Given that HQ has taken the positions that:

• They are under no obligation to explain how they spent our fees and have gotten themselves into a financial black hole that may well end in insolvency for the STC international body

• That even if HQ did show us the books, we would misunderstand the numbers

• That they have suspended the discussion forums so that people could not talk together in one location about this dreadful situation, which, to be fair, was years in the making

• Their insistence that HQ now needs all of our membership fees rather than ‘merely’ 80 per cent of the fees with 20 per cent for the chapters

• That they are refusing to fund the local chapters but even have the gall to add on a chapter administration fee WHEN THEY ARE NOT PLANNING ON FUNDING LOCAL CHAPTERS AT ALL

I am deeply committed to our profession, and our need to band together for mutual education, but ‘the house is on fire, please throw your money on it and we won’t tell you why’ is akin to abuse. I have complete confidence in the leadership of my local chapter and will be turning over my membership fee in full to them at the January meeting.

Andy Gural
Chapter President 2007-2008

Just a heads up. The STC Communication which you’ve quoted no longer contains much of the original text. It’s been toned down a lot.

I noticed this today (October 29), when a member of the STC Board of Directors left a comment, expressing unfamiliarity with the quote: “The current thinking is that it is all Society money, which is why the Society felt okay with recapturing money that was largely originally received from members for the chapters.”
(Conversation at http://askbobkauten.com/blog/?p=876)

I looked it up, and the original communication no longer contains that sentence, or the entire topic that contained it. It’s difficult to discuss a communication that is in constant flux.

It may not be clear to members (or even to myself) which choice makes for a good citizen from the chapter’s perspective — to pay the fee or not to pay the fee. If the member chooses not to pay the chapter fee, but instead pays an attendance fee at the door, does this not help the chapter more directly?

I think the Society would have simplified thing greatly by doing away with chapter membership entirely, and funding local chapters based on geographical information in the membership database.

It was made pretty clear, after a while, that all the STC money goes into one pot from which chapters are funded. Nobody knows if the chapter fee will be tracked separately but consensus is that all STC money is pooled and chapter fees are not kept separate.

From the discussion on Ning, it also seemed clear that there are three reasons for a member to want to pay the $25 for chapter membership:

1) To take advantage of discounted admission to chapter events, if the chapter charges STCers who are not chapter members more than chapter members.

2) To take advantage of any password-protected chapter content that is available only to chapter members.

3) To be a good STC chapter citizen. It was made clear that a decrease in membership would result in careful scrutiny of chapter budgets. So, if your members say, nevermind, we’ll join the STC and forget the membership fee, and just go to the chapter anyway, then long-term that will, perhaps, hurt the chapter’s ability to get funding.

Cheers,

Sean