Membership

Join the ME Association today!

Together we can make the UK a better place for people with M.E.

From just £2.00 a month you can help support others affected by M.E. and will receive the excellent and exclusive ME Essential magazine delivered straight to your door.

We recognise that your personal endorsement of our cause is important and we will do all that we can to support the needs of our members.

We support, inform, campaign, and invest in biomedical research…

Subscriptions are a vital part of our charity income and – together with donations – they allow us to help make the UK a better place for people with M.E.

• Read the About section to find our more about the ME Association, what we do and why we do it.

Moreover, the more members we have, the more representative we can be – which is especially useful when we take part in debates, we decide to launch a specific campaign or seek to raise awareness in Government or with medical authorities.

You don't have to be personally affected by M.E. to join the ME Association. Membership is available to carers, family-members, and anyone with a professional interest in the condition.

Subscriptions

Full Membership is available to all adults with ME/CFS, carers and anyone with an interest in the disease. Annual membership costs:

• £18.00 (UK residents and BFPO)
• £24.00 (Mainland Europe including Republic of Ireland)
• £30.00 (Rest of the World)

Each full member is entitled to vote at our Annual and Extraordinary General Meetings.

Special Offer

If you join by annual standing order, you can select up to Ten £1 leaflets for free from the largest stock of literature held by any M.E. charity in the UK.

In order to take advantage of this offer you will also need to download, complete, and return the Membership Application Form and complete the standing order declaration.

How to Join

You can join the ME Association and pay your subscription in several different ways:

• The easiest way to join is via the website shop where you can pay by debit, credit card, or PayPal.
• You can join by phone (01280 818963 between 9.30am and 3.00pm, Monday-Friday) and pay by debit or credit card,
• You can make a paper-based application by downloading the Membership Application Form, and pay by debit or credit card, cheque or postal order,
• You can also complete the Membership Application Form and pay by annual standing order (and select up to Ten £1 leaflets absolutely free).

Membership Pack

When we have received your subscription, we will send you:

• A copy of the latest issue of our magazine, ME Essential,
• An information sheet: ‘Where to find benefits',
• An information sheet listing a number of books which you may find helpful, and,
• If you have paid by annual standing order, your selection of £10 worth of free leaflets.

Why Join The ME Association?

We are championed by the UK's best-known M.E. expert and campaigner – Dr Charles Shepherd – our honorary medical adviser and a Trustee of the ME Association.

• Read the About section to learn more about the ME Association, what we do and why we do it.

Dr Shepherd not only has personal experience of the disease, but with help from our dedicated team, also manages to:

• Regularly provide updated medical information – that we publish as leaflets available in the website shop or as articles in our members magazine, or on our website and social media,
• Write and update the authoritative clinical and research guide, now in it's 11th edition with free hard copies sent to health professionals and also available to purchase via Kindle,
• Represent the ME Association, e.g. as Chair of the Steering Group for the UK ME Biobank, as an executive member of the CFS/ME Research Collaborative, as a member of Forward ME, which is Chaired by the Countess of Mar, as an active member of the CMRC Medical Education Group, Chaired by Dr Nina Muirhead, together with parliamentary initiatives alongside Carol Monaghan, MP.
• Provide key contributions to major publications, e.g. the NICE ME/CFS clinical guideline and review process, and other ME Association reports such as the widely cited publications relating to illness management,
• Attend key research and medical conferences, often presenting (e.g. at the 2018 RCGP conference), and publishing reports for members and the wider patient community to read,
• Edit our very popular research reviews, that help lay audiences to better understand the research that is taking place,
• Give presentations and lectures at local events up and down the country,
• Be heavily involved in the UK promotion of the award-winning documentary ‘Unrest' from Jennifer Brea.

We are regarded as the UK's premiere M.E. charity and actively campaign for greater recognition and understanding of the disease:

• We recognise that M.E. is a physical disease,
• Many of our trustees and staff are affected by M.E. or are primary carers for family members who have the disease, and this personal experience is reflected in everything we try to achieve,
• We understand the nature of M.E. and how hard it is to live with the condition,
• Our combined experience of M.E. and of the inequalities faced by this community, provide the main motivation for us to help others.

We fund biomedical research into M.E. and aim to discover effective treatments and a cure.

• We have invested over £1million in biomedical research in recent years, which we couldn’t have achieved without your support,
• We want to do more to exploit the better understanding we now have about the disease, and then build on any discoveries to help change lives for the better,
• We achieve all this via the Ramsay Research Fund – named after Dr Melvin Ramsay who helped establish the ME Association and was first to recognise the disease in 1955,
• We invest in quality research, as we have with Dr Karl Morten who is examining mitochondria, and infrastructure projects, as with the UK ME Biobank,
• Recently, we invested a further £200,000 in M.E. research and we continue to regard research investment as a key priority.

We work to secure improved health services that recognise the reality of M.E. and for better welfare support that is easier to obtain by those too ill to work or care for themselves.

We provide ME Connect, our flagship telephone helpline, which offers support and information to anyone affected by M.E:

• ME Connect is available every day of the year – even on bank holidays – and has managed more than 35,000 calls since it began in 2003.

We produce the best member's magazine in the UK today:

• ME Essential is delivered straight to your door and features exclusive interviews, medical and scientific updates and includes stories about how people cope with M.E. as well as member's own stories and fundraising adventures.

We listen to what our members – and those in the wider M.E. community – tell us about their experiences of this condition and the difficulties faced by a life with M.E.:

• We feature a monthly survey on our website homepage that seeks feedback from people with M.E. about their lived experience,
• We host very popular and open debates on our Facebook and Twitter pages,
• We invite questions via Facebook, ME Connect, ME Essential, and head office,
• We have also formally canvassed members and non-members about their feelings towards the ME Association and try to ensure we are meeting their needs.

Visit the About Us page of this website to learn more about the ME Association.

More reasons to join the ME Association

We asked members why they joined the ME Association, and the top 5 reasons were:

• “I wanted a continuing source of reliable support and information.”
• “I agreed with what I felt was the ME Association ethos i.e. that M.E. is a real and physical disease. ”
• “I wanted to belong to a charity that provided support, lobbying and biomedical research.”
• “I wanted to be part of a community which ensured I no longer felt isolated and alone.”
• “I wanted to contribute financially to the work of the ME Association.”

Note: The top 5 reasons for joining, and all the quotes shown on this page, were freely given as a result of a comprehensive stakeholder survey, that obtained views from members and non-members of the ME Association.

The ME Association

Please support our vital work

We are a national charity working hard to make the UK a better place for people whose lives have been devastated by an often-misunderstood neurological disease.

If you would like to support our efforts and ensure we are able to inform, support, advocate and invest in biomedical research, then please donate today.

Just click the image opposite or visit our JustGiving page for one-off donations or to establish a regular payment. You can even establish your own fundraising event.

Or why not join the ME Association as a member and be part of our growing community? For a monthly (or annual) subscription you will also receive ME Essential – quite simply the best M.E. magazine!

ME Association Registered Charity Number 801279

Visit the other pages in this section:

• Membership
• Patrons, Trustees, Advisers
• Policies and Documents

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