To engage as many community members as possible, the Individual Membership program will offer three membership tiers that each confer a different level of benefit to the member. Increasing member levels correspond to increased annual fees, increased expectations of the member, and more valuable perks. Members will have the option to adjust their membership level and renew their existing membership through the proposed membership management systems, as described in a following section.
The Individual Membership program will roll out in two phases.
Phase 1: At launch, the program will only have a single tier. This will provide the OpenJS Foundation, hereinafter referred to as the "Foundation", projects early validation of the program’s utility, give program developers the opportunity to receive feedback on tooling and workflow from members, and ease initial launch overhead for the implementers.
Phase 2: The long term goal of the projects will be to deliver three membership tiers, as described below. The initial membership offering would then be known as Bronze Membership, followed by the addition of the two higher tiers in terms of perks.The delay in Silver and Gold Membership launch allow the program time to recruit corporate member perks and mature enough to provide value.
The Cross Project Council (CPC) will be chartered by the board to roll out and maintain the Individual Membership program.
One of the three community board seats is reserved for Individual Membership Program. It becomes activated once there are least 3 platinum directors and 2000 members registered in the program. Specifics related to timing will be determined by the CPC.
The affordability of this member level allows for folks who are excited about Foundation projects to feel part of the Foundation without putting the barrier to entry too high. This membership level affords participants:
- The Foundation member badge – an exclusive digital membership badge and sticker
- Public “thank you” on the Foundation website
- Invitation to a quarterly town hall meeting with the CPC
- Bi-monthly town hall meeting with individual representation champion
- Access to the mailing list with monthly update
- Access to exclusive Individual Membership swag in the Foundation Store purchasable at cost (ex: clothing, pins, stickers)
- Guaranteed discount to Foundation-run events
This membership level targets participants excited to become more involved with industry tools and services by connecting with Foundation Corporate Member companies on a deeper level. This level affords participants all the benefits of Bronze Membership as well as:
- Access to Corporate Member perks (similar to GitHub’s Student Developer Pack)
- Ex: Three free months of LinkedIn Learning
- Draw for foundation donated swag 4 times/year. ($1000/year including shipping)
- Foundation corporate member donated swag/goods (shared at events)
- 15% discount to Foundation events.
A Gold Membership is for community members eager to engage closer with project administration and governance. This level affordes participants all the benefits of Silver Membership, as well as:
- A yearly town hall style meet and greet with Foundation Board members
- 25% discount to Foundation events.
- TBD
- Access to an engaged audience of Node.js users
- Corporate members are able to provide exclusive swag/resources/credits to the membership
- Better decision making for strategy and road map to ensure the success and sustainability of the Foundation through access to engaged Foundation project users for regular feedback
- Increase the number of promoters for the foundation efforts through building trust and reputation of meeting the needs of the ecosystem
The Individual Membership program moving forward must understand the demographics of those being served. A voluntary self-reporting of demographics from existing collaborators and engaged users will go a long way to improving the Foundation feedback loop. It is recommended that an assigned person from the Foundation executive team be responsible for coordinating this effort directly in collaboration with the CPC. This ensures that once we are connected to engaged users, we are hearing input, acting on it, and being held accountable to needs.
The continued engagement model will include first-contact communications and highlights to members before public notice and gives the foundation the opportunity to convert the transactional relationship to caring members.
$2100 annually Migrate over old system due to lack of interoperability and maintenance.
Tendenci is an open source membership management platform. $2028 per year. Cost increases to $249 per month once we hit 1000-5000 member range. Price upgrade gives us more processing power(so we could technically remain on the lower tier because it is not per-user cost and instead based off of the performance we want our users to experience). Manages signups, renewals, emails to members (currently not possible within a single system for us), news, events. Has the potential to add corporate and individual member value with the batteries-included offering, and doesn’t cost any more for these features. Example in the wild: [http://www.sfbig.org/](http://www.sfbig.org/]. Requires minimal admin IT work and an easy-to-navigate GUI that the entire Foundation internal team could access/administer along with projects members.
CIVS
- Currently used by the rest of the Linux Foundation projects
- Free
- http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/
- This proposal coincides with the membership management system because the prior election system we were using, Helios, is no longer being used by other projects in the LF.