How about a Trial Member, instead of an Associate member. You can set the rules to avoid those issues. No voting, for example. You can limit Trial membership to 1 or 2 years. If they are not hooked into the hobby by then, it seems clear they won't be with any more years of trial membership. Also, you can set the fee to whatever you want, without impacting existing Associate members. I think the idea is a good one, but may need some refining. These are just ideas off the top of my head.

Michael Siskin