Date:         Tue, 9 Jul 2002 11:33:39 -0400
From: Julia Flanders <Julia_Flanders@brown.edu>
Subject:      membership workgroup report

The membership workgroup put together a set of proposals for the 2000
ACH executive council meeting, addressing the question of how to
increase membership and in particular how to recruit members from the
younger segment of the humanities computing and related fields.

These proposals were discussed that year, and some action was taken
(e.g. the work of the ACH Jobs group). Some were not acted upon
because they depended on further discussion of issues like the status
of CHum. In general, we feel that these recommendations still
consitute a road map for membership recruiting. The report can be
found at:

http://www.ach.org/protected/MembershipCommitteeReport.html

It may be useful to give a precis of the report here.  The
introduction reads: "To sum up very briefly: we feel that to a
certain extent the ACH is caught in a cycle of high membership dues,
low visibility, low value to members, and low membership, where each
of these factors reinforces the other three. We were not able to find
some easy place to cut into this cycle, and as a result our
recommendations are all some form of bootstrapping."

The group identified several possible avenues of change:

--find a way to reduce membership fees or provide a lower-cost
option, possibly by offering membership without CHum subscription, or
by offering group rates.

--add value to the ACH web site

--use the conference to build continuity and to attract important
constituencies

Best wishes, Julia