An Announcement Concerning Membership

Greetings unto the membership of the SCA.

At the Third Quarter 2002 meeting of the SCA Board of Directors, held July 20, 2002 in Herndon, VA, the Board acted on the membership unbundling/fee increase proposal that has been out for comment. A total of 525 comments were received (a very high response rate in comparison to other items for which comment has been requested). No one option got a majority, but the most popular ideas were:

1) removing either Tournaments Illuminated (TI) or both TI and the member's Kingdom newsletter from the basic membership package (33%)
2) simply raising fees across the board (31%)
3) reinstating the Non-member Surcharge (22%).

It is noteworthy that, despite the Board's definitive statement that "pay-to-play" was not being considered, 11% of the respondents specifically said they favored that option.

The Board decided that:

1. TI will become an optional publication. The price of a sustaining membership will remain US$35 per year, but will no longer include TI-those subscriptions will be sold separately. The price of a TI subscription will be decided upon after consultation with the editor and the Corporate office to determine actual costs--the idea is that it will become self-supporting. Existing memberships will remain unchanged (that is, will continue to receive TI) until their expiration date.
2. The subscription price for additional publications will increase, as will the first-class option price for all newsletters (whether included in a membership or as an additional publication)
3. The kingdoms will get US$2 more per label per year in stipends. This is in response to the increased costs of producing and mailing the newsletters (for example, postage just went up again).
4. A nonmember surcharge of US$3 per event per non-member attendee will be instituted. These fees will go directly to the Corporation. The Society Seneschal and the corporate office will work with the kingdom officers on details of implementation.

All of the above items are to go into effect January 1, 2003. Some corresponding change to International memberships will be made in the future (hopefully in time to be implemented as of 1 January) but has not yet been decided upon by the Board of Directors.

Respectfully,

Andrew Smith
Andrew of Riga
Secretary, SCA Inc.

Comments are strongly encouraged and can be sent to:
SCA Inc.
Box 360789
Milpitas,  CA 95036