January, 2008
KOA Donations and Membership

(1) Life Membership: Anyone eligible for KOA membership per current Bylaws, and who donates an amount of $1000 or more in one calendar year to any KOA sponsored program, will be eligible for receiving life membership upon application and required approvals if applicable.

(2) Other memberships (Family, Single, Senior, Associate): Anyone eligible for KOA membership per current Bylaws, and who donates an amount of $250 or more in one calendar year to any KOA sponsored program, will be eligible for receiving active membership status for one calendar year upon application and required approvals if applicable.

PERTINENT BY-LAWS:
(a) Article-3, Section-6: "Membership dues.......determined by the Board of Directors and revised from time to time."
(b) Article-3, Sections 2 to 5: Life- / Family- / Single- / Senior- / Associate-Member.

RATIONALE OF THIS PROPOSAL:

(1) GIVING: Our community's track record of giving is improving, but we have long ways to go. This proposal will incentivise more people to come forward and step into the the act of giving for others. (Giving is infectious the same way not-giving is.)

(2) KOA @ GRASSROOTS: The single biggest challenge we have is to gain stronghold at grass roots level. By launching programs successfully at local level (today one zone, tomorrow all zones), increasingly more people will associate themselves to what KOA stands for. KOA will appear as everyone's' own organization rather than as a distant, bureaucratic apparatus which many community members tend to see it as generally.

(3) DISSOLVING THE INERTIA: Our donation amount generation seems to be stagnant on a per capita basis. Individually, some of us do donate to the causes we relate to, but that remains more private (individual family based ) than public (community wide based). By encouraging and recognizing the acts of community good, we can only get more subscribers. The mechanics of this phenomenon are well recognized: band-wagon effect (economics), network-externalities (business), viral marketing (marketing), peer-pressure (psychology) .

(4) WORKING for OUR MISSION: This proposal will appeal to some of our community members. That will get us $250 from those who otherwise gave $35 for annual membership. It will get us $1000 from those who almost never considered to give $500 for life membership. It could be a huge windfall to enable KOA, through its programs, become far reaching and impacting. Learning from community studies, those who extend and open wallet once eventually tend to keep it up more or less on continual basis.
No one donates money just to walk away.

Your fellow Board Member,
Ajay Koul

Director, Zone 7

Seconded by:

Pradumon Tickoo

Director, Zone 8

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