Membership Fee Reduction / Membership Renewal

[David Gibson]

BCRA individual membership fees reduced for 2020

As you are probably aware, BCRA restricts its membership to members of the British Caving Association (BCA). BCA has announced that, for 2020, their Direct Individual Membership (DIM) fee will be reduced by £5 to match the fee paid by club members (CIMs). BCA also says...

• Additionally we have removed the category of Joint Membership, which used to attract a small discount. However, thanks to the reduction in DIM prices, the cost of two DIM memberships is still less than the former Joint Membership rate.
• Although Joint Membership has been abolished we have retained, for your convenience, the ability for you to apply online for two members living at the same address, and to make a single payment.
• Another small change is that if you live outside the UK you can now join at the non-caving rate. This is due to the reduced relevance of some of the membership benefits

The above changes mean that we at BCRA can now take the (overdue) opportunity to raise our own fees by £3, so the overall reduction that we will be passing on to our individual members is £2. This means that the fees for individuals are now...

• £42 : for UK Caving Members (Includes Cave & Karst Science on paper)
• £31 : for Non-Caving and overseas members (Includes C&KS on paper)
• £10 : *DISCOUNT* if you do not wish to receive C&KS on paper
• £8 : for UK-based full-time undergraduate students (Incl. C&KS)
• Postage of C&KS is now free world-wide.

If you have already joined BCA for 2020 (either directly or via your club), you can now add BCRA membership by going to the online membership form and paying just the BCRA fee elements of £25 (paper) or £15 (paperless). If you are a student member of BCA you can add BCRA membership at no additional charge.

Because a paperless non-caving membership of BCRA is now only £21, world-wide, we are hoping that we will be able to attract some more members from outside the UK.

Membership Renewal

Please go to http://caves.org.uk/fees to renew online for 2020. A reminder letter will be in the post to you soon.

We would like to make a plea for members to renew and pay online, rather than by cheque. If you must pay by cheque, please go online first and complete the form. Your acknowledgement email will then give you a reference number to write on the back of your cheque.

Please do not just send us the completed renewal letter and cheque, except as a last resort, as it leads to more work and higher costs, and the opportunity for mistakes. In fact, it is likely that cheque payments to BCA/BCRA will be phased out during 2020, as well as the paper renewal letter; but more on that next year.

[David Gibson]

A note on Joint Membership of BCRA
BCRA Members who renew their membership online can currently still benefit from a joint membership discount, but it is likely that this will be phased out during 2020. Members who renew their membership by letter and cheque should calculate their fees as if they were two individual members.

Originally, joint membership reflected the fact that only one set of BCRA's publications was sent to each address. However, Speleology and regular newsletters are no longer published; and members already have the option of choosing whether to receive C&KS on paper. Therefore the concept of a joint membership discount no longer applies. We shall be retaining the facility of allowing two people living at one address to complete the same online form but there will no longer be any specific membership benefits associated with being a so-called "joint member".