Aaron the Librarian

As mentioned previously, I am on the Reactor Panel for the Presidential Task Force on the Graduated Dues Study. My involvement pre-dates the Task Force creation from while I was a (physically present) “virtual member” of the ALA Membership Committee.

Without having access to the ALA Council III session transcripts I have no idea how this effort was reported to Council; transcripts would be so nice to fact check myself. However, blaming only me for misstatements and errors, from the meeting of the Task Force I attended, in my capacity as a Responder, I recall the following tidbits of information:

• ALA has spent the staff-time equivalent of ~$60K to determine feasibility of Dues study
• ALA is preparing to do a study the feasibility of a member dues structure based on salary or other structures
• Salary-based was one of several models
• Benefits-based tiers (names supplied in this post by me — I forgot what these were really called)
• basic membership=$=a member, only standard discounts on services/publications
• advanced membership=$$=a member, with extra discounts on services/publications
• premium membership=$$$=a member, receiving all services/publications desired at no extra charge
• Keeping the structure we already have (flat fee)
• Others were mentioned but I do not recall how they were described
• The financial hit to the Association of the Study
• Not known how much the individual pieces of the study will cost
• RFI to go out Summer 2007 (probably end of July)
• Consulting teams can bid on all or parts of the project
• If whole project is out of single-year financial feasibility, parts will still be done
• Some prognostications on costs
• I’ve heard numbers bandied about *for the whole project* which come in at ~>$600K
• The history of the project as I know it
• This project is a “member driven initiative”
• It came out of a Membership Meeting where there was a quorum (50+ members, I think)
• I’m told the major sponsor of this program (in the Membership meeting where it was passed) is SRRT
• Council told the ALA Membership Committee to explore this
• Membership Committee (when I was on a few years back) originally sent a report back to Council suggesting that the cost would be prohibitive
• Council told ALA Membership Committee to plan the study anyway
• The project turned into a BARC/Membership Committee Joint Task Force
• Which then turned onto a Presidential Task Force (by ALA President Burger, I believe)
• The Reactor Panel and the Task Force members have finalized the pieces of the project
• The RFI should be announced in late July/early August

Would the outlay of this kind of money be beneficial for the Association?  I’m not sure; I feel more data is better than no data. The question for me is how would this affect the dues for the most people?  I suspect there won’t be all that many people suddenly paying *lower* dues, and plenty of people suddenly faced with higher dues if ALA moves to a graduated dues structure.

A couple of points to remember about this project, the Association staff are not doing this to try to maximize dues revenue; this project is a direct result of a “member initiated initiative;” the timeline for this started at a Membership Meeting right after the quorum requirements had been lowered to a mere 50 people.

Would I like to see a graduated dues structure replace the current flat rate (with exceptions for students, financially challenged, retirees, support staff, trustees, and the other exceptions I’m forgetting)?  I’m not sure.  I feel that if, for the most part, everyone is paying the same rate we all feel like equal partners in the efforts of the Association.  I would not want to see a class-based system based on perceived financial contributions to the Association.

We’ll see how this shakes out.