International Plastic Modelers' Society / USA

International Plastic Modelers' Society / USA

IPMS/USA

IPMS/USA

Officers Present
  • Ron Bell (President)
  • David Morrissette (1st VP)
  • Mike Van Schoonhoven (2nd VP)
  • Dennis Tennant (Secretary)
  • Mike Oberholtzer (Treasurer)
  • John Noack (DLC)
  • Jim Pearsall (Historian/Publication Director)
  • Marie Van Schoonhoven (Office Manager) *

* = Non-voting staff or Guest

Minutes

Action Items

  • The board completed answering member questions for a Region 11 club newsletter (and our Journal). Questions and board answers will be printed in the club's newsletter, the Journal and on our website.
  • John Shimek has officially turned over IPMS/USA treasurer records to our new Treasurer, Mike Oberholtzer, on June 6, 2016.
  • Mike Oberholtzer made a motion to upgrade our QuickBooks license to an online version which would improve access for board members needing it as well as providing a secure cloud storage for our financial data. DLC Noack seconded motion and it passed 7-0.

Officer/Staff Reports

Ron Bell, President

  • I have started working on a project to update the Constitution and By Laws. They are hopelessly out of date, disorganized, either repetitive, contradictory or vague in places and in a bad format. I have reviewed, re-organized and re-written them so that they are more in line with actual practice and allow for methods of operation, such as email, that did not exist when they were written, I have had some past presidents look at them as well as the members of the Eboard for suggestions and have made many alterations. The next step is to get it in the format of a constitutional amendment. If all the changes were submitted as separate amendments, there would be literally dozens of them varying from entire sections being deleted to just a word or two changed. Instead, I propose to submit the new documents as one large amendment to be either voted up or down in its entirety. I have started getting the signatures required on the amendment petition and will submit it when I have them. It will then go to the Constitutional Review Board for their comments and will appear in the Journal before the vote is taken on it. Every member will have a chance to see all the changes and the reason for each before he or she casts their vote. Given the necessary lead time, I don't think this will occur until next year sometime and it will, hopefully, be on the ballot for the next national election.
  • In a rather smaller matter, we have moved the link button for the Forums to the top of the web page and my last column in the Journal was all about promoting its use. It will be interesting to see if there is any actual increase.

David Morrissette, 1st VP

  • Picked up a new company, Advanced Modeling from Russia.
  • There are 55 late reviews at this point- 3 reviewers have 27 of them and have been contacted and awaiting responses.
  • Kits are slowly coming in.
  • Starting to set up Manufacturers dinner and Reviewer Corps get together

Mike Van Schoonhoven, 2nd Vice President

  • The CMS is in Columbia's hands now and is up and running. Have nothing further to report on the convention.
  • Have received three bids at this time for the 2018 and 2019 conventions. Questions are going back out to the groups from the board for clarifications on certain areas.

Mike Oberholtzer, Treasurer

  • I have received the checkbooks and records from John Shimek (and a big thanks to John for how well he documented everything!).
  • I have started writing checks as needed.
  • Marie and I are getting our processes synced up so we can work efficiently together.
  • I am in the process of getting us set up in Quickbooks. Biggest holdup is not having access to Huntington online banking yet; still waiting for the security token Dave requested more than a week ago.
  • Also still waiting on 2015 tax returns and financial statements.

Dennis Tennant, Secretary

  • Progress continues on the new hobby shop project. I have been receiving, on average, 2-3 new stores each week. I add them to the database as quickly as I can once I verify information.

John Noack, DLC

  • Regional plaques and plates for COY trophy have been ordered. National Award Webmaster of the Year and Newsletter Editor of the Year have been selected - only COY remains.
  • Search for R-1 replacement continues; received 2 letters of interest, waiting to hear back from both

Jim Pearsal, Historian/Publication Dir.

  • I received a further email from Dave Sutherland about changing our printer to his company.
  • The feedback I received from John & Chris was that they're not unhappy with the current printer.
  • I sent Dave's latest email to everyone, but as I said, I'll run point on this one.
  • We received a request for advertising in the Journal. I passed it on to Doug Reed, and he's handling it.

Marie Van Schoonhoven, National Office Manager

  • We have added 19 new members in June.
  • The V28J3 (May/June) Journal was beginning to be mailed out this week.
  • Some members have received their mail returned when sending to the old PO Box in North Canton. This issue has been addressed with the Post Office.
  • All Chapter renewal stickers were mailed out including ones that have been returned for bad addresses.
  • I am working with Dave Morrissette to update the existing tri-fold brochures with labels reflecting PO Box change vs spending money on new ones.
  • Registrations for the convention are starting to slow down.
  • Depositing checks via the Remote Data Capture via Huntington Bank is working beautifully.
  • I have the ability now to post on the IPMS Facebook page for items that need to be conveyed to the members as well as posting to the website.

Eric Aitala, Webmaster

  • Am working on closing out the ipmsusa2.org web hosting account. Moving domain name to Network Solutions. Will point to new online store.
  • Will have to hold off on Forum update as it requires a server update which might affect the Reviews and Gallery site. Will need to test.
  • May need to upgrade the hosting plan for ipmsusa3.org as it is hitting against the memory and disk space quota. Currently is $143.98 per quarter, would go to about $180 per quarter. This would be offset by the $258.72 per year (plus other fees) for ipmsusa2.org which we wont be paying.

Submitted by Dennis Tennant, Secretary