There are some good ideas floating around here, and also some pitfalls. Without going into all that I'd like to put in my 2 cents to say that I can see requiring certifiers to join USATF but I'm not in favor of asking measurers to join. Pete's comments brought up all those bad memories of the AAU membership battles; let's not get back into that!
We should recognize and celebrate the fact that we have a very rare and valuable bird here, by which I mean our structure-- we let anyone have a go at this work, and we try to make it very clear how to do it. I think it's in keeping with that idea to not require any membership or extra fees.
If we need money to upgrade technology couldn't this be done by increasing the registration fees?