Open Forum

 View Only

 Complimentary Memberships for Board of Trustees?

Erin Hood's profile image
Erin Hood posted 03-14-2025 04:44 PM

My organization is trying to decide if we should automatically issue our board of trustees with memberships for the duration of their board term. We recently discovered not all of our board members have active memberships.

The primary question is what is industry standard and best practice. On one hand, board members will be more directly looped into program communication and can easily share the museum visits with others as a cultivation tool. My suggestion is that they receive a level of membership more organization deems tax-deductible.

  1. What have you seen?
  2. What has worked well for organizations?
  3. What issues have come up?

Thanks for any additional insight or suggestions!

ERIN HOOD | Gift Processing Specialist

She/Her/Hers

MOHAI McQuaid Resource Center

206 324 1126 Ext 124

erin.hood@MOHAI.org | MOHAI.org

Dawn Salerno's profile image
Dawn Salerno posted 03-17-2025 09:34 AM

Hi Erin

We expect our trustees to be paid members (lowest level gift is $40). It's in their job description. We do not give them, or any other volunteers, complimentary memberships. But they can be on our email lists for free, so they are looped into program communication that way - it's actually the best way for them to know what we're doing. We've not had any push back about it, and it was a topic of discussion amongst the board, so they decided on this policy.

Laura Roberts's profile image
Laura Roberts posted 03-17-2025 02:31 PM

Hello. I agree with Dawn. It is best practice to include the expectation that board members maintain a membership in the written (and agreed upon) expectations of board members. In fact, it is more common to set the expectation beyond a basic membership to one of the upper levels. 

You might also want to include them on relevant mailing lists, but that's not a substitute for signing on to support the organization in that tangible way.

Laura

Related Content