PatC and DSchmidt,
I think it's worth pointing out that our policy is to encourage attendance at one rater event every other year, not to require it. To that end we always include educational workshops on ratings, often with me doing a presentation, or we bring in a guest speaker (over the years - Pete Dye, Herb Kohler, Rees Jones, Bill Coore, Tom Doak, Mike Keiser, David Kidd, John Fought, Tom Marzolf, Tom Fazio, Tim Liddy, Jeff Brauer, RTJ2, Paul Albanese, Robin Nelson, among others). Nobody has ever been told they have to attend a rater event and no one has ever been tossed for not.
As for the $250 fee, which about 2/3rds of our raters pay, it includes an annual subscription to Golfweek, some apparel, plus a $200 credit toward any one rater event for the year. So all of the numbers about revenue generation being fabricated (as usual) on this and other threads are nonsense.