For the first time in its 15 year history, the Board of THS has authorized a “Lifetime Membership”, available immediately. It will be priced at $750, which at current annual membership rates works out (for the bookies amongst you) to a bet of 21 years and change to break even on your investment, assuming no future rate increases (Uh, more on that later!). Our lifetime or yours, either way, if you accept the odds you’ll never get a membership bill from us again (we will, of course, continue to pester you to support special projects like Heinlein For Heroes, Blood Drives, and whatnot). This is an entirely voluntary program, and our annual regular members have all the same rights as anyone who becomes a Lifetime Member with the singular exception of being pestered for annual dues.
As it turns out, however, “current annual membership rates” will be changing for any renewal after 3/31/2016 as well. The new rate for regular membership after that date will be $45 rather than the current $35. It’s been $35 since the Society’s founding in 2000, but many of you have told us in our recent annual surveys that you would support us raising that annual regular membership fee in light of 15 years of inflation without a change –so now we’ve decided to see if you really meant it. We hope you’ll stick around at the higher rate, because we’d really miss you if you leave! If you do the math on the Lifetime Membership with the new annual amount, that’s 16 years and change to break-even, which if you ask us, is a pretty good deal as such things go (Particularly for those of you who know the appropriate responses to “Life is Short. . .” ’nuff said).
To, maybe, make the increase a bit more palatable, the Board also approved allowing anyone who wants to add years to their current membership at the current $35 annual rate may do so until 3/31/2016. In other words, if you want to run out to Paypal right now and send us, say, $175 for the next five years @ $35/year, we will accept that until 3/31/2016 and credit your membership extension at the current rate. (Hint: Sending more than $750 in annual pre-pays is probably not your best use of your money; but that’s on you, cobber.)
The drop downs on our Join/Renew Paypal box has been updated to include the new Lifetime Membership option, but to prepay your annual membership at the old rate for however many years you like, just do as many annual as you like, or use Paypal’s own facility directly from their site to send multiples of $35 to .
Or, if you’d like an extra $20 or so of your Lifetime Membership dues to actually go towards Paying it Forward! rather than Paypal fees, then you can send a check for $750 instead to The Heinlein Society, 3553 Atlantic Ave., #341, Long Beach, CA, 90807-5606 and mark “Lifetime Membership” in the memo field.
