2020 BCA Membership subscription rates

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
2020 BCA MEMBERSHIP SUBSCRIPTION RATES

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The BCA are pleased to announce our membership rates for 2020.
There are some changes to previous years mainly affecting DIM membership:

Club Individual Members (CIMs): No change from 2019
https://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/doku.php?id=membership:cim
Active caver (those participating in caving/mine exploring/digging etc): ?17 Non caver (those not participating in caving/mine exploring/digging etc): ?6 Student caver (in full time undergraduate education): ?8 Under-18s (on 1st January 2020): Free

Direct Individual Members (DIMs):
https://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/doku.php?id=membership:dim
We are pleased to say that the DIM rates for 2020 has been reduced to match those of CIMs above. This represents up to a ?5/year reduction compared to 2019. We are conscious that a very small number of proactive DIMs have already renewed for 2020 but at 2019 rates; please contact us to arrange a refund.

Joint DIM membership:
There is no longer any discount for joint membership as this discount was based on posted publications being shared, but these no longer exist. However, thanks to the reduction in DIM prices, the cost of two DIM memberships is now less than the former Joint DIM membership rate so our Joint DIM Members will also enjoy a small reduction.

Note on overseas CIM/DIM members:
If you live outside the UK and do not go caving in the UK (but you cave elsewhere) you are now entitled to pay the ?non-caver? rate, due to the reduced relevance of some of our membership benefits to you.

Club subscription rates: No changes from 2019
https://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/doku.php?id=membership:club

Up to 10 members: ?25
11-20 members: ?35
21-30 members: ?50
31-40 members: ?60
41+ members: ?70

Access bodies or accommodation providers:
Additional ?60 (no change from 2019)

Associate membership:
https://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/doku.php?id=membership:associate
Reduced from ?55 (2019) to ?25 (2020)
Note; Associate members DO NOT receive membership benefits including public liability insurance.

Why join the BCA?
The BCA is the UK?s national body for underground exploration. Your membership money goes towards funding conservation, education, access, training workshops, anchor installation, the British Caving Library (a library, archive and key resource), publications on matters that affect caving, international expeditions, plus numerous other activities which benefit cavers nationally. Almost all cavers will benefit from work funded by BCA from your membership money, both directly and via the Regional Councils, as well as via our recent efforts to support student and youth caving. Your money goes back into the sport, as well as covering the cost of the public liability insurance which we provide to all full members as a membership benefit. Thank you for joining the BCA!

https://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/doku.php
 
droid said:
Is it possible to join BCRA without joining BCA?

You have to be member of BCA (club or individual) to join BCRA.

Someone is bound to ask why.  You have to go back to when BCA was set up, 15 years ago. At the time, BCRA was the de facto national body for cavers to join. (There was another national body, NCA, but that did not have individual membership). PL insurance was free to individual members of BCRA and was paid for by a small levy on club membership. BCRA had about 1200 members in those days. What happened next? :)

The insurance premium skyrocketed, and the only way to solve the problem was to find a way for more cavers to join a new national body. The discussions took ages because getting cavers to agree on anything was a bit of a problem. For example, the whole DIM/CIM thing was not in the original plan but had to be shoe-horned in, late in the day, to appease some clubs, and bring them on board. (I think it was right: the idea was that CIMs were a 'low-cost' method of membership - but that point has been watered down over the years).

So... we needed a single national body, and it was considered that BCRA would therefore need to relinquish all its national body functions. But the emerging BCA thought that a further step was needed, and they asked us to change our constitution to restrict our membership to BCA members. So that's why we are where we are today.

There was some reluctance by BCRA Council to do that, but they were persuaded by the strong argument that there needed to be a single national body, acting for the benefit of all cavers, rather than just letting NCA (as was) morph into BCA, with BCRA staying untouched. BCRA therefore shrugged its collective shoulder and adopted the pragmatic view that even a karst scientist who never went near a cave still benefited from people who did go caving, and so he should pay his "caving tax" [a.k.a. insurance fee] like everybody else. also, of course, there were savings to be made, by BCRA not having to duplicate admin. functions like membership processing.

Now, some 15 years later, the position should probably be reviewed. BCRA has found, over the years, that we have been unable to attract academics and overseas members because they do not quite buy into the argument for joining BCA. We think that the current reduction in DIM membership fee will help us to recruit from these groups, because, as non-cavers, their "caving tax" is now reduced to ?6 - it was something like ?20 in the early days, if I remember correctly.


 

droid

Active member
Thank you David. I'm 'retired' from active caving nowadays but have always been interested in the scientific side of the sport: speleogenesis, ecology and the like.

Just read the other thread.

You'll be hearing.... :LOL:

 

Bob Mehew

Well-known member
DavidGibson said:
droid said:
Is it possible to join BCRA without joining BCA?
.... it was considered that BCRA would therefore need to relinquish all its national body functions. But the emerging BCA thought that a further step was needed, and they asked us to change our constitution to restrict our membership to BCA members.
That does not tally with my recollection.  BCRA did volunteer to give up some of its non scientific functions (like running insurance) to the new body.  However BCRA also decided that it wanted its members insured.  So like clubs who want insurance cover, the only way BCRA was going to get it, was to require every member to be a member of BCA so as to get the membership benefit of insurance for each member and hence the cover for the whole body.
 
That was certainly a part of it, Bob, but that could have been achieved by BCRA simply having CIMs. But there was definitively a "strong desire" that BCRA had to be seen to take a positive step to avoid competing with BCA for members. The discussion is still online (in the form of AGM minutes, newsletters, Speleology articles etc)  if anyone can bear to go and look, but you would need to really, really have nothing better to do. I also have a large pile of paperwork from the Hub Group meetings  (as Im sure you do too, Bob), but, at the risk of upsetting those cave historians who find this stuff fascinating, its all ear-marked for the skip, when I finally run out of space. I think the salient point is that "we are where we are because of decisions that made good sense at the time; but are those decisions still the right ones, today?"
 
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