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This turned out much longer than I wanted it to.
Feel free to summarize, excerpt, paraphrase, 
copy, or forward, with or without attribution. 


On the subject of Pay-to-Play in all it's aspects:

The first thing I saw that resembled an "official" statement 
of the problem/question was wrapped around the following:

  "We want to consider this as we're looking at the larger 
   issues of membership and what it means to be a member. 
   We have discussed the fact that people develop loyalty 
   to their local group, their household, their Kingdom, 
   but not the Organization. Why is that?"

My knee jerk response to that was: 
  "What do you want, a red cloak and a pointy hat?"
Only with more profanity.

My second response was:
  BoD: "people develop loyalty to their local group, 
        their household, their Kingdom,  
        but not the Organization."
   Me: "You say that like it's a bad thing.
        How is this a problem?"

I'm going to have to assume that the problem statement
above isn't meant the way it sounds, and that what the
BoD is actually concerned about is that people aren't
buying memberships the way the BoD wants/Expects them to, 
and that this is leaving said BoD short of money, and
that they're looking at changing the way memberships are
administered/required/encouraged as a possible way to 
fix the problem.  

Because if this is really about Loyalty to the Imperium, 
we have a serious problem, and it's not about membership.

[Later communication seems to support the "money"
 interpretation, but I'm going to leave the above in, 
 to illustrate the problems that bringing up the same
 agenda again and again can generate.  It's hard not
 to conclude that required membership isn't an objective
 in it's own right, when the question keeps coming up 
 again and again.  I think that may also explain some of
 the hostility.   Is there no way to put this issue to 
 rest once and for all?  {A: No.  As long as the organization
 structure is based on a general membership model, this will
 keep coming up, because pushing for membership requirements
 is an _obvious_ idea, even though it's a bad one.} ]

So assuming that this is really about money, I recast 
the question as:  People are enthusiastic, giving,
supportive, and generous to their SCA-Local, and
they are anywhere from indifferent to actively hostile
to the SCA-International, which means that we're getting
less money from memberships than we'd like.   Why, and 
what can be done about it?

Then I went away and thought about it for about 4 days.
This is my conclusion:

The product that you're selling sucks, and you're
trying to sell in the wrong marketplace.

If that's true, and I will shortly explain why I 
think it is true, you need to change either 
what you're trying to sell, or where you're trying 
to sell it.   My recommendation amounts to changing 
both.

So:  What's wrong with the product?  The SCA is clearly 
a pretty cool thing, and people enjoy the events, and
the format, and (etc. ad wandering attention) 

The problem is that the things that make the SCA
exiting, fun, interesting, and good are almost 
entirely *SOCIAL*.   People like the sense of 
acceptance, the congregation of like-minded clever
and talented people, their friends, the shared 
value system.  The attraction is the SCA with
the emphasis on "Society".

I invite you to explore this wikki article on
Dunbar's Number:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

And you can't package a society up as a corporation 
and sell it in little shrink wrapped packages, any more
than you can take your favorite corner hangout, and turn
it into a chain store.  You can try, but you're going
to get something more like Denny's.   People might still
go there to hang out, especially if you buy up the building
that they used to go to, or there's no place else open.
But the product is inescapably changed by the process of
of being a major corporation. 

If "an international corporation devoted to research and
re-enactment of the middle-ages" tries to sell the things
that excite new participants and cause people to come to SCA
events, the product *WILL* suck, because the things that 
excite participants and cause people to come to SCA events
are not things that a corporation can provide.

I could go for pages explaining why this is true, 
and it's possible that, with sufficient effort, care, 
and more brainpower than I have, you could overcome
the fact that the organizational model is actively 
working against you, but the fact remains that the
organizational model is actively working against you.

Increasing the pressure to join is one way to
increase membership, but it creates a relationship between
the corporation and the membership that is structurally 
hostile.   Increasing the appeal of membership is another
option, but if we buy the thesis that a large corporation
is not going to deliver a good product when that product is
social, then increasing the appeal is going to require 
horizontal diversification.  But for that to work, you
have to find a product that the corporation can provide
better than anyone else, or you've just moved the problem
to a new venue.   And if you find a product that the
the Corporation can provide better than anyon else, then
the logical thing to do would be to concentrate on that, 
and leave pushing the Society to the local groups that
are good at it. 
 
"But", you say, "the corporation provides valuable services!"
Yes, that's true.  Some people might even question the SCA's
(as we know it) ability to survive without the corporation.
I'm not one of them, but even if we postulate that the
BoD and the SCA-Inc. provide something that's really very
valuable...  What is it, and who is is valuable *TO*?

If we stop trying to pretend that the Corporation and the
Society are the same thing, we can then see that what the
corporation is theoretically good for is providing 
things like insurance coverage, communication between 
groups, some types of dispute resolution, a security blanket
and comforting presence to Site-Owners, Parents, the Media, 
and anyone else who finds what we do a little too wierd,
administrative assistance, and a mutually compatible, 
if not uniform,  set of rules.

But the people who will find that valuable are the people
who are trying to run events, practices,  and local groups,
and these people have, for the most part, already bought 
memberships.    The people to whom you are currently trying 
to market memberships are, usually insulated by at least 
one level of intermediaries from the benefits.   In the
absence of pressure (either social or fiscal) it is not
only unsurprising that they feel no particular urgency to
buy memberships, it would astounding if it were any other
way.  

The problem then becomes, given that way that the SCA
is set up, there's no convenient way to to sell what
the corporation should be good at providing to the people
who have a use for it. 

Ideally, each territorial group would be it's own legal
entity, which entity buys membership in the global SCA
community (A) At a price based on whatever it is that drives 
costs up, be that number of events, number of participants, or 
if that's too hard to figure out, a fraction that varies by 
group-type. and (B) with money generated in whatever way
works best for that local group.    I suspect that officers
and habitual autocrats would probably also find it valuable
to buy personal memberships, and some (probably many) regular
participants would buy them for whatever reasons seem good to 
them.  

That would allow the Corporation to sell it's natural product
to it's natural customers, instead of trying to ram itself down
people's throats by denying access to however much of the
local product it can successfuly seize control of.   

Hmm.. let me rephrase that:   ... instead of trying to bundle 
something people don't want (the corporation) with what 
they do want (the society), which is a bit like trying to
sell batteries by sticking them in toys.  It WORKS, but 
its a model that generally coincides with lousy batteries
and cheap plastic toys. 

If the corporation gives up trying to urge itself on 
[not-yet | un] willing customers, it will probably reduce the
amount of hostility it sees.  

--Goedjn  #0066293,  Bridge, EK

ps:  The bumper Sticker summary of all this is:
   "Let the local groups sell the Society to their communities, 
    and Let the Corporation sell administration to the Groups."