Club, positions and fee's?

[Reelfish]

I have been a little busy but still monitoring this proses and not helping out and I apoligize for that. I have not met many of you but I have been involved since June and in fact held the July meeting. I have a few questions and comments to make at the risk of being controversial or to have a "Lack of political B.S.". I Do not understand the rush to elect positions or the necessity to charge a fee at this early date. The club is not a year old and meny people have not experienced a meeting and events have not been planned. I think moving forward is positive and acting positions are more apt to be filled. The expenses can be covered by donations as costs are incurred and fees be waved at this time. The site is filled with the club and its establishment but I do not see any talk about our hobby which is the thing we have in common. Please do not misunderstand my comments. Again, I enjoy the club, the meetings and its members but the originators of this club seem mute on this and I think this should be considered.

Bob

[Tomzpc]

Originally posted by Reelfish
I have been a little busy but still monitoring this proses and not helping out and I apoligize for that. I have not met many of you but I have been involved since June and in fact held the July meeting. I have a few questions and comments to make at the risk of being controversial or to have a "Lack of political B.S.". I Do not understand the rush to elect positions or the necessity to charge a fee at this early date. The club is not a year old and meny people have not experienced a meeting and events have not been planned. I think moving forward is positive and acting positions are more apt to be filled. The expenses can be covered by donations as costs are incurred and fees be waved at this time. The site is filled with the club and its establishment but I do not see any talk about our hobby which is the thing we have in common. Please do not misunderstand my comments. Again, I enjoy the club, the meetings and its members but the originators of this club seem mute on this and I think this should be considered.

Bob

Hey Bob! Good to hear from you again.

Your post is an excellent one and I'm glad you wrote it because some other people might be thinking the same thing and just didn't want to post it. I'm going to offer "my view" of the things that you mentioned in an attempt to try and clarify things for everyone, but again these are only my opinions so everyone should feel free as always to disagree.

First off, I consider myself the luckiest man on the f....er wrong one. Let's try again :p

First off, I consider myself to be one of the "originators" of the Club. The others originators as I see it are the two Robs, Brian, Bob and Frank (sorry if I'm missing someone but I'm doing this on the fly). The club was in fact started when some guy (who we never heard from again even though he was notified several times before the first few meetings) started a thread about finding/starting a club in the Westchester/Putnam areas, or something along those lines (I tried to find the original thread here on RC but came up short). The guys that I mentioned above were all posting on that thread saying that they were interested.
Rob R. offered to host the first meeting, which he in fact did. Frank and Bob weren't able to make it but the other Rob, Brian and myself went. Frank hosted the second meeting where everyone mentioned above except for Brian (who had reserves stuff I think) were in attendance. At those first two meetings and through emails amongst us we talked about getting organized eventually with officers and such, along with the basic hobbiest chat (mostly) of course, so this stuff was talked about (albeit not nearly as much) from almost the beginning. We are beginning to get our name out there a little more in hopes of attracting new members with ideas like the logo, website and member cards (special thanks to Ross for his graphic capabilities). The more that we do this, the more that we will need guidelines and leadership. We don't want people to just go ahead and do things in the Club's name without some sort of "club approval". Ross is a good guy, but what if he turned evil overnight and started selling porno for his own profits on the Club website?
:p Obviously, an extreme and highly unlikely scenario but I just wanted to make the point.

Could we wait on membership fees? We could. But I think that we all agree that $24 a year isn't going to "break" anyone that is into "this" hobby and having a fee is a way to define who is and who isn't a member. That is a necessary thing because the larger we are the more likely that people will disagree (hopefully minor) about the future of the club, which in turn necessitates votes. You have to be able to define membershop whenever you are going to have voting on ideas/issues and of course officers. There is unlikely to be a great need anytime soon, if ever, for monies to "run" the club, especially since people are stepping up and doing things that might cost a few bucks here and there if we had to pay for it. Starting a treasury now gets the ball rolling so that some day as we grow we can maybe sponsor a special event (like a well known speaker, just for an example). Stewardship by the officers will be important. I personally don't see any big club expenditures made without the approval of the members as a whole and officers will be responsible for a complete financial accounting to all members of any minor expenditures (for printing small posters to hang in LFS, as an example) to the membership.

Talking about the hobby, sharing ideas and educating each other will always be the main focus of the Club. It makes up 90% of the discussion at all meetings which is a great thing. This forum does encourage hobby talk and hopefully always will but these current discussions about club organization are essential in my eyes IF we want to see this club grow beyond what it is now. I assume that we all do but maybe I'm wrong. Hopefully if I am wrong then people won't be afraid to say so. I confess to being the biggest proponent of club organization by way of dues and officers from the beginning and nobody has told me shut up yet. I won't feel hurt if anyone does since the Club isn't about me but about all of its members. Some are just more vocal than others.

All of that being said, I'd like to see more people throw their hat into the ring or nominate someone else for an officer position(nominate them and then give them the option of declining). I don't see any of these positions as being time-consuming by any means and I don't think that being an officer means that you have to make every meeting either, and again, these are only one-year terms that we are talking about.

I'll end this here for anyone who has even read this far! I'd like to see more discussion in this thread since Bob's points are excellent ones.

[seaham358]

Damn Tom that's a lot of reading in one sitting for me........
My head hurts now!!!!!!!!!!!
I think the Club is a Great thing but I agree with Bob about there is no rush in electing people at this point. I'm easy to get along with so if that's what the majority want then lets go ahead.
I got into the club mainly to hang out with other reefers and check out their tanks and talk fish not to talk politics about prez, vice prez, dues ect.
I understand that in time we will need to grow, ID cards and the web site is a must to keep people informed and let LFS who offer us a discount know who members are.
The Other Bob.....

[nine9d]

Hey all,
I am going to give my 2 cents. Hopefully not as long as Tom's thread, but my 2 cents may also be worth reading. On that note, I just wanted to make a point that any club that I have joined to this date has structure. With that I am meaning it had people in charge (not necessarily dues) and they gave direction towards what the club was doing. There was only one club, which was my company’s golf league that really didn't have much structure. Needless to say, I will no longer be with the golf league this next upcoming year. I was with it for 2 years. I believe we don't have to go as far as setting all sorts of rules and stuff but there is a definite need for organization within the club. It makes no difference to me who is nominated for what. A couple of weeks ago I even asked one of our originators if they would consider being the president. I just felt like he would do a good job. For the most part I would say that my views are the same as Tom's. It would be senseless to sit here and say the same exact thing that he has said previously. So a simple ditto... will come from me :) Maybe we should post a poll or have an e-mail poll on whether we should have dues or officers. Personally I think that people will vote for dues and officers but that is just in my eyes.

I would like to say that I have enjoyed my time with the club to this point and I am so glad to meet all of you guys/gals. Many of you have given me great suggestions and ideas for when I setup my tank. The guys at work even call it the "Reef Geeks" meetings. Whether we have officers or not I will still be there. I just strongly believe that we need some type of organization, and with that, someone to lead us into victory!

GIMMIE an "H", H!
GIMMIE a "V", V!
GIMMIE an "R", R!
GIMMIE an "E", E!
GIMMIE an "E", E!
GIMMIE an "F", F!

Now what's that spell! HVREEF! WHOOO HOOO!

P.S. - I like the point that Tom had made about me going bad. If you remember back when I setup the website; I had asked Ian to be another administrator of it for the same reason Tom pointed out. No, not selling porn, but if something happened to me or if something went wrong, there would still be another person to have control.

P.P.S. - Tom, the closest thing to porno selling that I will get on our site is our HVREEF Buddy Thong! ;)

[masterswimmer]

Hello all,
Guess it's my turn to chime in. I'm in total agreement with Tom and Ross. They were both quite eloquent in their presentation. We've talked about attending the MCMNA (or whatever the acronym is), visiting aquariums, engaging speakers, etc. In order for us to entertain any of these functions some structure would be prudent. It will guide and direct the club forward as opposed to detract from our main goal, reef talk. The beginning of any new organization is normally inundated with political chatter. This is the foundation of where we want to go in the future. Once this foundation is established we can then continue with the business at hand, reef talk, swaps, propagation, lighting, so on and so forth.

I don't believe anyone is trying to make this a political statement nor are we trying to make this more than it is, a group of people sharing a similar interest. We are just trying to lay the groundwork for what seems to be welcomed growth. The 'club' started out with 5 people and in only a few short months has grown to approximately 15 - 20. And new people keep popping up quite regularly. Seems to me that the masses are yearning for direction. Lets give it to them and show that we are guided.

The core people have already surfaced showing wonderful leadership, devotion and knowledge. I'm very thankful to all of you and you all know who you are (being a bit evasive here in fear of offending by omitting). Keep up the good work, you have my support. I will volunteer as time permits so as not to burden anyone. This must be fun and enjoyable, that's the reason we are all here, nothing less.

Ok, off my soapbox now. Bob, thanx for bringing this thread up, it gives everyone an opportunity to express their views without feeling they are bucking the trend.

Russ

[foxstop]

I don't think creating an organizational structure was ever intended to exclude anyone. Quite the opposite.
Bob, Tom, Ross, and Russ, you all make great and very compelling points about either not having or having a formal organization.
One thing we do not want to do IMHO is be exclusionary.
I think having a friendly group and meeting at peoples' homes is a great thing. It's a neat way to see other setups and pick everyone's brains!:D
The one thing I think is very compelling about our club is that by having an organization it grants you a certain amount of status and clout. Read the other threads about the LFS in the Hudson Valley and you realize we just can't walk into a store and get what we need. If we ever want to act as a group for purchases, events (speakers, lectures, etc.) then we need some organization, albeit not a dictatorship:mixed:
So I guess it depends on the goals of the club. Meeting at people's homes will never require a formal organization. Anything beyond that will.
I for one would like to see some type of organization. I think it would give those cool looking ID cards some credibility.:fish2:

Either way I'm happy. I enjoy my time on the boards and I have had a great time meeting everyone so far.

Thus ends my Dennis Miller rant!:beer:

Cheers!

Brian

p.s. The wife and I picked out the new carpeting today. Once that's in the tank will be right behind it! (estimated date of setup is around the end of December!:D)

[Tomzpc]

^Bump^

[WAGERJA]

this thread has had some long posts so I'll just say my 2 cents echo Tom, Ross, Brian & almost word for word Russ's post.

J

[andro]

I'll end this here for anyone who has even read this far!

Hey Tom, thanks for making me read more than I have since grad school :-p I agree with you. I feel that we should start to organize structure, because then it is just a group of guys getting together, not a club. Since we really do not have any structure, I do not know if dues would be necessary at this time, but since everyone already agreed on how much they felt should be payed, it would not hurt to start collecting now. That's all for now.

-Ian

[Reelfish]

In my first post I did not want to omit any original members. I am in favor of organization so meetings can become more beneficial to us, but at what extent? I am not sure of the goals of the club so maybe I should explain my hesitations. I see meetings being held at members homes around our aquariums becoming to large of a group for most homes. Meetings that are personal and about our reefs could become meetings begining with a gavel and a call to order. The organization of a group (depending on its goals) can be very costly in its conception. The fees need to be accounted for, banked and to open an account you need ID, SS #,Tax ID # and so on. Many clubs incorporate, some are not for profit and either process brings expense and responsibility. I approach my reef keeping as a hobby and enjoy sharing ideas, and experience with other aquarists. I was happy to find a group of people who share my passion for this hobby.

Bob

P.S Thanks for not commenting on my spelling (process)