Leadership Letter
April 2023
ASK COUNSELOR TARA
ASCE’s General Counsel Tara Hoke responds to legal questions posed by Sections and Branches here each month. Send Tara an email with your question.
Can you clarify Subscribing Member status and its benefits?
If you’ve spent any time reviewing the governing documents for your section, branch, or other ASCE entity, you’re probably familiar with the term “Subscribing Member.” Subscribing Membership is used throughout ASCE’s model bylaws to distinguish individuals who have actively joined a geographic entity from those who are simply “assigned” to that entity by virtue of their postal address. Unfortunately, the term has often been subject to some confusion – what exactly does it mean to be a Subscribing Member? Here are a few points about Subscribing Membership that are often misunderstood:
1. Subscribing Members are not necessarily “voting” members. Subscribing Member is the basic threshold for voting rights – but not all Subscribing Members can vote. Student Members are eligible to become a Subscribing Member of a geographic unit, and as such can derive most of the benefits reserved for Subscribing Membership, but they are not eligible to vote or hold office. For example, per ASCE’s model section bylaws, “Only Subscribing Members in good standing, in a voting grade of membership as defined by the Society, shall be eligible to vote in Section elections, to hold Section office, or to represent the Section officially.”
2. Subscribing Members are not necessarily dues-paying members. Many of our entity bylaws include language to the effect that members of the Society “who have paid the current dues” of the entity are Subscribing Members. However, in the case of a membership class with a $0 dues obligation (typically, Life Members and Students), then a member in one of those classes who pays $0 has “paid the current dues” for their class. Our current template includes language to help clarify this potential cause of confusion – by saying that Subscribing Members are those who have paid the current dues “or are exempt from dues payments.”
3. At least at the Section/Branch/YMG level, Subscribing Membership is not restricted to individuals living within the group’s geographic boundaries. Unlike so-called “Assigned Members,” who are assigned based on their address of record in ASCE’s membership database, Subscribing Membership simply requires the payment of dues. An individual can choose to have their membership materials sent to their home address in one section or branch but pay dues for and participate near their work address in another section. Or an individual can choose to belong to multiple sections, branches, and so forth. It is not even uncommon for individuals to volunteer for and hold office in multiple different groups – especially in areas at the borderline of geographic boundaries. (For example, a member living in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area could choose to become a Subscribing Member in the Virginia, Maryland and National Capital Sections.)
While these are the default rules in ASCE’s model documents, some level of customization is permitted. The most common modification is for a group to decide that some or all elected positions (e.g., the presidential offices) are open only to individuals living within the group’s geographic boundaries.