OERF:Membership categories

Overview
The prime motivation for contributing to the OER Foundation lies in demonstrating a commitment to the core value of education, namely to share knowledge freely as a social good. In addition, the strategy of the OER Foundation is designed to realise tangible benefits for participating organisations while contributing towards sustainable practice in education. Membership of the OER Foundation provides the following tangible benefits:

In the medium term, savings generated from integrating and participating in selected OER initiatives in your institution will far exceed the cost of participation.
 * Reduced cost associated with the design and development of digital course resources used in support of educational offerings at your institution.
 * Quantifiable savings which exceed the cost of membership relating to the technology infrastructure costs associated with hosting open collaborative environments and just-in-time professional development support for your academic staff.
 * Voting rights in determining the selection criteria and priorities for commissioned development of OER resources where authors and design professionals are remunerated for the development of open content which your educators are free to use and adapt. (All materials are provided in open editable formats).
 * Opportunities for your institution to brand OER content with your own educational identity.
 * Profiling your institution within the international open education community and benefiting from the strategic networks and international relationships provided by the WikiEducator community.
 * Advice from and access to world leaders in OER regarding the implementation of creative commons licensing, open content and refinements to institutional intellectual property policies.
 * Increased opportunities to improve the quality of learning for your students through collaborative design and networks of professional practice
 * Direct benefits from technology improvements and innovations for educational delivery at your institution.
 * Being part of a network of leaders and educational innovators.

Founding Members and Sponsors
This category is designed to profile founding members of the OER Foundation and to record their contribution for prosperity.

All members who sign up before 31 December 2009 will qualify for the designation of "Founding Member". Founding members will be profiled with a link from the landing page of WikiEducator with the right to link to a profiled case study of their organisation. This is an excellent opportunity to profile open education related initiatives as well as your contributions to the OER movement. WikiEducator has extensive international reach targeting a focused education community. This is a unique opportunity to be a founding partner in the history of open education. Together we can make the future happen.

In addition, sponsors who have contributed more than $20,000 before 31 December 2009 will qualify for the designation of "Founding Sponsor" with appropriate profiling on the WikiEducator websites.

Founding members who sign up for a three-year membership before 31 December 2009 will qualify for a 25% discount on membership dues.

Membership categories for tertiary education institutions
The OER Foundation will implement a tiered membership structure. There are two categories:


 * Contributing members who contribute financially plus allocate staff time if appropriate for coordinating OER activities at their institution. There are three tiers of membership: Gold, silver and bronze.
 * In-kind contributors allocate a minimum of a 0.2 full-time equivalent (1 day per week) for co-coordinating OER activities at their institution. We encourage active members to consider a voluntary donation form USD100 or more per annum.

Platinum Members ($10,000 - 25,000 per year)

 * Governments, Corporations
 * sponsorship of one or two FTE4WE institutions in different countries?

Gold Members (USD5,000 plus 0.2 FTE)
Gold is a premium membership designed to maximise organisational benefits from OER. Gold members assign a 0.2 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) staff member to coordinate and facilitate institutional-based OER activities on WikiEducator and receive a reduced membership fee of USD5000 per annum (excluding discounts for multi-year membership). Note: time donated by academic staff while authoring OER is not calculated under the 0.2 FTE allocation -- this is intended for a dedicated 0.2 OER coordinator at the institution.


 * Benefits included in this package


 * Estimated "savings" of USD9700 compared with hosting an institutional-based OER initiative
 * Local OER co-ordinator to facilitate maximum return on OER investment (Funded locally, institutions allocate a local coordinator to work 1 day per week (0.2FTE) on institutional-based OER projects)
 * Branded landing page in WikiEducator for your institutional OER initiatives and projects
 * Public recognition of membership status on the WikiEducator websites
 * Hosted wiki services on the WikiEducator website
 * Professional development for your staff (at least one international online workshop every calendar month)
 * Professional OER consulting services (Membership includes 10 hours of professional OER consulting time)
 * Voting rights for selecting OER development projects to be commissioned from surplus funds which the OER Foundation reinvests back into OER development.
 * Additional consulting hours provided at discounted rates. (Gold members qualify for a 20% discount on the standard consulting rate for additional consulting hours if required.)
 * 20% discount on three-year memberships.

Silver Members (USD8,000)
Silver members contribute USD8000 per annum (excluding discounts for multi-year membership). Standard members do not assign an institutional-based OER coordinator;


 * Estimated "savings" of USD6700 compared with hosting an institutional-based OER initiative
 * Benefits included in this package
 * Branded landing page in WikiEducator for your institutional OER initiatives and projects
 * Public recognition of membership status on the WikiEducator websites
 * Hosted wiki services on the WikiEducator website
 * Professional development for your staff (at least one international online workshop every calendar month)
 * Professional OER consulting services (Membership includes 10 hours of professional OER consulting time)
 * Voting rights for selecting OER development projects to be commissioned from surplus funds which the OER Foundation reinvests back into OER development.
 * Additional consulting hours provided at discounted rates. (Silver members qualify for a 20% discount on the standard consulting rate for additional consulting hours if required.)
 * 20% discount on three-year memberships.

Bronze members (USD1000)
Bronze is an entry-level membership designed for institutions or departments who want to test the OER waters and peer collaboration approaches by using a focused pilot project with facilitated support from an experienced OER professional. Bronze members contribute USD1,000 per annum. Our professional consulting support included in the package is restricted to an identified OER pilot project, however should more pilots be required the OER Foundation will provide a discounted consulting rate for these services.


 * Benefits included in this package
 * Public recognition of membership status on the WikiEducator websites
 * Hosted wiki services on the WikiEducator website
 * Professional development for your staff (at least one international online workshop every calendar month)
 * Professional OER consulting services for a specified pilot project (Membership includes 2 hours of professional OER consulting time)
 * Additional consulting hours provided at discounted rates. (Active members qualify for a 20% discount on the standard consulting rate for additional consulting hours if required.)

Consortia Members (Gold or Silver)
Consortia (and duly registered educational partnerships and alliances) may acquire an active or standard membership of the OER Foundation and receive normal benefits for their consortia staff in using OER to achieve their objectives. In addition, a consortium membership will enable duly registered members of the consortium to qualify for discounted membership of the OER Foundation. The following discount applies:


 * A 20% discount on the contribution to OER Foundation for registered members of the consortium (i.e. registered members would pay USD4000 for active membership and USD6,000 for standard membership of the OER Foundation)
 * Note: Consortium members provide the OER Foundation with an active membership list so that they can qualify for discounted membership of the OER Foundation.

In-kind contributors
Content coming soon .... -- but basically any institution allocating a a dedicated 0.2 OER FTE would qualify for listing as an "Active Member" --- We invite a donation of >USD100 for this category. Benefits would exclude professional OER consultancy and Branded landing page, but will include free wiki training.

We envisage a special category of Active member -- i.e for institutions who don't have the funds to become a contributing member (See FTE4WE below).

FTE for WikiEducator Members (FTE4WE)
This is a special category of contributing member designed for institutions in the developing world who may not have the financial resources to afford membership. These institutions will assign a 0.4 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) staff member to work and facilitate institutional OER activities on WikiEducator. The OER Foundation will seek to find sponsorship from the corporate sector and international donor community to assist in covering a standard membership fee to contribute towards the overall technical infrastructure, training services and professional support consultancies based on a rate of USD5000 per sponsorship.


 * Local OER co-ordinator to facilitate maximum return on OER activities (Funded locally, FTE4WE members assign a local coordinator to work 2 days per week (0.4FTE) on institutional-based OER projects)
 * Branded landing page in WikiEducator for FTE4WE OER initiatives and projects
 * Hosted wiki services on the WikiEducator website
 * Professional development for your staff (at least one international online workshop every calendar month)
 * Professional OER consulting services (FTE4WE membership includes 10 hours of professional OER consulting time if a corporate or international sponsor is found)


 * Note:
 * Voting rights for selecting OER development projects may be possible depending on requirements specified by the sponsor.

Membership categories for the School sector
Taking the public funding systems for provincial, federal and national school provision into account, the OER Foundation works with the respective Ministries of Education rather than levying individual school memberships to help support national OER collaborations in the school sector.

Ministry supported national OER collaborations
The OER foundation will provide a national identity in the WikiEducator suite of wikis for national OER collaborations. We encourage and recommend Ministries of Education to consider a flat fee structure of $15,000 per annum for basic services to support national collaborations.

The respective Ministry will assign an national or provincial representative for prioritising service and support needs for the sector. The OER foundation will liaise with the respective Ministry to discuss alternatives, including for example:


 * A bureaux service to assist with converting content into wiki format
 * Dedicated national online workshops for professional development of teachers
 * Seed funding for the development of OER mapped to the national curriculum.

Honesty box contributions for schools
WikiEducator provides free hosting of school portals for individual schools to profile their OER projects. Moreover, the OER Foundation provides free training and professional development in developing OER for teachers around the world. The OER Foundation guarantees that our OER wiki websites will not carry corporate advertising.

The OER Foundation welcomes voluntary donations from schools who find this service valuable and who wish to make a small contribution to supporting this international open education project for the social good of education. (While all donations are well received, we suggest a donation for an individual school in the range between USD70 to USD100 per annum).

Associate Members
This a special category of membership dedicated for registered non-profit entities working in the open education space. This will be based on a reciprocal membership trade to foster sharing of expertise, thought leadership and collaboration among like minded non-profits and NGOs. Associate members do not have voting rights on the allocation of financial resources for OER development. We encourage Associate members to provide preferred member pricing to OERF Members, for their services, conferences and events.

Affiliate Members
Affiliate members are for consultants, learning designers, and researchers who secure projects of a minimum threshold of $5,000 in one (1) calendar year, for related work in the WikiEducator community.

Organizations
Organizations which fund projects (where WikiEducator is used as the foundation for community or organisational development) of a minimum threshold of $5,000 gross contract value in one (1) calendar year are eligible.

Individuals
For example, learning design services for the development of OER materials in WikiEducator; funded code development projects which improves our technology, research grants focused on OER research and and self-organising educational systems based on WikiEducator data or consulting projects where WikiEducator is used as the foundation for community or organisational development.

3% OER Contribution
The OER Foundation uses an honesty box approach where we invite Affiliate Members to donate 3% of the gross contract value or grant as a contribution to our operational expenditure and support for our open source community.

Affiliate members will be profiled on the WikiEducator website for one (1) calendar year and this is a great way to profile your work and expertise. Affiliate members will NOT qualify for voting rights on commissioned content development projects.

Corporate members / sponsors
Corporate members will be listed on the WikiEducator sponsor page, based on their levels of contribution. (For example Platinum, Gold, Silver).

However, in addition to this we are thinking about additional value for corporate members:


 * While the WikiEducator site will not carry advertising on the main site, we envisage developing a dedicated WikiEducator electronic publication which will target the use of technology in Education which WikiEducators can opt into receiving for free. We envisage that this publication will carry advertising and Corporate members will qualify for different levels of advertising exposure in this publication. WikiEducator has an extensive global reach with a passionate education audience.

Monetary savings associated with membership
Compare the cost of setting up an organisational OER wiki and related professional development support costs. All estimates are in US dollars.