Your membership: Frequently asked questions

From April 2021, there will be membership fees to be part of the RE100, EV100, EP100 and Under2 initiatives. At the moment, only RE100 and Under2 have membership fees.

The reason this is changing is because the rapid growth of our initiatives, while reason to celebrate, has meant that our team structures and internal capacity have had to meet much higher demands than they were originally built for. Last year, we invested in a brand refresh and new website, and embarked on streamlining administrative processes to reduce unnecessary workloads and better serve companies who have made multiple commitments. 

This year, our initiatives have reached a maturity-level with funding implications. While philanthropic funders will finance the incubation and launch of a private sector-facing initiative, they expect us to demonstrate financial self-sufficiency as we continue to grow. All the work that the initiatives have achieved to date mean that we are in a better position than ever to create change, but our traditional funders will not fund operational costs.  Alongside, this year we experienced a 40% funding cut from traditional institutional donors which has further fast-tracked our timeline to introducing fees.

Hence nominal membership fees to sustain the everyday running of the initiatives are the best way for our members to continue supporting the wider mission. They directly enable the longevity of our work as an NGO committed to effective climate action and ensure the Climate Group’s financial self-sustainability. We thank you for your continued support.

Specific strategies depend on the corporate initiative themselves, but overall, the Climate Group has achieved the first of the motivations behind our corporate initiatives – Ambition – by aggregating the commitments of members to send a compelling demand signal to critical decision makers around the world.  
 
We are now ready to leverage this momentum and the combined global strength of our membership towards wider change, through our shifted focus towards delivering the 'Action' phase of member commitments.

The membership fees are a nominal charge to cover the main operational costs of the initiatives, such as staff costs, as well as supplementing the central support teams of the Climate Group like our Communications, Finance and Operations departments.

Additionally, members can also support our work through other ways (and we are grateful to those who already do so!) including philanthropy, sponsorship and special interest groups focused around specific themes.

We reserve the right to review membership fee levels every Autumn based on inflation. We will let members know of any changes at least four months in advance.

*Please note, different pricing applies for EP100 members who have come through the NZCB commitment pathway – please ask the EP100 team for more details.

**Organisations with less than $500m annual revenue are eligible for reduced membership fees of $3,000.

For existing members of EV100 and EP100, in February-March we will be sending you a Membership Agreement to sign, as well as a form to collect relevant details like your billing information and Finance contact. Once these are returned, we will send you your first annual invoice in April.

Our membership fees start on an annual basis from April 1st, with automatic renewals unless you let us know that you would like to opt out 60 days before. Our members normally prefer to pay by bank transfer, but we also accept PayPal payments.

Over the last year we have been massively investing in streamlining our internal structures to better serve our membership community. We completed a major Members' Feedback Survey, taking key findings from our global membership to better refine our benefits towards what members wanted us to prioritise.

The fruits of this exercise are in the Membership Benefits pack here, where new additions include:

• Investing in a world-class digital events platform called On24 to deliver the campaign events calendar and upgrade the webinar experience
• Providing more profiling assistance through a ‘Campaign Communications Pack’ which include assets like logo guidelines and promotional copy to help you better communicate your campaign involvements to different stakeholders
• A more lasered focus towards expanding working group activities to influence policy in areas that would make the largest impact for our members

The membership re-launch also recognises the fact that introducing membership fees has been inevitable for each campaign, given their maturity. For EV100 and EP100 (where no membership fees were previously charged), our services are the same ones that similar organisations would have charged for from the start. 

We were able to provide member benefits previously for either complimentary or below-market rates because of our institutional funders subsidising operational costs - but these same bodies are reducing our funding this year with the expectation for us to become financially self-sufficient. Nominal membership fees to sustain the everyday running of the campaign is the best way for our members to continue supporting the wider mission.

Given the work that the campaigns have achieved so far, we are in a better position than ever to create change. We thank you for all your support!
 

After the re-launch in April 2021, we reserve the right to review our membership levels every Autumn to account for inflation. We will inform you of any changes with at least four months advance notice (so latest by December, for the new membership year in April).

As part of the joining process, the relevant initiative team will first send you a Membership Agreement to sign, as well as a form to collect all relevant details including your billing information. Once these are returned, we will send your Finance contact your company's first annual invoice.

Our membership fees start on an annual basis from April 1st, with automatic renewals unless you let us know that you would like to opt out 60 days before. Our members normally prefer to pay by bank transfer, but we also accept PayPal payments.

The reason we are not able to offer membership fee reductions for members who have joined multiple campaigns is because each campaign has separate teams and activities focused around their specific goals, which are complementary but not the same across our various 100s initiatives. Therefore each new member per campaign still takes up the same amount of resources for each initiative team to manage and support, so unfortunately we are unable to pass any cost savings onto members who join multiple ones. 

However, we do recognise that such members are some of the most ambitious leaders in our network and we are planning to pay these members particular focus in the coming year. After our membership re-launch in April, the next plans are to further nurture our community of double and triple joiners to determine how they can most effectively work together for maximum impact.