Explore the usage of Membership Models for partner communities

[choldgraf]

Context

Currently, we charge monthly fees in exchange for services as part of our Managed Hubs Service contract.
This is a straightforward "exchange of services for money" transaction.

However, this type of transaction has some drawbacks associated with it:

• Many public institutions have policies that require public bidding processes for services above a certain price. This makes the leads process much longer and makes it harder to build new connections with communities.
• Framing the collaboration as a service fee creates a "transactional" frame of mind, rather than one of shared interest and mission alignment.
• Putting a price on the service can make it harder for us to charge smaller prices for communities that have fewer resources.
• There are many things we do as part of our mission that aren't cleanly part of a service we provide to others. For example, helping upstream open source communities isn't something we are explicitly paid for.

Membership models might help this

We've had feedback from a few potential partners that a membership model might be a way of defining a non-transactional relationship between 2i2c and partner communities, while still sustaining our organization and providing services that are useful to these communities.

It may also allow us to create financial relationships with organizations that do not require complex bidding / justification processes. Many universities have a notion of "buying into a membership for academically-aligned organizations", and this has a less-complex procurement process.

Proposal: Research membership models and decide if they are a good fit with 2i2c

We should investigate membership-style models for organizations similar to our own.
We should ask questions like:

• How do those organizations use membership fees to sustain themselves?
• How do they describe "the stuff you get as part of membership?"
• Are there any red lines or challenges with tying "membership" to "services that you get"?
• Do membership models usually come with some kind of governing role (e.g. a board of advisees)?
• How many members do organizations usually need in order to sustain themselves? What are the lower/upper bounds of membership?

Checkpoints

• Find similar organizations with membership models
• Investigate the questions above
• Decide if it's worth development a membership model for 2i2c.

Examples of membership models

• The Carpentries membership model, which includes income-based pricing based on the country of the organization, and includes access to services and two seats on an advisory council.
• CrossRef's membership model, which has annual membership fees based on the budget of the decision-maker, and comes with a variety of membership rights

[damianavila]

This is quite an interesting proposal...
I guess we are talking about membership of organizations first, but the concept might be extended to small groups and even individuals as members, right?