Monday
January 28, 2002
MINUTES of the BOARD MEETING:
The meeting was called to order by our President, Lynn McLeland at 6:50 PM. The following members were in attendance: Mike Flanagan, Linda Genaw, Betty Hesketh, Ed Hesketh, Hugh McLeland, Bill Wright, Donna Dommel, Mike Kelly, Kim Kelly, Bob Argo, Kevin Munson and Mimi Smith.
A motion was made by Mike Flanagan to approve the December 17, 2001 Board of Directors meeting’s minutes, as posted on the 1960 PCUG website. The motion was seconded by Linda Genaw and passed with an all voice vote.
Treasurer’s Report
Treasurer, Bob Argo reported that the bank statement for last month was reconciled. The current checking bank balance is $7,117.00. The club’s assets have declined $606.87 since the end of last month.
We received payment for (6) renewals and (3) new members this month.
Advertiser receipts were down this month. Advertiser’s Account Receivables have increased to $915. Mike Kelly said he would be visiting the advertisers.
The expenses have been somewhat high-but normal for the month of January. We are currently picking up a new bank service charge of $6.00 a month.
President’s Report
President, Lynn McLeland said her main focus, for this year, is to get the membership numbers back up. To achieve this goal, she has already had contact with (6) past members and has asked what would it take to bring them back to our club. In the Year 2002, we will be offering our members more good activities and great programs. Lynn wants to remind our members that the Board members are all open to their suggestions.
Programs Report
Vice President of Programs, Mike Flanagan reported our guest speaker for the February General Meeting will be from Storactive, with thanks to Kevin Munson for booking them. At the March General Meeting, one of Toshiba’s local representatives will be talking about their laptops and appliance servers. April’s General Meeting will have a PC User Group Associate that will speak about Power Quest and Access Data, thanks to Kevin Munson, our past programs V.P.
A motion was made by Mike Flanagan to move the July4th General Meeting to July 11th due to the holiday, and to cancel the July Hardware SIG that would normally be held on the second Thursday of the month. The motion was seconded by Kevin Munson and passed with an all voice vote.
SIGs Report
Vice President of SIGs, Bill Wright reported that the attendance of the SIGs this year is his main focus. The SIG leaders will be offering different topics in this upcoming year, such as, presentations of club members’ digital cameras and photo software. Other topics of interest by our membership will also be considered. Members express your interests to your SIG leaders. Remember: the Round Table still needs a home.
Communications Report
Vice President of Communications, Mike Kelly reported he had received a new advertisement zip disk from Micro Cache, which was given to Linda Genaw the PC News editor. We will be losing the Computer Professor as an advertiser, due to the economy, and now the back half page is available, for $75 a month. This space will be offered to our current advertisers first. Mike has talked to North Harris County Community College, which is interested in an advertisement spot. Mike also plans on talking to Tomball College. Mike will be visiting our advertisers this month when the invoices go out.
Membership Report
Chairperson, Linda Genaw reported the Membership Changes for January, 2002. The Total Members-149; Renewals Due-7; Actual Renewals-5; New Members-2; and $360 was added to the Treasury.
Directors-at-Large
No report given.
Old Business
New Meeting Location: Since we do not have a written contract with CCCCC, we are looking at some of our options. NAM was a good location with good space, so Lynn McLeland will pay a visit to our old stomping grounds and see if the new management would like to have us back for our same monthly rent. Another option is a place Donna Dommel visited, CompUSA. A while back the manager of CompUSA offered their back room and computer room to us. Donna will speak to the manager again. Mike Flanagan suggested we try the facilities out by putting one SIG meeting there to start. Also, we need some type of agreement in writing, before putting a SIG there. Another interesting thought came from Mike Flanagan that we start looking at a store front that we could call home. We would have to buy chairs and tables just to start up. When we negotiate for this property we can offer them a tax write-off since we are nonprofit club.
How many tri-fold flyers do we have for the club. After checking at home Linda Genaw said she had enough to fill 2 plastic holders. The storage room needs to be checked to see how many are there.
Since we have new officers and SIG leaders we need to know if everyone has a key, which was resounding yes.
Our last piece of old business was a report on the bounced check from the computer fair. Bob Argo, our treasurer, has put in a lot of time into this issue and still no money.
New Business
General Meeting’s Q&A discussions at the beginning of the meeting was discussed. Because we keep the Forum’s door closed until the start of the meeting, the people gather where we have refreshments in the reception hall. It was suggested that we have a Guru table set up in the reception area for Q&A prior to our meeting. The Guru table will be manned by volunteers.
Our members have expressed some concerns over the auctioned items at the General meetings. After a Board discussion it was decided that auctioned items and raffles would be published in, the prior month edition of the PC News, as a form of notification to our members.
Another piece of new business: what do we do with the extra PC News magazines each month? The magazine is a high cost item to the club and they shouldn’t go to waste. It was suggested that since we have bulk mailing that we send them to doctors’ offices, auto repair shops and other places that have waiting rooms. If our members have places where they go, in our area, that have a waiting room, please contact Linda Genaw with the complete names and addresses, so we can send a complimentary copy of PC News to help advertise our club.
Our President, Lynn McLeland has formed a new committee called Membership Retention and Recruiting, which will be chaired by Donna Dommel. Marj Krisman has volunteered to contact and coordinate with the local neighborhood newspapers, which will let us write small articles or ads in their newsletters. Mike Flanagan has forwarded his CSV file, which has information on 14 local newsletters, to Marj. This new committee will report to Lynn McLeland, through email, for the first few months, including Marj Krisman, which falls under the Membership Retention and Recruiting committee.
The last piece of new business besides the Budget 2002 is the dropping a position of Product Review Coordinator. The Board has agreed that this position be eliminated and that the SIG leaders would take on the responsibility of either a written review of new software or a SIG presentation of the piece of software, according to the expectations of the product representatives. The SIG leader will call and request a piece of software for a review that pertains to their SIG. So we do not request too much from one company, let Bill Wright, V.P. SIGs and Lynn McLeland, know what you are reviewing. The software the SIG leaders review can be door prizes at future SIG meetings. We would like to thank Ryan Kelly for holding this position as Product Review Coordinator, he has done a remarkable job. We wish him the very best in his very busy life. Thank you.
Budget for 2002: Treasurer, Bob Argo presented the 2002 Budget. The proposed 2002 Budget was based on the last 2 years financial performance of our club. Bob based our renewals of membership at 65%. Our new members have been about 15 a year. The advertising revenues have averaged at $315 a month. These numbers are conservative and with our current expenses that we will continue to dip into our savings. The computer fair expenses, bulk mail and postage are lower. The printing costs and rent have remained the same. The telephone costs have gone up. At this rate we will have a $1200 deficient for the year 2002. A motion to accept the proposed budget for 2002 was made by Bill Wright, seconded by Donna Dommel and passed with an all voice vote.
We need to recruit more than 15 new members a year. The 65% renewal rate will be hard to change, but we need to get it to 70%. A list of 20 or 30 addresses that we can send complimentary copies of our PC News could reach more prospective members.
In regards to the new budget, Donna Dommel wanted to know when the next computer fair would be held; since the silent auction is the moneymaker and software is a big part of its success. The time will be discussed at a later date but will be sometime in the fall.
Last month one of our members passed on, Duke Schiene, he will be missed.
The meeting adjourned at 9PM. The motion to adjourn was made by Mike Flanagan and seconded by Mike Kelly, and passed with an all voice vote.Sincerely submitted by
Mimi Smith
Secretary
