Membership Costs
Costs:
Firstly, it should be noted that for some projects with small scopes and user bases, yearly membership can be free if the yearly report is simple enough to be verified by one of our volunteers. However, for larger projects, or projects with a lot of potential to result in discrimination against disabled individuals, there could be a lot of work involved, including arbitration and orchestrated partnerships that require constant effort to maintain. For these memberships, the fees can be significant, but the value proposition of joining the FAWI can also be great, as it is a positive selling point to be a member.
The Find A Way Initiative (FAWI) is operated by a small grassroots advocacy charity. The goal is to run this initiative as inexpensively and efficiently as possible.
Hypothetical examples:
Let's look at a simple scenario where it could be free. It's a small GPT built by an NGO to help explain how to align the goals of a GPT with the needs of the FAWI.
Cost: The yearly FAWI report on the GPT can be simply analyzed by a volunteer board member. The potential impact on dyslexic individuals is significant in some ways but directly is likely small. The yearly membership for a project like this would almost certainly be free.
In this instance, two major corporations need to collaborate to prevent facilitating discrimination against learning-disabled individuals. It would involve higher consultations, then paying an appropriate yearly fee to FDBD so that the charity could also hire consultants to analyze the membership application. Also, if the consultants determine that the partnership between the two member organizations needs to be facilitated by a third party, and that arbiter should be FDBD, we would then need to create that relationship and also include administration costs so that FDBD could maintain servers and administration costs related to that, which would all be transparent. There would be no net "profit" in this venture, and every project and relationship is different but will be financially contained with only a small set yearly fee going to FDBD to facilitate the pro FAWI itself. However, overall administration costs are small, and will only be charged to members that require additional administration that cannot be performed by a volunteer. This would result in a membership fee that would be on a case by case basis and could change year to year if administration costs are reduced or increased.
There is a flip side to these kinds of more advanced and expensive FAWI agreements, which is that if this measure is being taken, it certainly will add a value proposition to the product in question, which could greatly increase the value of the product. In the future, morals will be valuable, and FAWI is all about morals.