Folks, I'm trying to think of ways to make membership in the Focus Fusion Society more valuable.
Swag
One thing most nonprofits do is send out "swag" - gifts, coupons, T-shirts, that sort of thing. All of this, of course, comes out of the budget of the organization, so a portion of your donation comes back to you in the form of the stuff.
Swag deduction
I was discussing this with a nonprofit colleague - we were talking about how to set up a "fundraising gala" for the Focus Fusion Society. She said typically, you plan the event, and, say, you hire a caterer. The caterer tells you it will be $25 per person. Then you sell $100 tickets to the event. Everyone gets their ticket which is also their receipt for taxes. The receipt shows them that they can deduct $75 for charity, because the other $25 was a good/service.
Costs incurred
Sending swag to members also incurrs mailing costs, and administration costs - you have to put together the stuff and print out labels and have the post office pick up, or go down to the PO. There is also the administration cost for time and expenses spent developing relationships with donors who donate swag:
Donated swag
I'd love to send out swag to members, but ideally donated swag. This is where companies will give you stuff which you can send out. They write it off as a donation, and...well I'm not sure.
Nonprofits spend a lot of money developing this sort of thing. In our case, for example, we might approach Lego Corporation to support fusion by designing fusion reactor themed toys. They would give a portion of their profits (if any : )) to us. And they would also give us a bit of product, which we would send out to our members.
This also works for them because they get new customers - you start with a little lego fusion scientist piece, and next thing you know, you go out and get more pieces to complete the kit.
Don't judge. This is how things are done.
Other membership perks would include discounts to other things - cross memberships. Let me put this in the next post.
Other benefits for members include providing access to things that might not be easily obtained. This falls under the category of access and discounts.
Museums and Credit Unions
For example, we could develop a relationship with various museums and offer our members discounts to those museums. For this, you'd get a membership card, and when you show up at those museums, you get x% off. (We'd have to negotiate for it).
As a member of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, I have that privilege. In their welcoming letter, they also sent me an invitation to join the Sandia Laboratory Federal Credit Union.
We could work to get the Focus Fusion Society to be part of this network, and offer our members these perks. It's a good synergistic move.
Costs to our organization
We'd have to take the time to negotiate these deals, make sure it all checks out legally, there's probably some reporting and tax filing issues that will come up and need to be maintained. And we'd have to send out formal membership packets to members, with a card and that sort of thing. In other words, we'd need staff and money to handle this.
Access to journal articles
As you know when trying to access academic journals online, there is often a fee associated with them. Most institutions provide these materials to their students, faculty, members and alumni. We could negotiate to likewise offer access.
We may have to pay for this, we may get it as a donation from them that we turn around and use to encourage people to donate to us.
* Free to Read - Authors or other parties may choose to pay a one-time fee to make chosen articles available to all readers at no cost and without a subscription.
As a society, we could approach several key publications and see if we could make articles available to our members with either a password, or what have you.
Something, again, which needs to be researched and negotiated.
Here are just some of the benefits of being an associate member of the Free Software Foundation...
Sustaining Support of FSF (aka "warm inner glow")
You can proudly proclaim that you are helping FSF carry out its mission to promote and preserve software freedom.
And at the bottom, they point out the tax deduction/swag cost offset issue, and also note that members are nonvoting:
Tax deduction in the USA
FSF is a 501(c)(3) charity in the USA, and therefore your membership dues are tax-deductible in the USA. The estimated value of the membership benefit items is $10. Therefore, the full amount of your dues, minus $10, is a tax-deductible contribution to the FSF.
Associate Members are non-voting members of the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
I would suggest to leave it as light as possible ATM (non-voting), as the resources are sparse.
And proudly proclaiming "being an associate member of FFS" seems really good benefit :D.
While I would love to have a say what FFS should do, its is better that resources are allocated for higher priority purpose
and at the moment I am really happy how well informal feedback is accepted.
One thing might be a good idea is to have some sort of membership accessory as a conversation starter.
It could be a plastic membership card, key-chain, amulet or some apparel item (hat, t-shirt).
I would not even mind paying for it myself as it could help spread awareness.
I bought a few clothing items some time before, but they seemed not usable enough for my climate to wear in the public.
Do you know what the situation is for non US citizens/taxpayers? It would be good to try to appeal as globally as possible. How can membership benefits be applied universally?
As a UK taxpayer (as I understand it), any donations I give to foreign (non EU) charities are not tax deductible. Also shipping costs of any swag will be higher, and so discourage sending any donated stuff to everyone, regardless of where they may be.
If you go to the top of the page and click on the Member List you will see all the members. If you go to the Forum Home page and scroll to the bottom of the page you can see who is currently logged in.
Access to journal articles
As you know when trying to access academic journals online, there is often a fee associated with them. Most institutions provide these materials to their students, faculty, members and alumni. We could negotiate to likewise offer access.
We may have to pay for this, we may get it as a donation from them that we turn around and use to encourage people to donate to us.
* Free to Read - Authors or other parties may choose to pay a one-time fee to make chosen articles available to all readers at no cost and without a subscription.
As a society, we could approach several key publications and see if we could make articles available to our members with either a password, or what have you.
Something, again, which needs to be researched and negotiated.
There should be an app for this : )
I like this idea. A lot of these articles cost $30 or more.
Focus Fusion Society 
