Meeting Minutes for November 2007 Board Meeting
Date: 11/5/07
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: The Common Man, Merrimack NH
Attendees : Bruce Smith, Alan Legerlotz, Laura Fallis, Paul Michali, Dana Sion, Michael Morin, Cassandra Vorisek-Creto, Alvin Legerlotz, Carol Croteau, Bob Favre.
Meeting was called to order at 6:55pm.
Carol Croteau was introduced to everyone as a potential new member. She recently bought a Z3 and has been talking with Laura about membership.
Bruce commented on how much people enjoyed the Social Event at the track on Saturday evening and thanked the social events committee for their efforts. The social events committee is already looking at doing similar things for next year based on the success of this. Michael suggested doing a “survey monkey” for the past one, but we feel that we got so many good comments, that a survey is not necessary. Paul suggested sending out a note to all participants pointing them to the gallery where Paul has uploaded all of the pictures he took. Alvin volunteered to blast out a note if Paul sends a pointer to the pictures.
Bruce got email from Gordon about the track dates. April 18th and August 25th are the dates for our 2008 events. The 3 day event, run by Boston will be the first weekend in October for 2008. This will the weekend after O’fest (at Watkins Glen) so we might have issues getting racers. On the good side, we will no longer be competing with Mid-Ohio, which has been a problem over the past couple of years. We’ll back into the ADSS dates around January and get those scheduled. We want to move the Street Survival dates closer to the beginning of May.
We have $22,800 in the bank and Mike D is waiting for a couple of refund/credit things from Alvin and Alan. Overall we seem to have done well with our events this season.
Bruce commented that at the end of the year when putting away equipment for the year for ADSS some of the cones and things were pretty beat up. He suggested that we refresh things. The DEC needs to come up with a budget that we can run by Boston since we share the equipment. Alan suggested that we run this by Boston before we split the profits from this past October event.
Bob brought up the possibility of having an all Women session at a driving school. This came out of him talking with his wife who said that she would not be comfortable going out in session one with novice men on the track. We’re thinking that we might want to try to have an all women ADSS first to try to gauge participation. Alan brought up the idea of resurrecting “spouses and sprouts” ADSS in addition to the ones we already have. This would be a good marketing tool and would expand our ADSS from the normal two, plus Minis and Street Survival. Laura suggested getting the attendance info from the “All Women Tech Sessions”. The idea of having a survey on this came up and this is probably a good thing for that.
Bruce got an email from John Sullivan about our Profile being late. Bruce received his color profile, as did others at the meeting, but the folks at National didn’t seem to get their profiles. Bruce is wondering whether or not this is the same issue that the previous board did where the profiles were not coming through. Laura said that she sent the appropriate address information to Martin and tried to make sure that he knew that there are both “Member” and “Officer” mailings and both need to be done separately.
Laura came up with new advertising rates (now posted on the web site). Laura has been contacted by Tulley BMW and Kensington Auto about the new rates. Bruce asked about any updates from Turner Motorsport and we haven’t gotten any… Laura asked, but Will Turner was out racing. She will follow up with Will. Alvin asked about Schneller and Laura said that Mike has expressed interest in the past and she will follow up. Alan asked about sponsorship of driving schools and what we’re going to give sponsors in terms of open slots (do they still get two), etc… Paul wants to post the new profile advertising rates when they’re finalized. In the mean time, Laura will mail them to Alan and Dick. We’ll talk about driving event sponsorship at the DEC, instead of at a board meeting.
Cassandra (SEC) is focused on the holiday party. “Stage Coach Improv” will be the entertainment this year. Registration should be opening shortly. CR Sparks recently sent Cassandra the menu. They’re working on getting sponsorships for the party based on the schedule that she’s sent out. We’re going to advertise a picture contest as well as other things at the party. The charity this year will be the Webster House in Manchester. The SEC is looking for another art car to auction as well as other prizes. There have been complaints about the dichotomy of prizes. This year they’re looking at low end giveaways and then high end prizes. Dana will be getting a contract for Bruce to sign. Paul asked about when we should open registration for the holiday party. Paul needs the final menu content to add that page on the site. Paul will then test the registration himself to ensure that everything is working properly. In addition to Paypal, checks can be accepted via US mail as well. Michael is going to do registration for the holiday party and Paul will be sure to have the right stuff on the web site. For the time being we’ll leave registration to open 11/15, but if necessary we can move it out a few days. We really want to make sure we can get the information ready to go into the profile. Paul is using the registration information from last year. Dana pointed out that last year we went over the number of allowed registrants and we had to turn people away. This year we’ve booked a bigger room and we’re assuming on 125 people. We’re charging $25/each and the actual cost is $75 each, so it’s a real bargain for the participants. This year’s entertainment is catered to the audience so we shouldn’t have issues like there were last year with people not liking the subject matter of the comedians. There will be two free passes to the charity for them to attend. Paul asked about whether there’s a limit of how many guests people can have; the answer is 4 can be in the party including the member, and the member must be the person to register.
Bruce brought up the Marketing Director Job Description, but we cannot vote on it tonight because Bruce and Alan are the only board members in attendance. There is a scaled down job description supplied by Michael. Dana is likely to be the person doing the job and the target is to vote on accepting it at the next meeting. Michael will send it out to people so we can look it over prior to the next meeting.
Bruce asked about where we should have the next board meeting. This will be the election meeting, and usually there’s a good turn out. We need to make sure we can get a big enough location and make it centrally located. Concord is probably the best location given the distribution of people. Hermanos is a Mexican restaurant that we’re going to try (Dana will call them). The Common Man is the fall back location if Hermanos doesn’t work out for some reason. Bruce asked about any other provisions we need to make to facilitate the elections. The date for the meeting is 12/3 (the first Monday of the month as usual).
Paul would like to do some web site training for board and staff members. Paul suggested a weekend being a better time. He’s around Monday, Wednesday, and Friday usually as well. Bruce will send out a note asking about when people are available for training.
Dana has transitioned the online store to the new logo and he’s working on doing a custom logo for the mugs.
Membership is down by 5 this month. Total membership for this month is 697. Laura sent emails to expired members to encourage them to renew. Rather than doing this in the future, she’s going to send emails proactively to get people to renew early rather than letting their membership lapse and have to re join. For some reason there are a fair number of memberships up to expire this December. Dana and George gave out lots of info at the Bavarian Autosport Show ‘n Shine. Three memberships were sold on the spot. Bruce suggested 5/10/15 year membership milestones being highlighted in the profile.
Laura asked about getting some logo stickers to help launch the logo to our members and getting 1000 was about $800. The group felt that this would be too much money. Bruce suggested getting another quote and possibly going with 500 and using some of those at the holiday party.
Dana asked about the membership banner. The current banner is old and has the wrong logo on it. Dana spoke with Erik, who said he could get one inside of 2 weeks. Dana will talk to Erik and get a new one.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:47pm.