We did address this at our annual meeting. This is the revised bylaw for membership (from the news section on the main page):

The second area of clarification defines our membership as it was intended by our founders. Basically, you can be a WGA member if you are eligible for a WI Driver’s License. The membership of the few current WGA Members who would not fit this new definition will be “grandfathered in” and will not be revoked. This clarification will only apply to new memberships.

Bec

@Team Deejay wrote:

Since apparently the only privilege associated with membership is voting for the BOD, I’m not sure this is that important to the individuals.

One negative is that currently we have the ability to say that we represent geocachers residing in the state of Wisconsin when we deal with government agencies. If we start adding “auxiliary members” from out of state, would we represent geocachers residing in the state of Wisconsin and tourists? I think that this is significant in these times where we are working to ensure the long-term viability of the game.

With regard to the Becky’s post, I am assuming that we do not intend to eliminate from membership people who have handicaps which would prevent them receiving a driver’s license (poor vision being the most likely reason). The wording provided would do exactly that. What if they just can’t pass the drivers test due to poor driving skills? Are those people excluded? Perhaps this should be changed to read “eligible for Wisconsin Drivers License or State Identification Card”?

As Bec said, this was discussed at this year’s BOD annual meeting, and it was decided that residency should be required for membership.

And no, a driver’s license is not required. It is just that the residency requirements for a Wisconsin driver’s license are the same residency requirements that we adopted for WGA membeship. So the blind, or those who cant drive are eligible to join WGA, as long as they meet the residency requirements spelled out for a driver’s license.

Hope that makes sense.

zuma

@marc_54140 wrote:

Does residency really matter in determining what you are a member of? Think about it for a moment. The Sierra Club, the Democratic party, Geocaching.Com, The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), Yahoo.Com, NAACP, citizenship in a particular country, etc.

These are not state organizations. Sierra Club has regional chapters based on your home address. The Democratic Party has residency requirements for voting in primary elections.

The most important reason for a WGA residency requirement, as others have alluded, is so that government officials know we represent Wisconsin residents, who are — for the most part — the people who pay their salaries through property and income taxes and we elect the respresentatives who control the government budgets.

Another good reason is that a group of non-Wisconsin residents with voting powers could conceiveably (although I don’t know why they would) become a majority, vote to disband our organization, and disperse whatever funds are in the treasury.

I totally agree with Marc. I think the Wisconsin Delorme Challenge should be the determining factor. I realize that an out of state cacher could come to Wisconsin and complete it in a month or week or whatever the common misconception is. But it’s funny, I don’t see a single non-Wisconsin cacher having completed it yet, or even in the top 20 for that matter. Oh, I’m sorry, there is one. 😀 It seems as though it might take quite a bit of commitment to caching in the State of Wisconsin to complete that Challenge. That commitment should warrant a person’s Membership to the WGA.

I think having the ‘friend’ title tells people who don’t know just how dedicated I am, that I’m just a curious by-standard. I don’t even belong to the Minnesota Geocaching association if that matters. I do the overwhelming majority of my caching in Wisconsin (check my stats). My dedication to caching in Wisconsin to Wisconsin’s environment warrants concideration if nothing else.

If the issue is the “friend” title, maybe we can come up with something different. How abot “WGA Auxiliary Member”? “WGA Non-Resident Member?” We could also have “WGA Youth Member.” Alternatively, we could let people set up their own titles on the website. (Lagrac would probably choose “WGA Gopher Hunter”.)

@Team Honeybunnies wrote:

Ooooh! I really like the idea of being able to customize your title. It neatly eliminates the problem, allows us to have some more fun in here, and we should still be able to readily identify one-time and infrequent visitors who wouldn’t bother to customize their title. Great idea.

I like that… or once you make 500 posts you are awarded the ability to change it.