Lesson 5: Dues, Fees, and Your Choices

Estimated time: 8–10 minutes

🎯 What You’ll Get From This Lesson

By the end, you’ll be able to:

• Explain, at a high level, what your dues actually pay for.
• Describe the process that must happen before your dues can be raised — and your role in it.
• Understand that you have choices around certain parts of what you pay, and where to go to exercise them.

📚 What’s Inside

Dues are the one part of membership every member feels directly. This lesson demystifies them — not the accounting (that’s the Secretary-Treasurer’s world), but what they mean for you as a member. Three short parts:

1. Where Your Dues Go
2. Your Say Before Dues Change
3. Your Choices About What You Pay

One ground rule up front: you won’t find specific dollar amounts or rates in this lesson on purpose. Dues figures change, and the only reliable source is the current dues schedule / the live financial records — not a number typed into a course. When you need the actual figure, go there.