Membership Fees in a pandemic
Given the COVID-19 situation, we’re having to re-think how we deliver Student Opportunities in the 2020-21 academic year. Who would have thought 6 months ago that we’d be planning virtual welcome socials and in many cases, abandoning our Freshers’ Fairs? Can we expect student groups (clubs and societies) to charge a membership fee when their members are having a less than ideal experience? We think you can, but you need to encourage your groups to make conscious decisions about these fees.
Membership fees for student groups have always been a bit weird. They come up most years as one of those ‘we will re-think that in Summer’ as whilst on the surface it’s a simple piece of work, actually it’s more complicated (as are most things in students’ unions!)
Why do we have to go and make things so complicated?
Complication no.1: sports clubs charge more than societies
Now this isn’t necessarily a problem. Usually, sport costs more than societies to do, so naturally it will cost more. Problems arise when students can’t afford to do sport, and when sports have bigger budgets than societies and the societies people are upset about this.
Complication no.2: you can join a society or club, but you need to join our Sports Guild/AU/Societies Federation first
This one is usually an insurance thing. It’s easier to see how many student you need to insure for certain activities if they’ve joined the right set of groups. It often creates confusion for potential members and can put them off joining altogether
Complication no.3: membership fee guesswork
How often do our student groups plan their yearly activities, budget for them (including other sources of income), then work out how much they need to charge for membership to cover their activities? Not very often.
Usually they either:
Charge what they’ve always charged, or
Add a few £ on last year’s fee because…inflation?
Complication no.4: can I have my money back please?
How many people reading this joined all. the. groups. at your own Freshers’ Fair, only to try out one society and hate it, not turn up to most of the others’ first socials and then settle on one out of the 10 that you joined at the Fair? It can’t have just been me?
Lots of students sign up, don’t enjoy it and don’t ask for their money back.
Others want to do it but can’t due to timetabling issues, not enough space on the team or hidden costs that they can’t afford. They usually still don’t ask for their money back.
There’s all of these complications in a ‘normal’ year, so you can see why we don’t tend to open up the membership fees box very often. So, we don’t usually make change and we crack on with other pieces of work.
But this year is different because all of those usual sticky subjects (memberships, risk management, space for activities, initiations) have been put into sharp focus by this pandemic.
But this post isn’t about all of those other issues. It’s about membership fees.
Can we justify charging if groups aren’t operating in the same way?
The short answer on this one is that you can still charge membership fees for student groups.
The longer answer is below…
Things cost money
Your members aren’t naive. Paying to do something fun and interesting is fine. It’s our job to help our groups to make it fun and interesting.
Paying for something suggests it’s valuable
There’s psychological evidence that suggests that people don’t value free stuff.
The admin is easier and probably more reliable
Students are more likely to sign-up and give you their details if they’ve paid. Free clubs and societies usually get lower sign up numbers. If they’ve signed up, you know who you’re insuring, you know which groups are more popular and you have an idea of how many people might turn up to events.
Still not sure what to do, here are your options summarised:
Remove membership fees for all groups
Remove membership fees for some groups
Keep fees the same across all groups
Change membership fees across all groups – work through calculator
Change some groups’ membership fees to termly
Change all groups’ membership fees to termly
Make a decision strategically about what is best for your SU, your groups and your students.
You’ve decided to change membership fees, what do you do now?
Governance
The Charity Commission doesn’t require clubs and societies to have a membership fee. Your SU bye-laws might.
Changing membership fees holistically for student groups at your SU usually involves some (frankly dull, sorry governance people) paperwork around student group constitutions and SU bye-laws. Written down somewhere in your SU governing documents will be a line or two about what groups must charge (or that they must not charge at all in some cases).
Communicating to your groups
One of the main complaints we hear from student groups is that their SU doesn’t communicate well enough with them, particularly about big decisions.
If you’re changing anything to do with how your groups are managed and administrated for the first term of the 2020-21 academic year, you need to talk to your groups now.
The value of membership
Whether it’s the Chess Club, Cheer, Chemistry Society or Cricket, committees should be able to communicate the value of being a member. Whether a group costs £10 or £100 to join, it needs to fun, interesting, beneficial and worthwhile. Our role working and volunteering in Student Opportunities is to create experiences that are worth the investment of time (and money, if we’re charging for it).
To help committees to think about this, we’ve made this tool that you can download.
We ran a session about this at Students’ Unions Digital conference back in July. Watch the session here.