SDG membership

Revision as of 08:05, 16 January 2010

Becoming a member

What is SDG membership?

Becoming a member of SDG means paying a voluntary membership contribution that goes to support SDG. There are a variety of membership and contribution levels, described below.

Memberships are SDG's primary source of funding. Currently, membership contributions are used to maintain Swarm (keep it compatible with new hardware and operating systems), guarantee the viability of our annual SwarmFest meetings, and support the development of new software tools for agent-based simulation. Membership contributions are not currently used for SDG administration, maintenance of the SDG wiki, or providing user support; these services are all provided by volunteers.

SDG is a not-for-profit [501c(3)] organization, so contributions and membership fees are tax-deductible.

What benefits or privileges does membership provide?

Currently, all SDG products and services are freely available (except SwarmFest, which has a registration fee) so we cannot provide discounts or special support for members. The primary benefits of membership are increased assurance that SDG and Swarm will persist and a voice in their future direction.

How you can fund SDG membership

We strongly encourage agent-based simulation users, and especially Swarm users, to include annual SDG membership in the budget of their proposals and projects. This approach has allowed several research teams to purchase group memberships that have been critical for SDG's ability to maintain Swarm.

Membership categories

SDG membership categories are established in the following table. The contribution levels are suggested; we welcome alternative amounts or one-time contributions of any amount.

**Membership categories**
Category	Suggested annual contribution
University or government group	$500
Corporate group	$1000
Elite group	$5000
Individual student	$20
Individual university faculty and postdoc	$100
Individual government or professional	$100
Individual elite	$500

Becoming a member

You can purchase a membership by providing your name (or, for a group membership, the name of the group), the kind of membership requested, your contact information, and the payment. Contributions can be made via check to Swarm Development Group, sent to:

  Swarm Development Group, Finance Office
  c/o Christine Muongchanh
  University of Washington Columbia Basin Research
  1325 4th Avenue, Suite 1820
  Seattle WA 98101
  USA

You can use our handy membership form (interactive PDF).

If you need an invoice for your membership, or have questions about payment, please contact Christine Muongchanh at the above address or:

Note: we now accept membership payments through paypal.com with <swarm at swarm.org> as the contact address.

If you have any questions or problems, please contact us.

Membership Policies and Procedures

This page constitutes the SDG membership policies and procedures manual (SDG bylaws article 3.3), adopted November 2006.

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 Note: we now accept membership payments through [http://paypal.com paypal.com] with &lt;<tt>swarm at swarm.org</tt>&gt; as the contact address.
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 If you have any questions or problems, please [[SDG_contact|contact us]].