But now, we may have a specific reason for inciting a defined membership: group liability insurance. I've been negotiating with a company who is willing to issue group fire insurance. That is to say, you could get one policy to cover your fire troupe and anyone who performs under that banner is covered. They're even willing to give "NAFAA members" a discount. But alas, we don't have a formal membership.

That's easy enough to accomplish under the current model, but if they require ID cards or some-such, it might be a different issue. So, if we want to go through with this, and get the group coverage, we might want to poke around with membership concepts.

Here's a few of the ideas we've had in the past.

1. Full licensing as an affiliate with regular safety evaluations - Interesting and desirable for the safer troupes, but a logistical nightmare for policing such things.
2. Chapter memberships with occasional policing - generally considered more favorable, and more likely to work well. However local charters may have different interpretations of the safety rules leading to uneven enforcement.
3. Basic $5 membership - gets you card and a newsletter. Not very exciting and doesn't validate safety procedures.
4. Like the APA - I never actually got how this was supposed to work, but apparently the American Piercers Association did a self-organizing thing like NAFAA with rules and such, but I never understood the enforcement part. It seems very much like they have none at all.
5. Exam Basic Membership - this would be a lot like getting 5 stars on Fire-dancing.com, just answer all the questions the way they want to hear them and you get good marks. Zero enforcement with the illusion of safety.

So, here's my thinking. We go with #3 below. Your $5 gets you a membership card, and reduced rates for group insurance. You also become a voting member of NAFAA and can decide on rule changes, regs modifications, etc.

First vote to happens no sooner than 6 months from formalizing membership, and we'll use something as close to parliamentary procedure as possible on the 'net.

-Tedward (webmaster)