March 2015 Meeting Minutes

Officers Present

* = Non-voting staff or Guest

Minutes

We continue to look for replacements for the volunteer positions of Advertising Director, Forum Administrator and Director of Foreign Liaison. Ads will be placed online or in the Journal.

Following a suggestion from Don Schmitz (#35303) that the Society create an internal group to plan and coordinate marketing-related activities across the organization, the board passed, by acclimation, a motion to create a new standing committee to focus on marketing. President Dick Christ will contact Schmitz to get the ball rolling.
DLC Larry Randel made the motion to appoint Jim Stepanek as the new Regional Coordinator for Region 11. Sec. Dennis Tennant seconded the nomination and the motion passed unanimously.

I am setting up the manufacturers dinner at the Columbus National on Friday night at Buca de Beppo.
There are currently 53 late reviews. I am working on the stragglers.
We have a new supplier - Delta One Decals.
There were 83 reviews posted in January and 80 in February 2015. So far there have been 26 posted March.

The Columbus National Convention is moving along. Shirt and trophy designs are to be revealed shortly.

Information has been sent to webmaster Eric to add a new page detailing our election timeline and procedures.
Conflict of interest forms have been sent to e-board core group and their direct reports. I am pleased to report that response and compliance has been extremely good.

Award nominations are due from RCs this weekend. Have about 40% response so far and will spend the rest of the week tracking down the rest. I should have a regional Chapter of the Year list to MJ in the next week or so and final nominees for the national awards by the end of the month for us to vote on for final awards.
Finalists for RC 11 replacement came down to two members. Based on the responses from the interviews and the overwhelming number of spontaneous recommendations from others in Region 11, I recommend Jim Stepanek be appointed be the new RC-11.

Financial Report as of 3/13/15:
- Regular Checking - $57,416.11 (includes half the profits from 2014 convention $13,129.86 - account now closed)
- Wire Transfer Account - $2,111.00 (journal advertising not transferred to regular checking)
- 2015 Convention Account - $32,035.79
- Convention Savings - $14,289.64
- Cert of Deposit - $48,794.34
- Cert of Depost - $81,383.56
- Total Assets - $236,030.44
We have 82 new members this year.
Due to the 1100 expiring notices sent in error with the last Journal, it appears that many members did not double-check the expiration date of their membership card or Journal and sent in early renewals, causing a tremendous amount of incoming membership renewals. I have processed 688 since the first of February and still have more to do. The usual number of renewals per Journal issue is 250 to 300. This has caused a great number of emails and phone calls and I have been busy dealing with this.
It appears that I may be able to lower the pricing on special products because the new vendor is not as expensive as the last. This, coupled with a rise in postage, calls for a re-examination of our current pricing. I will explore this further before doing anything.
We have one complete slate of nominations for the election and it appears there might be a second one coming.

The search for a replacement online store for our website continues. I tested two companies and will send a link for the e-board to test drive. Choosing either will take some time to set up before we can stop using our current online store.
An announcement was placed in the Forums for a new administrator. For the moment, the administration load is pretty light, so I'd like to keep doing it until I can find a better solution for handling Forum members whose IPMS/USA membership has expired.

Submitted by Dennis Tennant, Secretary

International Plastic Modelers' Society / USA