[Acme]

I signed up for a GOA membership over a month ago and didn't hear anything from them. They hit my account for the membership fee, but then nothing. I sent an email to an address on their site about a week ago to ask if I should have received some kind of welcome packet or a membership card or something, but I got no reply.

Well, lo and behold, today I got a letter from GOA that included my new membership card. The membership card is a blank, generic red card that I guess I'm supposed to fill in my name on. The rest of the contents of the letter is nothing more than several pages asking me to renew my membership.

What the heck??!? Is this the way they always run their association? I mean, I get hounded to death for more money all the time by the NRA, but AT LEAST they bother to let me know that they acknowledge that I'm a member. This is rather pathetic. Just send me one freakin' postcard that says "Welcome to the GOA" or something!!

Forgive me if I'm whining about something that is obvious to everyone else.

Acme

[MitchSchaft]

Yes, I would call that whining.
I sent for my membership a month ago as well. I received a courtesy email a couple days later stating they had received my membership. Did you not give them your email? I haven't received anything in the mail, though.
What is it that you want? I nice pretty card and a package filled with bumper stickers to make you feel better about sending them your money?

[4v50 Gary]

Expect the computer to automatically generate mail. After years of being a life member of the NRA, occasionally I'll receive a letter inviting me to join.

[Ian]

I hope I get that little service as a new GOA member myself. Every penny spent on member mailings is a penny less to spend on actual gun-rights legislative bribing...I mean lobbying. One guy who joined the GOA at the same gun show I did actually decided to just donate the membership fee and not sign up as a member, so that they didn't waste any money mailing him stuff.

[Standing Wolf]

The G.O.A. is strictly a no-frills organization. It concentrates on the tasks at hand, not looking good.

[pbman]

Well, lo and behold, today I got a letter from GOA that included my new membership card. The membership card is a blank, generic red card that I guess I'm supposed to fill in my name on. The rest of the contents of the letter is nothing more than several pages asking me to renew my membership.

Same thing happend to me.

It didn't piss me off because it was a donation.

It did surprise me thou.

[Acme]

I received a courtesy email a couple days later stating they had received my membership. Did you not give them your email? I haven't received anything in the mail, though.

Not at all. I think I made it pretty clear what I wanted. If I join an organization, and the organization hits my account, I expect SOMETHING from them saying that they even acknowledge I've joined. No, I did not receive so much as an email from them saying "We got your money". Yes, I gave them my email address.

If I was supposed to get an email and it got messed up somehow, then so be it. It just kinda sucks that the very first contact I have from them after joining is something asking me to renew my membership, and that comes less than a month and a half after I joined. I'm all about them not wastefully spending my dues on frills, but this is a bit ridiculous. There is both an art and a science to maintaining loyalty in a non-profit organization. It doesn't have to be expensive.

Acme

[whoami]

Funny....I signed up for a GOA life membership three months ago. It took almost two months, but I got a membership packet with a Life Member card, a certificate of membership, a rather nice pin, and two Life Member stickers. Just now I got the standard membership letter (strangely enough, with a standard membership card).

Maybe signing up for a lifer (50 bucks quarterly) got me more....not that I much care. I'm more interested in supporting the Org than the 'membership bennies'....

[Acme]

whoami,

Very nice. So now let's suppose you had gone to their site, typed in your credit card number, and then -- nothing. You check your account and see that SOMEONE has taken your $50, but you receive nothing from GOA that shows you that your $50 was ever translated into the "membership" that you thought you were buying. For all you know, some clever hacker has set up a way to capture membership applications off the GOA site and reroute the credit card information to himself. Would your thought then have been, "Hey, no problem, because all I wanted to do was give money to a cause I believe in"? Of course you wouldn't. After all, there was a space on that signup sheet for making simple donations to the cause. Had you wanted to throw money at them out of the goodness of your heart, you would have checked one of those other boxes and then forgotten about it. One day you may probably want to make a charitable donation to them, but on that day two months ago you wanted to join their association, right? My whole point is that it would be nice if they let you know that they had received your money and had placed your name on the list of "members", which is what you wanted when you typed in your credit card number that particular day.

The "good news" here, I suppose, is that it took them two months to get around to sending you ANYTHING. Perhaps I should simply count myself as lucky that I've started receiving the "please renew your membership" stuff from them already. That, apparently, is the primary differentiator between a "membership" and a "donation". I'll just wait a little longer and see if they send anything else -- even a response to my email inquiry on the email address they have set up specifically for those types of inquiries. Thanks for all the responses to my initial question. :)

Acme

[redhead]

I joined the GOA at a gun show in October, wrote them a check. All I've gotten from them so far is a letter telling me it's time to renew my membership. Yes, I gave them my email address. No, I didn't send them another check to renew my membership.

[Tamara]

I joined a month or two ago; just got the packet two days ago. :cool:

[Monte Harrison]

Guys, a membership in GOA isn't a magazine subscription. It isn't like a membership in Columbia House. You don't get a lot of mail, or a lot of other extraneous crap that your dues money is paying for. You get the satisfaction of knowing that your money is going to buy face time with politicians, issue advertising, and expenses for political activists. If you want a lot of crap with a membership, join AARP.

[Acme]

You get the satisfaction of knowing that your money is going to buy......

How do you have any of that "satisfaction" if the organization never acknowledges receiving your money? Heck, a week ago I considered calling my credit card company to tell them I think something seedy went on with my membership transaction. How can I have any satisfaction that I'm helping a cause I believe in if I have no way of knowing the organization even knows they got my money?

Please don't think I don't understand your point, Monte. From a high-and-mighty, pie-in-the-sky perspective I agree with you wholeheartedly. I don't want them wasting money sending extraneous fluff. For instance, they don't need to bother sending me "Please renew your membership" notices one month after I join and before they've acknowledged my having joined in the first place. THAT is an example of a waste of money because I assure you it will go right in the trash. It also speaks to a lack of understanding of the difference between a "membership" and a "donation". You know there's a difference between the two things, right?

Acme

[John Galt]

There are a great many who are NRA members and complain that the NRA is more about compromise than real rights defenders.

GOA works strictly on fighting for our rights. They don't put out a magazine or have a hunter safety program.
I'm happy to be a GOA member and am glad that maybe 98% of my contributions are used for fighting for my rights.

If you want 50% of your donation to go to magazines, mailings, salaries, offices and the other 50% toward limp wristed lobbying, confine your contributions to the NRA.

I also belong to JPFO. I really like how if you want to buy copies of their booklets to redistribute, the cost is something like 10cents each in quantity. Like GOA, they are not trying to "make a buck", but instead fight the good fight.

* It's so funny to see someone who wants to actually pay for the benefit of being bombarded by begging letters.

[whoami]

My whole point is that it would be nice if they let you know that they had received your money and had placed your name on the list of "members", which is what you wanted when you typed in your credit card number that particular day.

Actually, IIRC it took only a few days before my CC reflected the charge (I usually check my statement online every week). So from that point until I received my packet, I was in the same boat....they had my money, and I didn't even receive an email from them (In fact....to date I've only received one....it came about three days before I got the packet thanking me for my membership).

Again, IIRC, GOA does batch membership processing. They'll do it maybe once a month, or once every two months, so the actuall organizational setup of your membership doesn't happen immediately. It's done that way to keep costs down, and that is usually why they don't get membership packets out right away, or an immediate confirmation. I definitely agree, however, that they should have some method of acknowledging an application of membership with at least some sense of rapidity.

[Acme]

If you want 50% of your donation to go to magazines, mailings, salaries, offices and the other 50% toward limp wristed lobbying, confine your contributions to the NRA.

Wow, you've got to be trying really hard to twist what I said into the above pile of bombastic malarky. Apparently in some folks' minds there is no middle ground between "50% of your donation" going to "magazines, mailings, salaries, offices" and a single, feeble acknowledgement that my membership payment has been received and my membership has been activated. Besides, I'll say it one more time for the cheap seats, there's a difference between "buying a membership to an association" and "donating money to an association".

Imagine you are joining -- I don't know, say, a health club. You've heard good things about the health club and you know they get good results, so you go there to sign up. When you get there you see a sign that says "Membership $20", but there are no people around. Then you see a credit card swipe machine and you swipe your credit card through it. The machine appears to work, but never comes back to tell you the transaction was approved. It just sits there blankly. At some point you're going to wonder, "Am I done? Am I a member now?" but there's nobody around to ask. You show up there every day for a month trying to find someone to talk to about this membership you think you might have signed up for, but you can't find anyone. Then after a month or so of this, someone finally shows up, but the only thing they say is, "Would you like to go ahead and renew your membership for next year?"

That absurd analogy is about as absurd as this GOA business seems.

This is obviously one of those threads where some folks are going to choose to read what they want to read rather than reading what's actually on the screen. I'm not looking for a freakin' magazine here.

Acme

[Acme]

Thanks, whoami. That's the kind of information I was looking for when I started this thread. :)

Acme

[bronco61]

ACME,

I had the same situation but Whoami hit the answer as to why. I do get newsletters from them now and all my membership "goodies". Do they have all the bells and whistles as you'd get from an NRA membership? nope But I'm confident my money is used in a much better manner than it would be if I'd given it to the NRA.

[MitchSchaft]

I think what we're reading from you is that you care more about the frilly, feel-good stuff than the actual task at hand. Whether you meant that or not is irrelevant.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, no, we don't care if we get a card in the mail. I know my money is going towards a worthy cause. And, like the gentleman above, it's not hard to check your bank statement showing who took the money and when.

[Acme]

...you care more about the frilly, feel-good stuff than the actual task at hand.

Very well. Thanks for your input. :rolleyes:

Acme

[MitchSchaft]

You asked for it.

[HS/LD]

I sent them money with instructions not to send me anything as I wanted the money to go for the Protection of My Rights.

I'll buy a friggin' t-shirt if I want one.



HS/LD

[Luku]

I payed my dues to be a new member in the GOA. I did get an email saying they received my payment. And the charge did appear on my bank statement. According to this thread I probably should wait another two weeks to receive my membership packet. It has been six weeks already.

Btw, does anyone know when is the best time to call the number listed on their site? I tried 3 or 4 times before and i just got a message that their lines were busy everytime.

[hightech]

Acme,

GOA has a 4 room suite in an office building not a 15 story office building like the NRA. Also their staff is only about 6 full time employees not hundreds like the NRA and two of them are lobbying on Capitol Hill. They do batch process a number of things to keep the group focused and use a number of volunteers after hours. For their size they are one of the most effective groups going. :)

[DeseoUnTaco]

I hope I get that little service as a new GOA member myself. Every penny spent on member mailings is a penny less to spend on actual gun-rights legislative bribing...I mean lobbying. One guy who joined the GOA at the same gun show I did actually decided to just donate the membership fee and not sign up as a member, so that they didn't waste any money mailing him stuff.
Yeah, if I join an organization like that, I don't want them wasting a single penny on sending me stuff in the mail. That's preaching to the converted. Spend that money where it will do some good. Mailers to non-members, lobbying, etc. I would rather get everything by email.

[The Real Hawkeye]

I joined a couple of weeks ago. Paid by Visa over the phone. They said a membership package would be sent to me, though I have not yet received it, but I didn't join for that. Mainly I joined so as to increase their clout with politicians by adding one more member to their numbers, and to do my part to help fund their activities in defense of my liberties. Don't really care if I ever receive a card or other material, so long as they remind me when it's time to re-up.

[kage genin]

Reading this thread inspired me to act now. I think it's fantastic that GOA doesn't waste time/money/effort on 'frills'. A dedicated, no-compromise pro-rights organization like the GOA is exactly what we need more of in this country.

I just bought my Life membership with GOA, and I will be PO'ed if I see my contribution going to fancy plastic cards or glossy paper magazines. I've got my NRA membership for that :D