[Tfwebster]

As we continue to formalize our club, we're creating a formal membership agreement: what members do and what the club does in return.  Anyone able to offer good templates? Thank you.

[smkranz]

Anything "formal" about a homebrew club makes it less fun.  We do have bylaws, a tax ID and a bank account.  But if we asked our members to sign an agreement, that would be pretty much the end of our club.

As for dues, our club's are $18.50 for a single (renewing), $32 for couples, and a few bucks more for new members.  We didn't have any events last year, and have some money in the bank, so we waived dues for this year.

[ravenwater]

To review our bylaws go to worthogshc.com – Find the link in “Interested in joining us?- click here for more information”, it takes you to a page with “Click here to view our bylaws”.

Our club is formalized in that we have bylaws folks have to agree to abide by in order to become members, and we have club officers with fairly well-defined responsibilities. Within this much of how things get done is pretty organic and flexible as needed. We feel having bylaws helps nail down what members can expect and how details of maintaining a club are carried out. And, there’s never absolute protection from a lawsuit or claims of liability or unfair treatment, but our bylaws attempt to begin to give some protections against such things. It’s the stuff lawyers like. When you get a large-ish group of diverse personalities together imbibing alcohol, occasionally less than desirable stuff can happen. As for the thought that formalizing things detracts from the fun, I believe our members would argue otherwise – we have tons of fun and the social aspect of the club is front and center, but we've prevented things from being a free-for-all where the wheel has to be reinvented every time we want to do things like designate leadership roles or responsibility for club activities. Our bylaws outline what our philosophy and purpose are which helps those who might be interested in joining know what they’re getting into. We got large enough a move to greater formality seemed like a good plan. Yes, some would say our bylaws are wordy and overly-detailed. That's fine for them. Our members felt we had reasons for pursuing this format.