[Fsfe-uk] Increasing Membership

[Andrew Savory]

Hi,

One of the things that AFFS suffers from is a limited membership. There
were various discussions about "associate membership" and signing up
teachers a while back. I'd like to suggest other approachs (which may have
come up before)

Some of the people on this list work for or run businesses. This is
primarily for you, but I'd appreciate feedback from everyone.

Our income is from building Free Software sites and services and from
supporting Free Software. I'm considering reducing all our prices by 10
pounds, and adding ten pounds as "AFFS membership fee" to sign up a
nominated person at the customer site. To us, 10 pounds will make little
difference to the total price.

One benefit from this is that AFFS will get more funds and more members,
and even more exposure as it will be directly mentioned in invoices, etc
(demanding money greatly focuses the mind!).

Another benefit is we'll get members who are outside of IT (but who have
been convinced of the benefits of Free Software). The downside is that
these will be "one-off" members - it will be up to AFFS to retain them at
the end of the first year.

Which leads me neatly on to my next point. Are we currently doing anything
to retain members at the end of their first year membership? Are we doing
form mailings from the membership database?

Finally, do we have good links with the various conference organising
companies? I think it would be a good idea if we could arrange stands or
publicity at diverse events, not just specifically computing-related. The
only conference organisers I know of are 101 Communications, who are of
course predominantly IT-based. Does anyone know of any others we could
talk to?


Andrew.

-- 
Andrew Savory                                Email: address@hidden
Managing Director                              Tel:  +44 (0)870 741 6658
Luminas Internet Applications                  Fax:  +44 (0)700 598 1135
Orixo alliance: http://www.orixo.com/          Web:    www.luminas.co.uk