Mark & ODV —
N2COP and I “missed the memo”, too. For us, the subject came to our attention when a
younger (20- or 30-something) League Member cornered each of us individually at the Shelby NC hamfest on Labor Day weekend and asked why ARRL Life Membership was no longer available on the time-payment plan. (And, to be clear,
other Members have asked me about it since then.)
As soon as we got back home from Shelby, Bill and I exchanged a series of e-mails with Diane Petrilli and Diane Middleton regarding the change. Diane P. confirmed that the time payment option had been eliminated and Diane M. explained the financial
rationale behind the change. In short, HQ has taken the position that younger Members can effectively create their own “time-payment plan” by charging their Life Membership to their own credit cards. I don’t know about other young adults, but my 29-y/o
son would only entertain a $1700 lump-sum charge to his credit card if it were a necessary home repair or medical expense. Otherwise, his response would be “mañana”.
As I pointed out in our September e-mail exchange, if it hadn’t been for the time-payment plan when I was in my 20s, I would not have been able to become a Life Member when I did. It seems obvious to me that the longer one waits
to obtain a Life Membership, the less monetary sense it makes to the Member who is potentially interested. From HQ’s point of view, removing the time-payment option appears to have been a pure dollars and cents decision. From the younger Member’s point of
view, however, “perception” is often a bigger factor than what “works” for HQ, and the perception of flexibility on the part of the League to
accommodate a Member can only help build and assure future membership totals — even if HQ believes the incremental increase is too small to cater to.
Another part of the HQ argument I heard was that on the one hand the life membership option was expensive for the League to maintain — yet, on the other hand there were few, if any, “takers”. If both “facts” are true, then I would suggest perhaps
our time-payment accounting system was the wrong one.
I thought perhaps I hadn’t known about the change in policy because I didn’t come on the Board until January of this year. But perhaps others on ODV in 2018 and earlier weren’t aware of the change, either.
In any event, as of this writing, the time-payment option for Life Memberships is not currently available. I believe this is a decision that has not been completely analyzed but perhaps there were surveys that I’m not aware of that have been
conducted to explore younger Members’ propensity to obtain a Life Membership if a time-payment plan were available.
Bud,W2RU