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Offering Nonprofit Pricing for Chamber Memberships is the Wrong Way to Go

We recently featured a post about pricing small/homebased-business chamber memberships. The question was around charging them less than main street businesses.

A similar question was asked by one of the members in our Chamber Professionals Group on Facebook concerning nonprofits. nonprofit pricing for chambers

Nonprofits can be pretty large organizations, bigger than many for-profit businesses. There’s really very little reason to charge a nonprofit that happens to have a million dollar budget $50 a year when you are charging a small business just starting out and struggling to pay their rent $200 a year.

It seems arbitrary to me. And maybe a little insulting.

Tiered Dues Solves the Pricing Dilemma

 

I am not in favor of nonprofits and for-profits being charged at a different levels arbitrarily.

Don’t assume nonprofits are broke and can’t afford to invest at higher levels.

The best way to address this concern is through tiered dues, where the entity chooses the level of service it wants.

If you are working with a huge nonprofit, like the Red Cross (with a massive budget), they can come into your chamber and be involved at the highest level because they want the highest level of service.

The same goes with the smallest of nonprofits, a one-person show trying to do good. They can come in at the lowest level and still be an active part of your membership. But to charge the Red Cross and the startup nonprofit the same amount, that seems silly to me. Arbitrary.

Similarly, charging a startup small business more than the Red Cross simply because of their tax designation, seems unfair and unwise. Allow your members, without regard to their tax classification, to invest in your chamber and your community at a level that is appropriate for them.

If you can’t, or won’t, go the tiered dues route then at least remove the discount for nonprofits and base their dues as you do any other member, on the number of employees they have. To do otherwise is to force all your members to subsidize the nonprofit members (even the ones with deep wallets). Do you want to force that?

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Frank Kenny is a successful entrepreneur, chamber member, chamber board member, chamber board of directors chair, and chamber President/CEO. He now coaches chamber professionals, consults with chambers, trains staff and members, and speaks professionally. He helps Chambers and Chamber Professionals reach their goals. See full bio.

Christina R. Green teaches chambers, associations and small businesses how to connect through content. Her articles have appeared in the Midwest Society of Association Executives’ Magazine, NTEN.org, AssociationTech, and Socialfish. She is a regular guest blogger on this site and Event Managers Blog. Christina is just your average bookish writer on a quest to bring great storytelling to organizations everywhere.Visit her site or connect with her on Twitter @christinagsmith.
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