All,
Last year it was decided to have memberships be automatically renewed. There are a few reasons that the decision was made, and it is worth understanding them.

Prior to January 2023 many new memberships and renewals were processed by the Club's staff. At that time there was one full-time employee and one part-time. In December of 2022, our part time staff left for other employment, which was a planned event and around January 1st of 2023 Mary made a sudden decision to retire with 30 days notice, which was unexpected, but understood.

There is plusses and minuses of not having staff, the plus is that financially, the Club could not afford them without a substantial increase in dues, and without the payroll expense, the Club has regained solid financial footing.The minus, is that we have no one that can attend a phone line 40 hours per week and process memberships on behalf of anyone that called. 

Had we as a Club continued with the staff that we had in December of 2022, our financial prediction was that the club would be bankrupt by July of this year barring a substantial cash infusion in some form.

Therefore, the Board was faced with some choices and realities. The first thing was that it was clear we had to streamline and automate as much of our operations as possible. Processing memberships consumed the majority of staff time and we had no manual replacement. It is also a fact that many of our Board members also have jobs and businesses to attend to and while we have all put in a significant amount of time, there is a limit to what can be invested while meeting these other responsibilities. Once again, this reality points to automation.

Since membership processing was our most time-consuming task, and one of the easiest to automate, it made sense to move in that direction. 

We automated memberships by making all transactions happen online and by making them auto-renewing. For a Club without paid staff, this did a few things for us: 1) Eliminated processing checks and mail, 2) Eliminated the need to staff a phone line, 3) Eliminated the need to send renewal reminders. Further, we looked at the overall subscription landscape and most common subscriptions, like Netflix, and so on are auto-renewing and therefore not at all uncommon. We also considered the convenience for members, no longer having to take an action to renew, send a check, call the office, etc. 

Overall, we felt that there was more benefit to our Club than negatives. Combine this with the very real limitations the time Board members can allot to the Club, the chosen route made sense.

Now, since it seems that there are members that are quite averse to this, we will take the issue up in our next board meeting. 

Time and budget limitations have not changed, I am open to constructive ideas and questions. 

There is no question that we might all like to see the Club as it was in 2008, or 1999, or other time in the past. However, times change and we have to adapt to those changes in the best possible way. Today there is a lot of competition for everyone's attention, YouTube, Facebook, and so on. We are no longer in an era where scale models are in high demand overall. Younger generations want apps, not paper magazines, even websites are at risk of becoming irrelevant. These realities are challenging, and limit the financial growth of a Club like ours. 

Keep in mind, that everyone that has volunteered for the Board of this organization want the best for it and it's members. None of us are perfect, but none have any ill intent.

Kurt
 

D8Dude - one of our objectives is to keep dues affordable and offer more to members and chapters than we have been able to in the recent past. The BoD would rather offer funds to Chapters to invest in activities than pay staff. I know this causes some inconvenience for some members, and am sorry for that, but in reality, it is a pretty small (and cheap) ask to do something beneficial for the Club.

D8Dude - That is a reasonable option that I know we will discuss. I appreciate your comments and thoughtful contributions!

Ray,
First, I hope you're with us for a long time! And your point is well-taken. There is no question that check-based transactions are on their way into history, in some countries where we have significant membership, they are already not longer used at all. I know that I personally don't write more than two or three checks per year.

I am sure we will put a one-year only option in place.

I hope that everyone can keep in mind that the auto-renew process was put into practice with good intention. There is no one that makes money from ACMOC, what gets done is what we think is in the best interest of the Club.

I agree with Wombat, credit cards are cancelled when a person passes so there is no risk that a membership will continue indefinitely. Beyond that, as it sits today the auto renewal system relieves you as a member of having to think about renewal and take an action annually to renew, we see that as a net benefit. Secondly, it relieves volunteers from having to manually process renewals and memberships and create and send reminders to members. You can cancel by simply sending one of us an email, it may take a few days, but your cancellation will be accomplished and a refund issued to your card. Keep in mind that a cancellation simply stops the next automatic renewal, no partial-year refunds will be made. The only exception is if you request the cancellation within a few days of you last renewal.

We can create a one-year only option, in that case a member would get an email reminder that their membership will expire and they would have to take action to renew by going to the website and filling the short form. In this case, if a membership were to expire and the member renews after the expiration date, their membership will start again at that point in time, we have no ability to back date a membership or provide back issues of the magazine, which has been a very common request in the past.

My preference would be to leave the auto-renew system in place as-is and make it easier for a member to request a cancellation. We have far more renewals than cancellations and that would be the most efficient.

The bottom line is this:
The Club has finite resources and we have many areas that we could invest. For instance, would you rather we increase dues hire staff to take calls and handle renewals for members, or would you rather us find a way to reduce dues and make memberships more affordable for more people? Would you rather we hire staff, or make funds available to chapters to actually hold events and get more people involved in our hobby? These are a couple of examples, and they get to the heart of what we are about.