Don Baccus noted the Friends of Portland Audubon and its great features.

Seattle Audubon also has tis membership category available. FOSA, Friends
of Seattle Audubon, members have all rights and privileges of local NAS
members who are assigned to SAS by NAS. As Don noted, the FOSA members
do not get the AUDUBON magazine, nor do they get phone solicitations to
join etc. Many of the SAS Board are FOSA members. FOSA members get
EARTHCARE, the SAS newsletter, discounts at the Nature shop and priority
for field trips.

What Don omitted was the nature of the NAS membership and dues split. The
dues paid to NAS are split between the local chapter and NAS. The local
chapter gets $5.50 and NAS keeps the rest. For FOSA membership all the
dues go to the Seattle Audubon chapter for the local programs.

One final note. NAS is engaged in a strategic planning process. Their
preliminary report shows that 80% of the membership join only to get
the AUDUBON magazine. At SAS the annual membership turnover from NAS
generated members is 30%. This may give some insight into the NAS
recruiting stratgey, irritating as it is. Of course when you learn that
NAS loses money on this membership technique one can hope it will be
modified in the future.

Steve Hallstrom

ps. SAS is tht 5th or 6th largest chapter in NAS with about 5,000 members.
We now have around 250 FOSA members. Aiming for that first 1,000 soon. I
think PAS has over 2,500 FOPAS members. We have a ways to go.

pps. While the Western Regional VP may support local memberships the
NAS office in Olympia does not.