Actions Items

Two motions were made and approved.

A motion to appoint Ro Annis as Director of Publications/Historian to fill the remainder of Jim Pearsall's term was made and unanimously approved by the board.

Following group discussion, a motion was made by Dave Knights to proceed with a six-month evaluation of Wild Apricot, a web-based content management firm, to see if it can handle our current (and future) operational needs. Our reliance on "homegrown" and maintained systems for things like convention registration and other operating processes need to be updated and standardized using commercially available systems and Treasurer Michael Oberholtzer and his technology review team felt this vendor may fit the bill. The motion passed and the trial period will begin. Mike will work with various board and staff members to determine if this system best fits our needs. The motion passed and the trial period will begin.

Old Action Items

Office Manager Marie is looking into getting quotes for bundling our insurance coverage with a single vendor with the hopes of making things simpler and lowering our premiums. At present, we have several vendors handling our insurance needs. Marie has the necessary info to get quotes and will report back to the board.

Atlantis promo cards didn't generate any additional memberships that we can confirm. We will stop doing this. John will thank Atlantis for helping in our efforts. We won't go forward.

Officer/Staff Reports

John Noack, President

• Nothing to Report.

Phil Peterson, 1st VP

• Nothing to Report.

T.J. Misiolek, 2nd Vice President

• Nothing to Report.

Mike Oberholtzer, Treasurer

• Our financial position is showing signs of improvement. We had gains in convention revenues and Journal revenues, but the real story is a $4800 increase in membership revenue over October. Hopefully we will see this trend continue! Overall revenues were up $8,382 over October while expenses were down $10,541, mostly due to timing of Journal printing expenses. So the bottom line for November was a gain of $17,553 vs. a loss of $1,370 in October, a month to month improvement of $18,293. For the year to date we show a loss of $68,465, again an improvement from the YTD loss at the end of October of $86,018. November was a relatively quiet month, but the membership income growth is promising and will hopefully continue. With luck we may see another modest improvement in our full year numbers at the end of the month.

Dennis Tennant, Secretary

• Not much to report. I added another hobby shop or two to our online list. As a member of Mike Oberholtzer's Technology Review Team, I have been evaluating the various features of the cloud-based Wild Apricot product from a user point of view. Nothing to report on sponsorships on various modeling-related podcasts.

David Lockhart, DLC

• We have 218 chapters with 62 renewed so far. Local shows for first quarter are being canceled due to the pandemic. Late summer seems to be showing some signs of activity.

Ro Annis, Director of Publications - Historian

• IPMS USA Journal Ads, Swaps and Invoices: We have added a few advertisers and will be expanding on this in the next few months. John and I are working on updating our Swap ads in other magazines. Likewise I will be contacting those we swap with to make sure their ads are also up to date. Invoicing is up to date.
• There were a number of things that we (the E-board) thought would be good to change in regards to the IPMS USA Journal:
  1. Obituaries will be moved further to the rear of the magazine.
  2. We will ask readers to send in pics showing off their IPMS apparel for use on the swag page. This will be a text banner pasted over the current image.
  3. John Heck has been sending me finished Journal articles so I can post a Facebook preview before the magazine hits members' mailboxes.
  4. Still planning to highlight in the magazine a request for members for contribute article for publication.
  5. Working on the possibility of swapping articles with other model related publications. I have contacted RT Canada (no response so far) and Model Cars (they will get back to me). John Heck also has a source for articles from Italy and we even have a member willing to translate. This is something we will try out and see where it leads. I noticed in the old Quarterlies and Updates there were quite a few articles from other sources. So, this is in the works.

David Knights, Recruitment & Retention Secretary

• I'm working on a new recruitment brochure for 2021.

Steve Broughall, Military & Veterans Services Liaison

• Models For Troops (M4T) update
  • Jon Emery and I have developed a good working relationship. Now the immediate issue, for my role, is to understand where we want the relationship between IPMS and M4T (M4T is a separate entity that the IPMS/USA supports) to go in the future. Jon's biggest expenses continue to be for storage space and shipping costs. He is servicing requests from mostly disabled vets plus a smaller number of active duty troops (those serving in remote or combat zones). We may want to publish a few photos in the Journal from those folks. I've asked Jon to include IPMS membership information in all these shipments.
• Outreach
  • The challenge is to figure out how to effectively share this with local chapters. I am quite comfortable contacting big national entities like, for example, military associations, the Federal government (Veterans Administration and the Defense Department public affairs offices), and defense contractors. At a minimum, I'll aim to get some publicity for IPMS and M4T, maybe even plead for some funding.
    
    Veteran Service Organizations (VSO) like VFW, DAV, American Legion, etc. may be best approached locally by local chapters. Also, every state (and some large cities) has a veterans agency and maybe we can launch a campaign, with our local IPMS chapters, to connect.
    
    I believe that IPMS and M4T have the model kit manufacturers and wholesalers/ distributors covered. I followed the link on M4T's website to the UK counterpart https://www.modelsforheroes.org.uk and they show an impressive roster of sponsors. Should we be doing something similar?
    
    Jon Emery has also been working with this group: https://www.healvets.org. I will contact them and see if we can possibly connect them with local chapters Another idea for local chapters might be Scouting organizations. For example, Eagle Scout projects that could include veteran occupational rehab through model building.
• "Share Your Stash"
  • My piece in the July+August Journal talked about sharing excess kits with M4T (or other worthy recipients). I have received some response and I think the major hurdles are who and how to share the surplus stash items. Obviously, having a bona fide charitable organization would be an incentive for giving and receiving a tax deduction. Asking somebody who may be donating $200 worth of kits to then have to pay around $50 for shipping would be a hard sell. However, I have a hunch that most folks who want to cull their stash do so through sales at local shows anyway.

Marie Van Schoonhoven, National Office Manager

• Nothing to Report.

Submitted by Dennis Tennant, Secretary