Old Business/Tabled Items/Discussion

• The 2015 budget has been completed and will soon be presented to the board by Treasurer John Shimek for approval soon.
• Chief Judge Mark Persichetti acknowledged the recent out-of-box category discussion on the IPMS/USA forums and has shared it with his chief judges. Mark will be sharing his/their thoughts about the OOB categories in a future Journal article.

New Business

• President Dick Christ noted that he has received positive feedback about the 50th Anniversary articles that have appeared in the Journal - especially the articles about the planes IPMS/USA members flew. He wants to put the word out to the membership that we'd like to see more articles of this sort in the Journal in the future. Director of Publications Jim Pearsall will work on promoting this in the Journal and on our forum.
• We will be adding two columns to future national convention master entry sheets for "manufacturer" and "scale" so that we can collect this data and analyze it for any trends in the convention contest entries. At present, this info is entered only on the individual entry sheets and are not collected at the end of the contest. Director of Foreign Liaison John Ratzenberger will create a suggested master entry form for the 2015 Convention Contest Chair to refer to when creating their master entry sheet for the next convention contest.

Officer/Staff Reports

Dick Christ, President

• Nothing to report.

David Morrissette, 1st VP

• Reviewer Corps:
  • Two reviewers from last time who are chronically late- Issue with one has been resolved and he is returning the kits. Still working on the other chronic late reviewer.
  • Late reviews are at 95. Still suffering a post-Nats lag and we have lots of inventory. Will work on adding more reviewers and pushing for completion of late reviews.
• Wounded Warriors - Update from John Emery:
  • We are still making progress with the program though with the draw downs we only have 2 groups in Afghanistan.
  • The glue from Dick Christ's supplier never showed up. (Sec. note: Pres. Christ will be sending him some boxes of glue.)
  • We have to be getting close to the 2000 lb. mark soon. I will let you know when we reach that.
  • Discussing other groups we can partner with (USO, Blue Star Mothers, etc.)

Ron Bell, 2nd Vice President

• The original block of rooms for the 2015 Nationals in Columbus has been sold out and alternative hotel info will be posted on the convention web site.
• The letter soliciting bids for 2017 went out. So far I have interest from one chapter and curiosity from two others.

Dennis Tennant, Secretary

• A PDF of all the conflict of interest forms I have on file for 2014 have been sent to the office manager for her records in case the IRS wants to look at them.

John Shimek, Treasurer

• Putting final touches to the 2015 budget.

Larry Randel, DLC

• About half way through the Chapter Renewal cycle and have a current chapter count of 233.
• Currently have 104 renewed out of 233 for 44.6% complete, 129 remaining. We're probably slightly ahead of where we were last year at this time.
• Make n Take report:
  • 2014 Totals (January to December) includes future events)
    • Events: 61
    • Models: 3537 (1491 Aircraft,? 2071 Auto)
    • Model Costs: $10693.15
    • Shipping Costs: $2221.18
    • Shipping/Program Fees Paid: ?$4361.00
    • Donations: $50.00
    • Net Cost (cost minus fees): $8503.23

John Ratzenberger, Dir. Foreign Liaison

• Nothing to report.

Bruce Briggs, Membership Secretary

• Nothing to report.

Jim Pearsal, Director of Publications/Historian

• All wrappers from early issues of the Journal have been scanned (with help from Ralph Forehand) and made into PDFs. Once they have been indexed, they'll be uploaded to the member-accessible area of the IPMS/USA web site for member access. There is lots of interesting information there that may be of interest to our membership.

MJ Kinney, National Office Manager

• I have received many comments about the convention , but there is one in particular that I want to share from a Canadian member of IPMS/USA ?
  • ?To say I'm impressed is a HUGE understatement. As a front line representative of IPMS USA Mary Jane, you ... are ... wonderful! Your email responses are prompt, informative and courteous! Thank you!
  • And via email, I've had contact with a VP when I was enquiring about setting up a Model convention ... and again, the response was prompt and generous! He offered up an enormous amount of information. (Which I then forwarded to our local Model Club) Just GREAT!
  • And then to offer little things like, a pin and T-shirt ... I'm proud to wear it, especially at our local Model Cons! ... needless to say, it doesn't make me all too popular up here, near Niagara Falls, Canada ?:-D
• And this comment from another Canadian member of IPMS/USA:
  • When I received the Journal I was in awe when I see my boy on the cover for Best Junior. Thanks. So? I gave the issue to Mark, So I was wondering if I could get another one for me... and if possible a couple extras for grandparents, thanks. I would be willing to pay for them. You guys did a great job on that issue in a short time.?My hats off to everyone involved.
• The 50th anniversary special products sold very well. However, we have 857 pins left ? any suggestions as to what we should do with them? We sold 162 via the shopping cart, some were sold at the convention and I shipped 1200 to Charles Landrum for the convention bags.
• We sold 153 t-shirts and 69 polo shirts via the shopping cart and 30 shirts at the convention. Total sales were $ 4,361.00. Cost of goods sold was $1,949.74 and shipping costs were $800.93 for a profit of $ 1,610.33.

Submitted by Dennis Tennant, Secretary