Dear BARS,
As we announced at the General Meeting in Glasgow and when we circulated the members’ survey earlier this year, BARS is currently in a position where it needs to increase its fees, which haven’t risen since 2011. In the past few years, we have expanded the range of fellowships and funding we offer substantially, spending down a surplus that had built up, but we are now at a point where we must raise fees to keep the association on a secure financial footing.
To guide us in pursuing a course in line with our members’ wishes, we asked about the level of fee increase we should implement in the members’ survey. The vast majority of respondents (91.5%) were happy with a fee increase that will allow us to sustain BARS’ current level of activities, with those who favoured a larger fee increase outnumbering those who favoured a smaller increase (which would mandate cuts) by three to one.
In line with these results, the BARS Executive has determined that the fees will rise to the following levels as of 1st July 2025:
- Waged: £37 (from £25)
- Unwaged: £17 (from £10)
The members’ survey also indicated an appetite among some members (23.9%) for an easy means of making a larger yearly contribution to BARS; for these people, we will be setting up a new Sustaining Membership at £57. No one will ever be obliged to pay at this level, but if you’d like to make a larger regular donation to BARS, subscribing at this level will help support additional fellowships and allow BARS to plan activities over a sustained period.
For members who have already paid this year, current subscriptions remain valid until 31st December 2025. Please note that receiving this email does not necessarily mean that your membership is up to date. If you haven’t yet paid your subscription for the calendar year 2025, you have until 30th June to do so at the current rates (this may be especially relevant for postgraduate and early career members attending Romantic (Un)Conciousness). After that point, we will change the How to Join page to charge the new rates and will adjust all existing PayPal subscriptions.
If you have an ongoing subscription, you will be automatically notified when this is amended. If you’re happy to continue as a member at the new rate, you don’t need to do anything further, but you can also cancel your subscription if you wish. If you’d like to change the rate at which you subscribe (either because your circumstances have changed or because you’d like to subscribe at the new Sustaining Membership rate), you can cancel your subscription and then rejoin BARS using the links on the page. For honorary members, there is no need to contact us individually.
We realise that raising fees at a time of considerable uncertainty is far from ideal, and we wouldn’t be doing so if there were other options. However, membership fees comprise the entirety of BARS’ regular income, supporting the association’s full range of activities, from conferences to fellowships and from The BARS Review to the Digital Events programme. Without this increase, we would need to cut back drastically. With this increase, BARS can continue to flourish; we are confident that we will not need to increase fees again in the short term, and do not plan to review them again until 2029.
Many thanks for your continuing support, and best wishes,
Mary Fairclough (Treasurer), Yimon Lo (Membership Secretary) and Matthew Sangster (President), for the BARS Executive