Membership Report

Overview

Membership in 2009 has started to slow down compared with previous years. Combined with loss of existing memberships (as projects fade away) and the increasing use of resources of our members who stay: this slow down in new members could cause financial short fall down the line.

Several important new developments have taken place:

• local food coops
• New Sanctuary Movement
• Indymedia and Tachanka collaborations
• Progressive Technology Project
• Philadelphia Fight/Crit Path

In addition, changes to the control panel have created an opportunity for a "federated" membership model in which an organization running a server can sign up MFPL members on their own.

Outlook

We need to reverse the slide in our regular membership numbers and we need to start promoting our federated/shared server membership model.

Challenges with federated model:

• Lack of clarity around support
• Lack of clarity around sharing of membership dues
• Consciousness among federated members of May First/People Link and their membership in our organization

Membership Trends

	New members	Renewals
January 2006	20	2
February 2006	28	3
March 2006	10	5
April 2006	20	9
May 2006	9	6
June 2006	4	5
July 2006	10	5
August 2006	5	5
September 2006	5	5
October 2006	12	54
November 2006	7	6
December 2006	11	6
January 2007	4	56
February 2007	6	15
March 2007	13	15
April 2007	9	15
May 2007	4	8
June 2007	3	8
July 2007	11	8
August 2007	9	13
September 2007	4	11
October 2007	7	57
November 2007	9	5
December 2007	10	20
January 2008	3	51
February 2008	4	17
March 2008	6	27
April 2008	6	19
May 2008	5	15
June 2008	16	13
July 2008	5	20
August 2008	5	16
September 2008	8	9
October 2008	4	56
November 2008	7	20
December 2008	9	21
January 2009	8	51
February 2009	8	23
March 2009	8	29
April 2009	7	28
May 2009	14	21
June 2009	6	24
July 2009	6	21
August 2009	8	23
September 2009	1	21
October 2009	5	55