Last updated 13 September 2026
1. The short version
The first fifty Fellows admitted to the Society are its Founding Fellows.
Each holds a number, from one to fifty, in the order they were admitted. The number is yours and is never given to anyone else.
Fellowship is free for you, for life.
You carry the gold Founding Fellow badge on your profile, and you are named as a Founding Fellow in the Society's own record of how it began.
In return we ask for your judgement while the Society is young. That is an invitation, and nothing in these terms turns it into an obligation.
2. How these terms fit together
These terms sit on top of the Fellowship terms. Everything in the Fellowship terms applies to you as it applies to every Fellow. Where these terms and the Fellowship terms say different things about a Founding Fellowship, these terms apply.
3. The fifty places
There are fifty places. We have no plan to create more, and if the Society ever decided otherwise it would say so openly and would not describe the result as the same thing.
The places are for honorary doctors who join the Society directly, at a point when the University that awarded their doctorate does not yet take part. An honorary doctor invited by a University that already takes part joins as a Fellow with their first year covered by that University, and does not take a Founding Fellow place.
A place is allocated when your Fellowship is activated, which is the moment your application is approved and your award confirmed. Places are allocated strictly in that order.
Your number is recorded once and is never recalculated. If a Founding Fellow later closes their account, their number is retired with them. It is not reissued and the places below it do not move up.
Once all fifty are allocated, the Founding Fellowship is closed.
4. What it gives you
- Your number. Your Founding Fellow number, from one to fifty, recorded in the Society's register and shown on your profile
- The gold Founding Fellow badge, shown beside your name across the platform
- Fellowship free for life, described in full below
- Your name in the founding record, which the Society will keep and publish as part of its own history
- First sight of what is being built, and a direct line to the founder while the Society is small enough for that to be real
5. Free for life
You will never be charged a Fellowship fee.
This holds if the Society introduces a fee for other Fellows, and it holds if that fee later rises. It applies to the annual Fellowship fee. It does not cover tickets for events, contributions to a particular project, or anything else you choose to buy from the Society, and we will always tell you plainly when something carries a charge.
It runs for as long as your Fellowship continues without a break.
If you close your account, the place is retired and the fee exemption ends with it. That holds if you later rejoin. You would be welcome back as a Fellow, on the terms in force at the time.
6. What we ask of you
The Society will be shaped by the people who joined it first. We would like you to:
- tell us what is wrong with it, in plain terms, while it is still easy to change
- take part in the Common Room in the first months, so that the fifty-first Fellow arrives to a room with people in it
- bring in one person you think should be here
- say yes to something once: an article, a conversation, a panel, a piece of advice to a chapter
None of this is a condition of your Founding Fellowship, and we will not withdraw a place because somebody was busy. It is what we are asking for, and we are asking plainly.
7. Using the badge and the title
You may describe yourself as a Founding Fellow of the Society of Honorary Doctors, and you may use FSHD as every Fellow does. You may quote your number.
We will give you the badge artwork if you would like it for your own use. Please use it as supplied, to say that you are a Founding Fellow. Please do not use it to endorse a product, a service or an organisation.
If your Fellowship ends, please stop using the badge and the title.
8. If your Fellowship ends
The Fellowship terms set out when a Fellowship can end, and how to ask us to look again at a decision.
If a Founding Fellowship ends, the number is retired. The Society keeps the fact that the number was allocated, so that it is never given to anyone else. Nothing else about you stays on the platform.
9. Changes to these terms
We will update these terms as the Society develops, and the version and date are at the top.
Two things will not be changed to your disadvantage: your number, and the fact that your Fellowship is free for life. If we change anything else in a way that affects you materially, we will email you at least 30 days before it takes effect.
10. Which law applies
The law of Scotland, as set out in the Fellowship terms.
11. Talking to us
Write to info@societyofhonorarydoctors.org, or reply to any email you have had from the founder. For as long as there are fifty of you, he will answer himself.