Where AANR Membership Dollars Go

An interesting piece written by AANR President John Kinman and published in the March 2010 edition of the AANR monthly publication, The Bulletin, provided an interesting partial breakdown of how AANR uses the dollars generated from annual membeship dues.

How Annual Membership Dues are Used

According to AANR, it takes...

• 1 member's yearly dues to pay for the printing and postage for one kit of legal resources
• 2 member's yearly dues to pay for the average expenses for a volunteer to travel to a state legislature to testify on a bill
• 3 member's yearly dues to defray the costs of lapel pins and brochures for about 30 lawmakers at a legislative conference
• 8 member's annual dues to pay fees for one hour of a quality attorney's time representing or researching a nudist issue
• 50 member's yearly dues to film, edit, and copy training DVDs that assist clubs in dealing with media
• 66 member's yearly dues for one month of a typical lobbyist's services
• 215 member's yearly dues for a one year subscription to a service that monitors legislative bills in the 50 states
• 1,666 member's yearly dues for one year of professional public relations firm services to generate favorable stories on nudism

As mentioned, this is a partial breakdown, representing the dollars generated from the annual dues for about 2,011 of AANR's estimated 40,000 members.  Still the information does serve to underscore the importance of having a national nudist organization to help promote nudism in a positive way and to help protect the rights of nudists through representation at the various levels of government.

Organized Nudism

 I've never made a secret of how important I think it is for nudists to be members of one or more of the national nudist organizations and personally I hold membership in both.  I do think it is a great idea for AANR to inform members about how the organization uses the funds generated from dues since I think it is part of what is needed to convince nudists that organized nudity has great value.  Dues paying membership in AANR has recently been on the decline which is a disturbing trend.  Without national organizations who are able to marshall the necessary resources to oppose legislation aimed at restricting the practice of nudism, we can expect further erosion of things like the right to use public lands.  On the individual level, we simply cannot accomplish the same things that can be performed on our behalf by a strong, visible national nudist organization.