The SCA is a world-wide organisation with a slightly strange membership tradition. If you want to come along to Lightwood activities, here’s what you need to know.
- Membership is not compulsory. One of our oldest rules is that you can be involved in the SCA, even quite heavily, without paying for membership. There are some things you can’t do — you can’t organise an SCA event, serve as an Officer or enter a tournament to become King if you’re not a member — but in general, membership is optional. But…
- Members get in to SCA activities cheaper than non-members. The reason for this is insurance: everyone has to either have a paid-up annual membership or else pay a ten dollar event membership ($5 minors) to be allowed to attend SCA events, including archery and arty-crafty stuff. If you’re not a member, you pay the extra $10 or $5, we track it and remit it to the insurer, and then you’re in. Pretty simple, but it can add up over time. Especially considering…
- Membership for under-18s is free, but the non-member fee is still five or ten bucks. If you’re an adult with two kids, you only need to come to three events within a year to be out of pocket compared to what you’d pay for membership. Why? Because…
- Membership is cheap! Compared to scouting, sports clubs, social clubs and the like, none of which do as many different things as the SCA, our membership is really inexpensive. Adults: $45 a year. Minors living under the same roof as an adult member: free. So pretty obviously, membership is worth getting if you think you might come along more than a couple of times. So what we say is:
- Come along, see if you like it, and if you do we’ll point you at the membership sign-up page. In the long run, that gets you the best balance between paying too much and being a member of something you might decide you’re not keen on after all — it’s rare, but it does happen very occasionally!
The membership sign-up page is here, by the way. We recommend coming to one activity as a non-member to make sure you want to get involved, or if you don’t mind taking a chance and you really really hate paying insurers for whatever it is they supposedly do then go ahead and pay your membership right now. It’s up to you! Remember point 1, because we don’t want you to feel any obligation.
Clear as mud? Excellent! We’ll see you at our next activity or event!