up.

You are going from £5 a year to £12 a year if they turn up each month a 100%+ increase...

Would you be happy to pay that much more?

You might get away with 50p a month.

MyRealNameToo

born_again said:

wendywearl said:

Can someone help me with subscriptions?  We have a club of about 40-50 people.  I am wondering whether we should waive our £5 annual membership fee and just increase the entry by £1 per month?  Can someone advise on the best way forward?

I think dropping subs of £5 a year & charging a extra £1 a month is going to lead to either a lot of complaints on the increase. Or people simply not bothering to turning up.

You are going from £5 a year to £12 a year if they turn up each month a 100%+ increase...

Would you be happy to pay that much more?

You might get away with 50p a month.

Guess it depends on how often members attend and what they get from their membership outside of the "entry"

wendywearl said:

Can someone help me with subscriptions?  We have a club of about 40-50 people.  I am wondering whether we should waive our £5 annual membership fee and just increase the entry by £1 per month?  Can someone advise on the best way forward?

Would need to know a lot more... you say to "increase" the entry which would imply there is already an entry fee? 

How often do your members typically attend? Is this same for all members or a wide spectrum of how often they attend?
What do members get in exchange for their fees? 
Can non-members attend and just pay the entry? 

Savvy_Sue

I'd be asking your members, but also what you need the subs for. 

Many 'halls for hire' require that groups making bookings must have insurance. Getting subs in once a year makes it easier to pay for that. 

I'm in a local walking group. Our annual subs pay for insurance, publicity, an annual social event and the costs of organising other outings, eg we can pay mileage if someone's going to check out our Big Day Out. 

Non-members can tag along to anything, but if someone was regularly attending walks we'd ask them to 'join' so that if they have an accident, there won't be any quibbles about insurance. For that reason if no other I'd want to keep the subs. 

I'm also in the local history group. They charge subs which get you into all meetings for free, and mean you get the emails advertising said meetings and other historical stuff. If you're not a member, you'd have to pay to attend any meetings you want to go to. I don't know if we have insurance. 

I think they benefit by charging subs, because I don't get to many meetings - I actually joined during Covid when talks were on Zoom, and recorded so you could watch them again if you'd dropped off part-way through! But if I wasn't a member, I'd never get any reminders, which I need if I'm going to get to anything!