MEMBERSHIP

You were accepted into this chapter representing a specific seat, company, and role. If any of those change, you must submit a renewal application to reapply for the chapter. This is BNI corporate policy, not controlled at the chapter level. The reasoning: members are accepted to fill seats as they’re presented, so when one of these factors changes, the chapter needs the chance to assess whether it’s still the right fit.

• Lateral change in the same industry: e.g. one sign company to another.
• Job change within the same company: e.g. promotion from sales rep to sales manager.
• Change of industry: e.g. health insurance to auto/home/personal lines.
• Change of seat: company and title stay the same but the seat changes; e.g. Tax Preparer to Bookkeeper, or Commercial to Personal Lines Insurance.
• Personnel change: seat, role, and company stay the same, but the company replaces the salesperson.

Your BNI membership is owned by whoever paid for it. If your company paid, the company owns it. If you own the company and it paid, it’s yours. If you work for a company but paid for your own membership, you own it, not the company. Exceptions can often be made if a company is willing to gift the remaining membership.

As long as you have at least 3 months left, you may pause your membership for up to 2 years (24 months) to resign from the chapter. You’ll need to reapply to whatever chapter you want, but you won’t pay the first-time application admin fee again.

If you own the membership, you may transfer it to whomever you wish. Example: you’ve been a member for 3 years but are stepping away from sales to focus on production, so you can transfer your credit to your sales rep, who can apply to a chapter (or the same one).