Meetup Organizer Dues are tied to the account of the person who submitted the payment.

Organizer Dues are not tied to Meetup Groups themselves.

It's good to think of the Organizer Dues as a bucket tied to your account that can hold up to three groups. The bucket itself is tied to a personal account, or email address. So every single Organizer account with Meetup needs their own bucket, or Organizer Dues, in order to hold up to three groups. Different accounts cannot share this bucket, and Organizer Dues cannot float about without being tied to someone specific.

So when a Meetup group switches hands, the person who submitted the payment keeps their bucket, but one group is taken out of it. The new Organizer, if they don't already have dues, will be asked to make them. Every Organizer needs their own active Organizer Dues plan.

A member of a group who is not the Organizer is not responsible for Organizer Dues for that group.

What does this mean? Meetup does not automatically switch Organizer Dues from the account that submitted payment to anybody else without permission. An Organizer who steps down from running one particular Meetup may want to start or run another group using their dues.

However, sometimes an Organizer will have dues on their account that they want to transfer to a new Organizer. Learn more about transferring dues from one account to another here.