Student membership rate reduced dramatically

For some while Council has been focusing its Clubs and Membership recruitment and development attention on the building up of University clubs.

There are a number of issues in the creation and support of these which we have been working on, but one of these issues is that students are extremely price sensitive and that in the digital age they now expect to receive almost all their information electronically, with printed material being considered of little importance and often discarded.

So Council has decided that, for an extended trial period and with immediate effect, the Student membership fee will be reduced to £5 per annum and that it will be the first online-only membership category.

The main change regarding this is that Students will not receive a printed copy of the British Go Journal, but they will be able to access it via our Members Area. Announcement of its availability there will be made via our RSS feed.

We hope this will increase the number of Student members considerably and lead to an increased number of ex-students remaining as members and continuing to play Go.

This change may raise a few questions about other aspects of Membership and the future of the British Go Journal, so for the avoidance of doubt:

• existing Student members will continue to receive the printed BGJ until the end of their current membership year,
• we will continue to produce a printed British Go Journal, although we do need a new Editor at the end of this year and
• we have no intention of introducing other categories of online membership or reducing the membership fee for those who wish to receive all their communications from us online, although we will no doubt wish to revisit this area next year (at the AGM perhaps).