Dues for Home Brew Club

[Lager]

Our club is starting to grow and we are thinking about starting dues. I was wondering if anyone who is part of an established club would be willing to answer a few questions
Does your club have Dues?
How much are they?
Is it mandatory?
Do you have an option for those who don’t want to pay dues but want to participate occasionally in club events? Such as paying per meeting or activity.
What do you do if someone who was a paying member doesn’t pay after a few reminders?
What if they end up showing up at your meetings or events, are they asked to leave?
Thank you in advance

[denny]

Our club is starting to grow and we are thinking about starting dues. I was wondering if anyone who is part of an established club would be willing to answer a few questions
Does your club have Dues?
How much are they?
Is it mandatory?
Do you have an option for those who don’t want to pay dues but want to participate occasionally in club events? Such as paying per meeting or activity.
What do you do if someone who was a paying member doesn’t pay after a few reminders?
What if they end up showing up at your meetings or events, are they asked to leave?
Thank you in advance

Our club dues are $20/person, $25/family.  We'll let people come and check out a meeting or 2, but after that they have to pay dues.  If they don't pay, they are dropped from the mailing list of club activities.

[Jimmy K]

Our dues are $1 per person/meeting.  It is mandatory and we send somebody around at the beginning of the meeting (before we start tasting) to collect. We don't really ever have problems with it.

[smkranz]

Our dues are $15/$25.  That money gets spent on things like our web domain, the large annual events we host including Big Brew, our annual Brew-Ha-Ha, BrewCamp, an annual beer festival and competition, and our holiday party.  About every other year, we also order T-shirts and engraved tasting mugs for new members who don't have them or who want to add to their collection, and the dues subsidize a portion of those costs as well.  In years past, the club also used its treasury to help offset the cost of shipping our beers to the NHC.

Our dues are payable every January.  New members who join during the year pay a pro-rated amount based on when they join, then all renewal invoices (PayPal makes this easy) go out to the entire membership in December.  By late February/early March, if someone has not paid their dues we'll start sending reminders.  PayPal makes that easy, too.  We'll give folks at least one more heads-up after that, before dropping them from the club's roster and email list (and revoking their Members Only access to our web site).

We do not have a fixed meeting place, but rather have tastings at members' homes where lots of good food is provided by the host.  For these tastings, we collect a $5/head tasting fee which covers at least portion of the host's costs for food, paper/plastic, etc.

[garc_mall]

Ours are $20/$30. They go to setting up for competitions, paying for food at meetings, and occasionally paying for beer (either as a commercial calibration, or to support the brewery we meet at). If you join after June, we only charge $10. it's pretty simple, and kept it only homebrewers who show up.

[mabrungard]

We have been charging $20/yr for individuals for years.  We recently started providing commercial examples of the beer style of the month that are sampled at our monthly meeting.  So now attending the monthly meetings is a way to enjoy the fruits of their dues.  Its a win-win for everyone.  The club shows a definite benefit for membership and membership grows and the meetings tend to get more members there and the activity grows. 

This is the same thing that my old club in Tallahassee does.

[Bruce B]

How much are they? - Mostly a quickly copy from our web site - The Beer Barons of Milwaukee is open to anyone 21 years of age or older. Annual dues are $20.00 ($30 family), which are mainly used to cover the cost of producing the clubs newsletter (equipment, insurance, PO Box, etc). In addition, we normally charge a $5.00 or $10.00 fee at each meeting attended to cover the cost of the featured beer style we taste that evening. However, additional fees may be required to cover the cost of higher priced beers such as Belgian Ales or special events such as the annual party in December.
Is it mandatory? - Yes after a 3 month trial.
Do you have an option for those who don’t want to pay dues but want to participate occasionally in club events? Such as paying per meeting or activity. - Officially no.
What do you do if someone who was a paying member doesn't pay after a few reminders? - We keep 'reminding them'.  Eventually they sign up or fade away.
What if they end up showing up at your meetings or events, are they asked to leave? - Officially yes, but realistically no.  They still get their pink wrist band and are 'reminded' that they should officially renew.

Here is a link to the Barons payments page if you'd like to see how we break it down - http://beerbarons.org/index.php/about/payments

It's important to note that our membership does get us discounts at local homebrew shops, brew pubs, and a CO2 gas vendor.

[dbeechum]

The Falcons are $25 / year and for that you get discounts at the area's homebrew shops and a few liquor stores and some restaurants.

They're payable throughout the year and we try and handle as much as possible via our online store, but we still have the wonderful paper option.

We don't enforce any sort of mandatory "join" period, mostly because we're too lazy to enforce it and most everyone joins us.

We use the dues to fund: our parties, special projects, a commercial beer tasting every month, etc.

[yates]

Thanks for asking this question, Lager.  Our club also recently started collecting dues.  I will admit that it was a bit of a culture shock for me. That said, the $3/month seemed very reasonable when taking into account our very active web forums, the frequent giveaways [including three free TAPNY beer festival tickets valued at $70 a piece], and the amount of homebrew you get to sample at each meeting.  Plus, we have recently implemented our own version of a "Brewfessor" series.  In speaking with many homebrew club officers at NHC this year, the one major take away I had was that including a brew-centric educational component in each meeting should help keep us a BREW club as opposed to a DRINKING club - which quickly became a problem at another club I'm in.

I also want to give a quick shout out to Bruce B.  Your seminar was a lot of fun at NHC.  I stole your idea and stuffed about 200 brew kits with flyers for our homebrew club at one of the local HBS's earlier this month.  Hopefully, a beginning brewer will open one of these shiny new kits and come play with us if they need some help or company!  I thought it was a great idea and I'll be keeping track of how many new members this brings in to make sure it was worth the time and ~$80 in photocopying fees...   

[Bruce B]

No problem.  I hope it helped and goes well for you guys.  The first time I did that our class was in late January and we got about 20 to 25 attendees.

[yates]

Boy, I'd be happy with 10!   

[tommymorris]

Our club dues are $25/year. You can come to two events free to try before you buy.

All dues are used to the benefit of members. Ex. food for parties, etc. I would say the benefits back to me are more than the $25.

[yates]

I agree.  As stated above, even at $36 per year [$3 per meeting] you are getting WAY more than $3 worth of beer.  Tonight was a light night for us and we still had 8 beers to sample.  We will regularly have as many as 15-20 and that's more than you can really sample safely even at 4 oz pours!

Plus, the feedback you get on your own homebrew costs you $7 plus shipping at a competition?  And you won't necessarily get an answer to a question, problem, or concern you ran into when making your beer.  All of a sudden, $3 per meeting is a steal.

We have also negotiated 10% off for club members at a couple of local homebrew shops, the beverage center [for CO2 fills, kegs, and kegging equipment], bars, and a restaurant.  I saved $2 just tonight!

[reverseapachemaster]

Our club is $30/individual and $40/family. Dues are not mandatory to attend meetings but they are mandatory to participate in the club competitions, big brew sessions, and participate on the club's forum. The meetings are open but there's only provided beer in a few of the meetings. Most of the drinking is beer provided by homebrewers and everybody shares.

I'm not really sure where all the money goes. We have over 200 paying members plus we get fees from the German-style homebrewing competition we run in September and part of Bluebonnet, plus you pay to get in on big brews, the intra-club competition in the fall and the end of year party. I'm sure the money is put to use somewhere. Hopefully the club has liability insurance.

I wish there was more education/technical skills time in the meeting and less open drinking time.

[dkfick]

Our club charges $25 per year this includes a spouse or significant other.  We allow people to attend a meeting or 2 without joining the club.  We work on the honor system.  But to help keep you honerable we have a very large party each year with thousands of dollars worth of stuff raffled off... You must be a member to attend so we usually have a rush of memberships from all the "slackers" just before that.  Most of our club events are open to the public as we would like to share our hobby with anyone.  We're not very strict on "forcing" people to get their dues paid or making people pay their dues to go to events (other than the big winter party).  Our local homebrew shop (Cap 'N Cork) does offer a 10% discount to anyone with a 'current' membership though... so I suppose that's a reason to renew your dues.