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Membership Tracking

Greetings MNFurs Community!

We want to quickly outline some changes we are making to our events regarding membership tracking and Code of Conduct (CoC) acceptance. To stay transparent with everyone on how we do things and what we’re changing, this explains these changes.

How it’s currently done

Little may people know that individuals become “members” of Minnesota Furs (MNFurs) when attending Furry Migration or Midwinter Frolic when they accept the CoC at the time of registration. We do want to be clear that membership and paying for access to these events are different. To attend our events, you must be a member, so it’s just a package deal kind of thing.

However, most people may be aware that we need people to explicitly accept our CoC in the past at MNFurs events throughout the year. Previously, we would state, “By attending our event, you accept our CoC,” and usually have a banner stand by an entrance with a link to our CoC ([http://coc.mnfurs.org] If you’re curious to read it). We recently had legal assistance in reviewing our operational documents and policies. One of the items that called to our attention was the minimal membership tracking and CoC acceptance at our events. So we did our best, while still staying legally sound, to come up with a process that would be the least invasive but still reaches the proper compliance required.

What is changing

Soon (likely this weekend), we will be pushing a new change to how the website works. Upon creating an MNFurs.org [http://mnfurs.org] account and logging in, you’ll be presented with our CoC and a few information items we need to collect to establish membership properly. These things include basic things like your legal name, if you accept our CoC, and emergency contact information. We want to be clear, as per the MNFurs Privacy Policy [https://www.mnfurs.org/about/privacy-policy] we will continue never to sell any of your data. Furthermore, membership for MNFurs has been and will always be free. Some MNFurs events like Furry Migration and MidWinter Frolic will require an admission fee, and others could be added in the future. Fees may also be required by third-party locations such as bowling or E-Sports, and those fees are paid to that venue – MNFurs will not collect these monies.

With that being said, Our events require membership to attend. This is actually something that has been the case in the past but never truly enforced. We won’t be cross-checking everyone at our event for having a membership record [http://.mnfurs.org], but now per a recent change to our operational documents, attendance at our events assumes the attendee has signed up for a membership with us. We may cross-check that someone has active membership at our event, and if they do not, ask that they establish membership at that time or may be asked to leave the event until they can verify membership.

Because our events ask for membership to be established, another change on the website will be that you must have accepted the CoC to RSVP for events. You will only be able to RSVP for an upcoming event if this has been completed. We, please, ask that people continue to RSVP for events, especially those requiring our event runners to establish a headcount of individuals for space allocation and stocking consumable goods (Like picnics).

In summary

The TL;DR of this is that we’re working harder to track our membership properly and do better due diligence to have our event attendees explicitly accept our CoC following some legal review of our processes. Our events will continue to be the same as you expect, and we’re not pay-walling our events or anything. Merely the only change in the way we collect membership. We welcome anyone with questions or concerns to reach out to us via email, [directors@mnfurs.org], or to talk to a staff member at any of our events.

We appreciate your understanding and look forward to seeing you at our events!

 
 

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The RSVP Plus One is for one-time guests or guardians of the MNFurs member going to event.

If the Plus One is for an MNFurs member, they need to RSVP themselves.