Schedule thoughts

[mojoreef]

As of today here is where we stand with the schedule.

October> Steve Tryee and Terry Bartelme both doing talks, Steve on how light effects corals and terry on fish disease.

November> A vendor exposistion, about 10 vendors setting up tables and showing thier wears. I thought we could get each vendor to supply an item for auction, and we could auction them off as the night went on. This would give our members a taste of the other side of a macna type of event.

December> potluck dinner. I thought we could go to Dangs resturant in redmond for this. I believe Dang has offered a full dinner for 10 bucks a peice. I thought this would be a good give back by the club to the members if the club picked up the cost of it. The member pays for the drinks and we cover the meal. I figure about 5 to 6 hundred, same as a speakers cost.
January> I have Eric Borneman coming in for a talk, no presentation picked yet.
Feburary> would be the Public aquarium tour.
March> is open
April> is open
May> is Anthony calfo, no topic picked yet.
the rest is still open.

We have the annual raffle to put togther also, I though about adding it to the Potluck month so as to get more traffic and recoup some money.

Here are somethings to talk about.
1: If we have the raffle in dec, are we creating a problem with the vendor thing in dec. as in asking for to much from the vendors at one time.
2: on the raffle, since it is a pure money maker for the club should we open it up to anyone to purchase tickets?? as in advertise it on the board to sell more tickets?? I know when we did this for the tank raffle, it was very sucessful.
3: We have a couple of local speakers that we can also use to spice up some events also, so keep that in mind to.
4: the speaker dates I cant change but all else is open to moving around so speak up now so we can put this into place.
5: I am going to Macna in a few weeks so I will try to pound out a couple of more speakers then also.
6: think of some thingns we can do to make money at the same time the speakers are about to do thier presentations, this way we can take advantage of the larger crowd and try to make some money back.

let me know.

Mike

 

[reedman]

Can we do a coral auction at the Borneman event. Should be a big draw and lots of people looking for coral afterward.

If we could get some bigger ticket items (tank from IAP, skimmer/reactor from reefantasea, or similar) then I think openning the raffle up to the RF community would be cool. The goal being to make money for the club.

I don't know what other people thought, but I enjoyed the presentation from Jon Warner and wouldn't mind seeing him again, but he is probably better suited to the Vendor event.

 

[jesshimom]

Whatever will make the most money... for starters we are going to be spending alot more on our monthly meeting place than before. We have to be able to handle that. Also, what do these speakers cost?? If you can give me that, I'd like to sketch out our finances and see where we are. I know we are around $3500 or so right now, and if you subtract all the meeting rooms and airfare/lodging/speaker fee that won't last that long!

Gordon, do you have some checks I need to deposit? I thought you mentioned you do, and they should get to the bank. Could you please mail them to me? You have my address already.

How do we go about doing the membership renewals?? Do we send an email out to everyone or they are responsible to ask to do it?

I'm with you Mike whatever you think about the Nov/Dec thing with vendors, might be alot two months in a row.

Back to the speakers.... what about airfare? SHouldn't we be looking for a bargain now rather than later? If I know where they are coming from and such, I'll take care of that.

 

[mojoreef]

I agree Reed Jon is one of the smaller speaker we could get to add to an event for sure.

Colleen the cost of the speakers vary. All depends on the cost of the flights. I usually end up putting them up at my place and feeding them to help save of the costs.
Some examples from memories. Erick B was about 900, anthony was about 300, Steve tyree was about 250. This is mainly for flights, what ever lodging and so on.
I believe all membership dues are owed in September, What we normally do is set up a table and hit them up when they show up, and then do so at the balance of the meetings.
Anyone else on the change of novemer and dec?? What way should we change it??
I agree on getting the flights early colleen, but lets wait until I get back from macna so we can do them all at once.

Mike

 

[Alice]

Hi everyone;

Since I'm going to be hitting up the locals for the vendor spotlight meeting and the raffle, Mike has given me access to this forum again.

Couple of thoughts: 2 months in a row, I believe, is going to be too much to ask of many of the local vendors in the way of donations. Can we just concentrate on the out-of-town vendors for the raffle? I'm ready to rock on the local stuff, had already started in fact but I guess we were contemplating making a change of the date so I held off. I heard that it was decided that Feb would be the best month for the Seattle Aquarium tour so I'd say that pretty much does leave us with the vendor meeting in November and leaving the spring months open for now in case Mike can secure another speaker or two while he's at MACNA.

I don't think we need to hold a coral auction with Borneman; he draws a good crowd on his own. Coral auctions are a big draw, especially if we give one away as a a door prize. Could we do that in conjunction with Steve T and Terry B and make it a members-only event? If we need money, let's get em interested enough to pay their memberships early in the season instead of holding out towards the end.

Holding Eric's last engagement at Blue Sierra worked out well, we weren't too tight in there; is it possible that they might want to host another meeting/event (Borneman or another) and save us the cost of paying for the meeting room for at least one event? I know there were a few issues that came up with them hosting, but it seemed to turn out pretty smooth.

The Calfo book deal worked out really well; the club made quite a bit of money on that one. At Tri-Cities, Steve Tyree seemed willing to work out a deal with the club there for a cut on book/CD sales - I'd bet he'd do the same for us. He has the possiblity to sell quite a few more at one of our meetings. I know Eric isn't making enough on his books to give us a cut but other potential speakers may be approachable.

Just so that I am 100% clear before I start in again with the locals: the meeting is Saturday, November 20th, (time?) at the hotel meeting room by Southcenter.

Alice

 

[reedman]

Chuck suggested we open a paypal account for PSAS. I think this is a great idea. This would allow people to pay dues online (or donate money to the club). In addition we could send out an email about dues renewal and have a link to where they could pay. And a final benefit would be that new members could have the link on the PSAS page so they could easily see how to join (and pay). I think this would increase dues renewal and fill the club coffers a bit more.

 

[jesshimom]

Sounds like a good idea! I'm going to change accounts after September; but I dont think it's a big deal to change accounts within PayPal.

If everyone decides yes, then I'll take a look at PayPal and see if I can get it set up with our existing checking account.

Colleen

 

[mojoreef]

Ok as of right now I say we take the auction off of the december potluck and just make it a free dinner on the club. Lets go strong on the vendor thing and go for november.
From my understanding with Chuck is that he had automated the membership process with paypal and automatic email notification, but I am not sure. Maybe Gordon or cuck if he is around could comment on that.
I think I am going to hit up Blue Sierra again to pay for Borneman and be the sponcer of that. I have already talked with hi about that and he was interested for sure.

 

[jesshimom]

And you're sure we can afford free dinner on the club with all the speakers and associated fees with what we have now?? I'm just thinking outloud, I'm sure you know what you're planning.... I know the dues will be rolling in and other money making schemes in the works.... Just seems like alot to the new money girl

 

[MtnDewMan]

From my understanding with Chuck is that he had automated the membership process with paypal and automatic email notification, but I am not sure. Maybe Gordon or cuck if he is around could comment on that.

Since Mike asked, I will chime in

The way we worked it before was not that automated. The way Colleen is talking about is much more automated.

Members would make a payment of $20 to me through paypal. Since it is a business account, the payment after fees was actually $19.38 or something like that. Then when a few paid up, I would write a personal check to Scott for the deposit. When a payment came in, I would email Scott and Gordon who joined up.

With the way Colleen is talking about linking the club bank account, then it gets rid of the middle man (me) and the money goes straight into the club's account. Just a simple email to the membership chair that a member has signed up.

 

[mojoreef]

And you're sure we can afford free dinner on the club with all the speakers and associated fees with what we have now??

Colleen I figure the cost of the dinner would work out to be the same as if we had a speaker coming in. My thinking was that we are going to be relying on the members generousity for the all the raffles/vendors, various draws and so on and this would be a way to give some back. But I leave it up to the board to make the call...let me know


MIke

 

[reedman]

I think we should publicize the "big" events we have coming ASAP as member-only events to try to encourage more people to pay the $20 for membership. If half the people who are on the list as part of the club pay (150 people) we would have 3K in the bank. Maybe we can have a bigger event open to anyone in July, August, or September to give people a taste of what they would get for their money. The other thing we talked about to defer some of the costs was to have a joint speaking event with another club. I don't know much of the details about this, but I remember Paul Hamby talking about this at the planning meeting.

Bottom line is that $20 is nothing in this hobby. For someone to not want to pay that and still want to see the likes of Borneman, Tyree, etc. for free is a bit rediculous to me.

 

[Wolfesbane]

If we want to open up speaker meetings or other big meetings to non-members, we can always allow members for free and charge non-members $10 or something. I'm sure it won't be a large source of income, but it'd help defray costs a little.

As for the vendor expo/raffle... we could do a smaller raffle in December and save the majority of items for the big raffler later in the season. As long as we hit people who we're not approaching for the expo, we should be able to get a decent group of items for December. Then we can just hit the expo people after a couple months for the big raffle, maybe in April.

~ Steve

 

[Fragman]

What about raising the dues to $25 per year (Still a modest amount) AND including the dinner at Dangs as sort of a justification (of sorts) for the increase?

 

[mojoreef]

I think moving ouot the raffle is probibly the best route to take, this way we get seperation and solve the vendor thingy.
All meetings should be members only. We will get a bunch of folks in september when the dues are up, the balance will pay as they come to meetings, or at least thats the way it has been working.
Paul the upping the dues is attractive but at this moment I dont think we are in a position to do that right now. Lets put a good year together first and then revisit it.


Mike