[Ansteorra] Award requirements

[Tim McDaniel]

On Thu, 5 Jul 2012, Salvador Ordoñez
<salvadorthespaniard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> A kingdom is allowed to make such a requirement [that paid
>> membership in SCA Inc is required to receive an award].  Few do: I
>> know Meridies does.  Ansteorra does not.
>
> Why has Ansteorra decided that way?

You beg the question: ask, rather, why Meridies decided that way. [1]
In the earliest versions of the SCA's Corpora, "membership" was
defined in various classes, and one of the grades of membership was,
very roughly, "shows up at events and stuff".  Many grades required no
payment.  Payment was required of those who wanted to get Tournaments
Illuminated and other newsletters.

Later, attitudes towards membership were still laid-back.  There were
paid membership requirments for branches, but I interpreted it as more
like choosing a criterion that was clear and definitive.

The increasing emphasis on paid membership in SCA Inc. has been
comparatively recent.  The Milpitas Meltdown of 1994 put us off
"pay for play", unfortunately not for long enough.

As for the future: personally, I think the contributions of service,
arts and sciences, and martial prowess are far FAR more important than
whether someone paid some money to a corporation headquartered 2000
miles away, whose usefulness I question.

Before you throw the standard bugbear of insurance back at me:
check the budget figures under http://www.sca.org/officers/treasurer/
.  My system (LibreOffice under Linux) cannot read the 2012 budget
spreadsheet.  The 2011 figures are much like other recent years':
$178,000 out of total expenditures of $1,325,000, or about 13% of the
total.

Danett Lincoln

[1] I believe it was because, in the earliest days, Meridies was
having trouble keeping its paid membership up to Corpora's minimum
requirements for a kingdom.
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com