Dues-Deposit Societies
A safety valve for explosive political battles in membership organizations
Kevin Langdon
Most of the membership organizations I'm familiar with, and especially (for some reason ;-) ) the high-IQ societies, seem to get into bitter, and often prolonged, disputes every few years. Things get ugly and highly polarized, but neither side will let go of its grip on the society. What is a society? It's a name, a membership, and a treasury (possibly including non-monetary assets). Here's an idea for a practical approach to the periodic schisms in such organizations.
Instead of paying dues, members would deposit funds in individual accounts with the
society, which would be decremented for each member's proportional share of the costs of
publication of the journal and other expenses. This would be easy to do with a little
programming. There would be no society treasury at all apart from these accounts. All
members' accounts would be decremented when each issue of the journal was published and
quarterly for other expenses. When a member's account dropped below a certain amount, the
Treasurer would remind him to make another deposit. Any member could resign at
any time and get his deposited funds back.
When there were fundamental disagreements, the parties could go their separate ways much
more easily. Those who did not care to associate with one another could form their own
groups from the former one, taking their dues-deposits with them. In case of a split, any
faction not claiming 2/3 of the original membership would have to choose a new name.