It has been the policy of the Colorado chapter from the very beginning of its existence to accept members without requiring membership in national. If you want a working model on just how this policy pans out in actuallity, after eight years in existence, I think the number of "CCC members only" is under 10% of the total chapter membership (about 110 members last time I counted). Just because we don't require it doesn't mean most people won't join anyway.

We were being pressured by national to enforce the "must be a member" clause in the club's bylaws about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. When a vote was taken at a monthly meeting during that time, I don't recall a single vote cast for changing our chapter policy. That resulted in our chapter being thrown out of the national organization. We kept holding our local meetings, and lobbied the new BOD of national to change the bylaws and to reinstate our chapter. That is what they did.

I'm not going to tell Doris (who only collects $1 Colorado tokens) that she can't be a member of our chapter and attend our monthly meetings unless she sends $20 a year (and the talk of increasing that is being pushed hard recently by some) to national. I just won't do it. Nobody else on our chapter's BOD would either. The national club is of no use or interest to this type of collector. With recent talk of increasing national's dues to do things like buy manufacturer's records, insisting that every chapter member be a member of national looks like asking people to pay even more for stuff that is of no use to them!

I hope you can see where I'm (we're) coming from.

Bob