VPGGB * #4 - RHS Membership?

Dahlias at the RHS Inner Temple Show - September 2008

There's been quite a lot of debate recently in the blogosphere about the RHS, where it's headed and the value of membership to its members. James has a particularly thoughtful article plus comments over at his award winning Blackpitts blog if you're interested in what's been said so far. It's been a timely discussion for me as my membership is due for renewal in January. NAH purchased it for me 2 years ago as a welcome Christmas gift. Last year I renewed it without a thought, but this year every purchase has to count, so here goes.

Membership cost £41 this year and my benefits according to the RHS are:

• A monthly magazine (The Garden) rrp @ £4.25 - however, I believe the net value to me is nearer £10, (not RHS' £51) when compared with other subscription bargains like Gardens Illustrated, who discount theirs and give away a free book. I'd also like to know how many non-membership sales there are of this magazine
• Free admission to the four RHS Gardens - I'll be an infrequent visitor as they are so far away, so no real benefit to me. I also feel the same about the RHS seed scheme - I could probably get the same seed cheaper elsewhere, though I do like the idea of growing something that may have come from Wisley!
• Free admission to 147 affiliated gardens - 2 of these (Westonbirt and Corsham Court garden) are within 10 miles of here and I usually visit them once a year (I do visit Westonbirt more frequently, but at times when my membership doesn't give me free entry), so I saved £10.50
• Discounted admission to RHS Shows - I've visited 5 this year, saving £15
• Discounts on special events - my membership has given me free visits to Jekka McVicar's Herb Farm and my workshop attendance at The Botanic Nursery - a saving of £6
• 2 other benefits are not exclusive to members, so I feel they don't really count - Garden Advice and Plant Selector information. In addition e-mail updates are optional and tend to be mainly of a marketing nature, so are of minimal benefit

So looking my total benefits (shown in blue above), they have a value of £41.50, just a tiny bit better than break even then when taking my cost of membership (£41) into account. Of course I could have accrued additional benefits by visiting more gardens, events and shows, but I would have needed to spend a lot more cash in order to do so as I would have attended the more expensive shows, events and gardens much further away. I think my level of activity this year is sustainable and has actually made better use of my membership than I did in my first year.
So far, I'm feeling rather neutral about my membership. Perhaps I need to look at this whole thing a different way and ask the question, What does my membership give the RHS?

• From the latest Annual Report available online, I see I'm one of 372,000 members providing just over half of the RHS' income (total income £20.9 million, membership income £11 million)
• In effect membership could fund the four RHS gardens (£9.6 million) with a little left over OR fund Science & Learning, Governance and Editorial costs (£8 million) with slightly more left over (NB total expenditure for the year was £17.6 million)

So no membership at all would result in a much smaller organisation unable to meet its stated aims. Also, whilst membership income is substantial, I haven't found any evidence of the RHS using Gift Aid with membership fees (unbelievable!). If this is the case, then my membership money can be made to work so much harder than it does at the moment. In the current economic climate, this must be a priority as I suspect membership numbers may go down this year.

Although I'm unlikely to visit say, Wisley very often, I do like the idea of it being there and I'm sure I'm indirectly benefitting from the RHS trained horticulturalists who look after some of the gardens I do visit. I'm also hoping to gain my RHS Certificate (at least), so I'll be trained to RHS standard myself at some point. I also value the Award of Garden Merit scheme, and I enjoyed being able to contribute in a small way earlier this year by taking part in the radish trial. I also love the Lindley Library and a lot of RHS publications have made their way into my own gardening reference hoard. I make extensive use of the RHS website, in spite of its many drawbacks **. So whilst I could benefit from all of these things as a non-member, I do value them highly enough to feel supporting them via my membership is worthwhile.

However, that doesn't make me a blind follower. This whole debate reminds me of what the National Trust found last year when they surveyed their members. Most of them didn't think of the National Trust as theirs at all, feeling quite removed from their fee and what the Trust does. As a result there's a major project underway to reconnect the membership to Trust relationship. Perhaps the RHS is in a similar position? When I worked at Earthwatch (an environmental charity supporting scientific research) 10 years ago, there was a similar disconnection and it took an awful lot of work to put it right. There needs to better information available on the good work the RHS does - I feel it's poorly communicated at the moment. This needs to be done at both member and non-member levels. Might I suggest a campaign called something like Membership Matters, starting with space for it on the website and in The Garden?

Conclusion: Membership for me is a bargain (but you may feel differently), however the RHS needs to work extremely hard for it to remain that way.

* = VP's Guide to Gardening Bargains
** = Yes, the website has improved visibly over the past few weeks, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. I would dearly love to sit down with the website people for a few hours and make them see how it looks and feels from a real user's viewpoint. I also understand the website is relatively underfunded, perhaps there's an opportunity for the RHS to mobilise the IT savvy part of its membership and provide some web development volunteer opportunities?

Update 15/4/2015: I'm revisiting this post today as Gwenfar has written a similar, very good piece on her reasons why she isn't renewing her membership. They're good and well argued reasons, particularly her remarks on peat and public transport policies. I've looked again at my reasons for staying with the RHS and they still apply.

Since I wrote this post I lobbied the RHS hard about its stance on Gift Aid and it's now available. Membership has gone up, not down and there have been quite a few changes to the magazine and website. There isn't a Membership Matters section, but there is a lot more information on what the RHS does for gardeners nowadays.

It's the second National Gardens Week this week and on Friday there's the first Free Gardens Day. It's not perfect, but I can see evidence of change which answers some of my above criticisms. Now, I must go and find out what happened to the RHS's research into native/non-native plants and pollinators...