Two-Tier Membership Model for Grex?

Feb 23 15:33 UTC 2013

The recent discussion elsewhere in Coop concerning Grex membership
and what it should entail has gotten me to thinking about the
internet-based services that I pay for. Here are a few of them:

    o Instapaper - a "read it later" service
    o Pinboard - a bookmarking service
    o Ars Technica - news, reviews, and other articles
    o New York Times web edition

With each of these I asked myself two questions: (1) Do they
provide services that are of value to me? (2) Do I expect to
play a part in the governance of the organization that
provides the service?

In every case, the answer to (1) was "yes" (else why would
I pay?) and to (2) was "mostly no" - I'm interested in the
service provided and have at best a marginal interest in
running the show, as long as the service is satisfactory.
If I have a problem or get an idea about how the service
could be improved, most of them provide forums or mailing
lists for input.

That's a pretty common business model for internet services,
and I think it makes sense for Grex to consider a similar
one. Perhaps two tiers of membership: First tier gives full
access to the services provided (bbs, unix stuff, and
whatever else there is), second tier confers participation
in the governance process: voting in elections, running for
the board.

Provided the services are sufficient for enough folks to
sign on to tier #1, this could provide Grex with a steady
revenue stream. It would also tend to insure that the
people with voting privileges are really the ones who
want to be involved in governance.

I think that providing channels for communication with and
by tier 1 members is important to do, and I also think it's
not hard to solve. We would require that they provide a
working email address. Periodically, we send out an email
describing updates to the service and brief instructions
on how to access stuff (e.g. bbs) and how to upgrade to
tier 2.

Lots of internet services do business via a tier 1 model.
By having two tiers, we can also preserve the concept of
member governance. Should we consider doing this?

response 2 of 16:

Feb 23 19:24 UTC 2013

Years ago, M-Net had two tiers, "member" for voting rights, and "patron"
for that plus perks.  They ended it about 4 or 5 years ago because M-Net
doesn't offer any services worth paying to get, didn't need income, and
didn't have people using both levels of membership.  Now, if you want to
be a member, you become a patron.  Everything offered is offered for
free to everyone.  That's what Grex has always offered, right?

I don't see a need to have two membership tiers.  I didn't get the point
of doing this.  Am I just missing something that you said?

response 6 of 16:

Feb 23 21:00 UTC 2013

Sorry Dan - I scribbled the response that you're responding to since I
didn't particularly care for it myself.  :-)

Anyway - problem I was trying to address was that of
distinguishing between "customers" and "members" (in the
governance-participating sense). Dan's right that we sort of do that
already with the Paypal thing. But I was wondering if it would be
possible to turn the customer base (I probably shouldn't refer to them
as "members") into some sort of significant income stream. (We have
money now, but not necessarily forever.) Obviously these
ideas aren't fully baked, and there's the issue of reconciling that with
Grex's charitable mission.

Something to keep in mind in any discussion of the membership model is
that Cyberspace Inc. is a Michigan corporation and as such has
record-keeping and reportage obligations regarding members, such that we
probably don't want to incur those obligations for everybody anywhere in
the world who sends in a few bucks via Paypal, even temporarily, much
less in perpetuity. (Rane can probably clarify whether what I'm saying
here makes any sense.)

In any case, the issue I'm trying to address here is minor compared to
the truly difficult ones.