From 2017, IE offers a new membership category: individual members can become professional members. We ask all individual members to do so if they can. Additional fees will be deleted and some more changes need your attention.
In May 2016, the General Assembly decided to reform our membership fee system. The most significant innovation is the introduction of a professional membership category.
Professional membership is supposed to be the new standard category for individual members whose main source of income is interpretation, either as employees or as freelancers, and who feel they can pay an annual membership fee of €60. This was an offer that several individual members made and it will replace the practice of asking individual members to add a ‘supporting fee’ to their ‘minimum fee’. From 2017 onwards, there will be just one standard fee of €60 for professional members and one standard fee of €30 for individual members. There are no special requirements or additional benefits linked to professional membership.
If you are an individual member, we kindly ask you to consider whether you can support IE with an annual membership fee of €60. If you feel this would be possible, just send an e-mail to mail@interpret-europe.net asking to change your membership category from individual membership to professional membership.
Individual membership is now mainly meant for members whose profession is not interpretation or who feel that they cannot afford to pay €60 per year. We decided not to adapt the membership fees to the GDP of different countries for this is something we cannot achieve with the administrative means we currently have. Individual members will still have all networking opportunities, receive all information through IE newsmails, newsletters and conference proceedings, will continue to benefit from reduced fees for IE conferences and other events, can furthermore participate in the IE training programme, and will, of course, have full voting rights in the General Assembly or whenever a ballot is held.
To allow as many individuals as possible to join, the General Assembly decided to ‘freeze’ the annual fee for individual members at €30. On the other hand, reduced individual membership which required to prove the need as a student, unemployed or a retired person every year will not be offered any longer. All reduced individual memberships will be turned into individual memberships on 1 January 2017.
From 2017 onwards the annual fee for organisation memberships will be €120. The same is true for corporate members with 2-5 employees. Corporate members with 6-10 employees pay €240, corporate members with more than 10 employees pay €480. On average, the fees for corporate members have decreased and the additional fee of €50 to place their profile on the IE website will be cancelled. All corporate members have now the possibility to do so for free.
To keep administrative procedures simple, the additional fee of €5 for issuing invoices will also be deleted for all membership categories.
To give you an overview about the new fee system:
| Membership category | Fee 2017 |
| Reduced individual membership | no longer offered |
| Individual membership | €30.00 |
| Professional membership | €60.00 |
| Organisation membership | €120.00 |
| Corporate membership C (2 to 5 employees) | €120.00 |
| Corporate membership B (6 to 10 employees) | €240.00 |
| Corporate membership A (more than 10 employees) | €480.00 |
Management is asking all who can make it possible to issue SEPA direct debit mandates – and to inform us if their bank account details change. We checked the possibility to charge credit cards additionally to SEPA direct debit mandates and to Paypal direct invoicing but alas, IE is still too small to make this worthwhile.
Let us all take care that the energy and the banking fees resulting from these procedures are kept as low as possible.
The general payment procedure for the membership fee will slightly change for 2017 onwards. All members registered in the past year or before will receive their invoice within the first quarter of the year. Members paying the fee individually will have a two-month payment target. Those members who have issued a SEPA direct debit mandate will be debited at the end of this two-month payment target. New members will receive an invoice for their membership fee also with a two-month payment target. Members who have still not paid the fee for the current year will be reminded once and then it will be assumed that you no longer wish to remain a member and your membership will be cancelled at the beginning of the next year.
Due to international bank restrictions and software issues, IE Management is still processing the membership fee payments for 2015 and 2016. Therefore, we kindly ask you for your understanding if we ask you for your outstanding membership fees within the next couple of weeks. Your membership fee payments for the recent years will help us to expand our work to the benefit of all members.
IE’s Managing Directors are Thorsten Ludwig and Sebastian Zoepp from Germany. Thorsten runs Bildungswerk Interpretation, providing interpretive training, planning and consulting since 1993. You can get in touch with him at: thorsten.ludwig@interpret-europe.net. Sebastian runs Spreescouts and Spree Academy in the Spreewald Biosphere Reserve south-east of Berlin. You can contact him at: sebastian.zoepp@interpret-europe.net.
To cite this article:
Ludwig, T., Zoepp, S. (2016) ‘Would you like to become a professional member?’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2016, 7
Available online:
https://www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/ie-newsletter_2016-4_winter.pdf
