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Big charities charged more than corporates to join Institute

Fundraising | Gemma Ware | 1 Dec 2007

A new corporate membership structure launched by the Institute of Fundraising will charge a £5,000 membership fee for the largest corporate organisations although member charities with income over £100m are charged £9,000.

The new membership band is aimed at organisations such as suppliers, recruitment companies and direct mail agencies working within the charity sector. They will be able to benefit from use of a unique logo, a regular e-zine, receive invitations to sit on code of practice working parties where appropriate, and enter the Institute’s Innovation Zone.

Annual subscription for corporate membership will depend on the organisation’s number of employees, ranging from £300 for organisations with between one and 10 employees, to £5,000 for organisations with over 151 staff.

Charities can join the Institute as organisational members. Their fees are calculated on their level of voluntary income and range from £150 for organisations with income of less than £1m, to £9,000 for those with income of over £100m.

Organisational member benefits include invitations to feed into the development of codes of practice, a hotline to the policy team, a lobbying facility on members’ behalf, access to a legal helpline, an invitation to participate in the Fundratios benchmarking exercise and a unique logo.

Laura Webb, director of membership at the Institute, said the new membership bands had been set by its sales manager after an assessment of the suppliers to the not-for-profit sector but that it was unfair to compare fees for corporate and organisational membership. “It’s a completely different marketplace. Cancer Research UK and Oxfam are far, far bigger organisations than the businesses we’re trying to attract,” she said.

In the past the Institute had around 20 companies as members, sitting within the organisational band. Their membership fees were calculated depending on the number of staff rather than income, but because of the size of the organisations, none were in the £9,000 membership band.

Webb added that the Institute did not expect to have membership inquiries from organisations with large numbers of employees. “The type of organisations working in the sector are not going to be having more than a thousand employees, otherwise we would create more bands.”

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