Adrian wrote:The membership fee was drastically reduced a few years ago because it was decided to try a new way of doing things,
And not only that, it was done after a great deal of debate and a democratic decision by the membership to move to a pay as you go model. If that decision is to be reversed it should be explicitly approved by the membership rather than conflated with a need to raise income.
and because it was possible to do so. Now that it's no longer possible, the fees will go up.
The need to raise more income does not in any way impact on the mechanism for that income to be raised.
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Not great, but I support it. £15 is still not excessive, and most/all of it is got back through the £2 discounts at events.[/quote]
One of the things that was changed when we move to the £5 membership model was dropping the requirement on clubs to charge a £2 surcharge on entries to non members. This was only ever introduced to try to give some incentive on people to join (at that time the concern was that the high membership fee was a deterring club-only members joining BOF). And it was resented by clubs who were actively trying to recruit new people to participate by offering discounted entry to first timers.