0 the state of belonging to an organization: --
1 the state of belonging to an organization, or an agreement by which someone joins an organization: --
2 the state of belonging to a group or organization: --
EU/WTO/NATO membership
the cost/benefit of membership One of the benefits of membership is access to free legal advice.
apply/qualify for membership Employees need to have worked here for more than two years in order to qualify for membership of the scheme.
membership of sth She has promised to use her influence and membership of a high-level advisory group to lobby for change.
membership in sth He holds membership in a number of regional and national organizations.
3 the number of people who belong to a group or organization: --
expand/boost/restrict membership The appointment was made in the hope of strengthening finances and boosting membership.
a decline/increase in membership We get a significant increase in membership each year, mostly because people read about us on the Internet.
membership increases/rises/climbs Party membership has risen, by 3,000, for the first time in 20 years.
membership declines/falls/goes down Membership in investment clubs has declined just like the stock market.
declining/falling membership Pooling resources will help us cope more easily with declining membership and revenues.
have a membership of sth We currently have a membership of more than 11,000 professionals, professors, and students.
4 members of a group or organization considered as a group: --
Especially in the years before 1961, the memberships of state legislatures included significant numbers of returning members whose service was not continuous.
Second, and more importantly, conservation groups could capitalize on public outrage and swell the ranks of their memberships by effectively mobilizing support.
Typically, respondents cited paid-up memberships of between 100 and 250, and most suggested that attendance at the most recent meeting exceeded 50.
Most of these names were of newly recruited members ; apparently provincial records of older memberships were incomplete and unreliable and were still undergoing verification.
The eventual document guaranteed free association and ensured there would be no attempts to corporatize or make associational memberships obligatory.
The parties have become relatively institutionalised, with stable mass memberships, distinctive ideology and a signi®cant degree of intra-party democracy.
The legacies of previous regimes are reflected in organizational memberships today.
The most significant is that in 1984 only 27 per cent of respondents had no memberships and 73 per cent had one or none.