How are membership dues distributed? A couple years back I had a concern about the term of a membership. I had joined and paid in September, and was asked to renew again in December. The by-laws state 4.2.2 Membership dues shall cover a period of one year beginning with the first day of the first full month of active membership and extending to the last day of the month at the end of that one year period. But I was told then that the by-laws had changed and it was done January1 to Dec 31. But yet the posted By-Laws remain the same. This could be confusing to new members

Good question Made in Detroit!

The by-laws regarding membership dues have not changed. Everyone's membership is good for one year. 

For the last several years we have asked that members re-up at the end/beginning of each year to make it easier for the club to manage renewals. It's been suggested that we can't manage to keep up with renewals throughout the year because we are  a bunch of "ADD males". That's partially true, but we haven't had a good process and program for sending reminders to "lapsing" memberships throughout the year without asking extraordinary efforts from our membership coordinator. 

We have gotten a large portion of our members on the "year-end renewal program". We have been asking those who have joined or renewed sometime during the previous year - particularly if it was in the first half of the year - to renew at year end to help us out and get with the year-end renewal schedule. However, we will of course always honor each member's full year's membership no matter when it is paid. Everyone is certainly welcome to renew at their annual anniversary. We just don't have a process to remind everyone of individual renewals at this time.

I do believe we need to reconsider how we manage our membership renewals and seek a better way to ask our members to renew their membership. The year-end renewal program is not really efficient for everyone and we may even risk alienating some members by asking them to re-up less than 12 months after they joined or last renewed. Our members are our greatest asset and we need to do our best to both recognize and honor the committment our new and renewing members make.

We will look into the issue and see if we can make improvements. I'm sure Catsrulen would agree that we are not just a bunch of ADD males!

If anyone has suggestions or concerns, please feel free to let me know.

Jim Grover
President, Tarheel Trailblazers