Welcome the Charleston Reefers

[minfinger]

The mission of the Charleston Reefers Club is to provide a resource and focus for hobbyists in the Charleston area who have interests in captive marine systems. We will increase public awareness of the importance and value of living coral reef ecosystems and help hobbyists become more successful in maintaining these sensitive aquatic environments by increasing the level of understanding and depth of knowledge.

Please Visit the Web Page www.charlestonreefers.com

Everyone in and out club is very welcome to post here.

If you have any questions please email me @ minfinger@cchat.com

[c_k_kuehne]

Nice start guys.

As for meeting length --- In the begining you will probably be doing alot of business. Possibly try for 1 hour for business and 1 hour for fun. A 2 hour meeting is a good length.

Who ever is hosting can supply refreshments (sodas, snacks ect..).

Your meeting agenda looks good. Try for one planned activity or presentation per meeting. If you try for more you'll run out of time.

Collecting dues requires alot of organization. Incorporating, fileing IRS forms, bank account, by-laws ect... So it might be easier initially to have it a free club. Once you have some meetings and get a few regular attendees you can appoint positions and start moving twords a more organized club. It will probably take a few meetings to figure out who is really interested and has time to help w/ all the club details. You will probably find that some just want to be members. Also a free club will bring in more members until you actually get everthing together. Remeber members want fun and learning.

It took the ARC 2 years of free membership to become organized enough to start collecting dues. We had over 100 people on the clubs e-mail list and about 30 attendees at the meetings.

We went through great pains to refine our Constitution and By-laws and when you get to doing that they might be a good starting point for you all. They also spell out alot about membership, elected positions, Board of Directors ect...

Our greatest membership drive was the Feb meeting. A LFS (Marine Fish, Inc) volunteered to donated a SPS, LPS, and a softie to use for fragging. We had a large hands on fragging demonstration and gave the frags away to official members. We had approx 60 people (both current members and prospective members) at the meeting and managed to get 29 new members. Theres nothing better at getting members than giving away free frags.

Just wanted to throw out some ideas that might help you all along.

I wish everyone the best of luck getting the club organized. If you have any questions please e-mail me direct at c_k_kuehne@yahoo.com or PM me over on TRT under the Atlanta Reef CLub forum (I don't check in at RC very often)

Have fun -- Happy reefing.

Charles

Atlanta Reef Club --- Vice President

[minfinger]

Charles,

Wow, thanks for the pointers. Like I said over in your other forum, I've read over and over again your Minutes and Club info. I like the path that your club followed. What I'm shooting for is several hundred members and 50ish regular attendess. I have ambishions, but I do understand the path it takes to get there. as far as the Activities, I don't have anything going for the first meeting, but I plan on working with a local Aquairum service guy and developing some DIY classes/seminar kind of things. I want the LFS to help out a great deal, but I think they're waiting to see where I go with the club. I think they will be pleasantly surprised :D

They did advise me not to become one of those buy everything from the Internet clubs, and I understand hwere they are coming from. Doing it that way totaly takes away from the value of the LFS.

P.S. I don't work for the LFS, I just spend to much time there ;)

[c_k_kuehne]

Originally posted by minfinger

They did advise me not to become one of those buy everything from the Internet clubs, and I understand hwere they are coming from. Doing it that way totaly takes away from the value of the LFS.


Yea most LFS are not really fond of the internet. When we started up w/ dues we also added a sponsor membership. We now have 3 LFS that are sponsor members and they give our regular members 10% off of purchases. They get some specific benifits but we also try and actively recommend thoses LFS to our members.

While starting up you could recommend to the LFS's to have one good employee become a regular member and attend all meetings. This way your members get comfortable speaking to the employee and eventually that employee will earn your members respect and trust. And of course with that respect and trust will come sales from your members. Usually one employee from each of our sponsors attend every meeting and have allso joined hands in a few after hours emergencies which got them many praises from all involved. It was nice seeing the LFS's working together to get someones disaster back up and going instead of being comfrontational like most competitors would be.

Anyway if you need some specific questions or help along the way please do not hesitate to e-mail me.

Charles

Atlanta Reef Club --- Vice President

[minfinger]

Cool. Thanks. My current Saturday meeting times do not allow any of the LFS employees to attend. The whole staff works Saturdays. I'm going to talk to everyone about switching to a Week night meeting, but we'll have to see.

I'm hoping the Aquariumn service guy will get us some inside info and help too. Plus he's starting up a large Fraging system in his business soon and I want to get everyone involved in that. we'll see :D

Thanks again!