[Artemisia] Fwd: [Announcements] Membership Fees

[Rachael Emborg]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Leslie Luther-Fulton <janefalada at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 5:55 PM
Subject: [Announcements] Membership Fees
To: sca Announcements <announcements at sca.org>



Due to extraordinary legal expenses from an ongoing lawsuit, the SCA has
determined that our best option is to raise membership fees in most classes
by $8.00, effective January 1, 2011. Family membership rates will not
increase, although the family cap for memberships will be raised by $5.00
effective the same time.



When we indicated in 2009 that membership fees would raise gradually over
the next three years, we were not fully aware of the extent and impact of
the legal fees required to defend our organization. Earlier this year we
received a realistic projection for legal expenses through 2011. We are
committed to protecting not only the SCA Inc., but the assets of every SCA
group. This lawsuit may go on for additional years and cost-cutting alone
will not be sufficient.



We are formulating a plan to get the SCA back on track and are selecting
options to restructure our operating business model. One option is a move to
electronic kingdom newsletters with a print-on-demand option for those who
would like to get their version in hardcopy. With these changes, there are
many details to consider

including: legal issues surrounding the fulfillment of our current
subscription liability; the development of an electronic publishing
framework for use by kingdom chroniclers that supports both web-publishing
and print-on-demand; writing relevant changes to governing documents,
officer handbooks, and kingdom procedures; and making dramatic programming
changes to the SCA website and corporate systems.

The current migration of corporate and Society officer email addresses to a
more robust infrastructure is a step in this direction.



It is our hope that as financial circumstances evolve we will be able to
re-evaluate the entire membership fee structure once the effectiveness of
the restructured business model can be determined. This would include
evaluating the necessity of collecting NMS as well as potential reductions
in membership fees.



There will be many stages in this process where feedback will be needed and
solicited. We want to be completely transparent with any changes that will
be made, and will share details as they become available. As every year, the
budget will be posted on the SCA website as soon as it is approved for your
review. Our job is to keep you as fully informed as possible and in that
spirit we welcome any and all questions and comments. For the moment, please
submit questions and comments through comments at sca.org.



Finally, this process will be very difficult and take many months to
complete, so please bear with us. During this time, Board members will be
attempting to attend as many events as possible to be available to answer
your questions.



The SCA Board of Directors




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

You may also email comments at lists.sca.org.

This announcement is an official informational release by the Society for
Creative Anachronism , Inc.  Permission is granted to reproduce this
announcement in its entirety in newsletters, websites and electronic mailing
lists.