2010 Membership Drive

[fsn77]

Just a reminder...  Membership cards will expire at the end of the day on 12/31/09 and it will be time once again to pay membership dues.  As per the vote, dues remain $10 per person for 2010.  Once the first of January rolls around, the automatic PayPal link should update for anyone that wants to pay dues online via PayPal.  The link to do so can be found by clicking on the Join CMAC link (here in this thread or the one near the top of the page).  If for some reason it does not update, please be patient, as it will get fixed.  While the club welcomes dues payments via PayPal, please keep in mind that the club pays PayPal fees that remove approximately $0.50 from each $10 payment, which means the club does not receive the full benefit of your $10 payment.

As always, membership dues can be paid at any of the monthly meetings, where anyone that has paid dues may also pick up their membership card for 2010.  Generally, membership cards will not be mailed, however, if anyone that pays online wants or needs to use their Paid Member discount at a local shop prior to being able to attend a meeting, simply print out the receipt PayPal generates and use that in the meantime until you're able to pick up your Paid Member card.  With the addition of Reef Savers to the club's list of local shops offering Paid Members a discount on purchases, the benefits Paid Members can receive continues to grow.

In 2009, CMAC had 50 Paid Members, with several first time Paid Members.  Thank you to those that helped support CMAC!
Hopefully, 2010 will be another good year for CMAC, as well as for all of its members and sponsors.

If anyone has any membership related questions, please feel free to post them here in this thread, or you may PM me.

[fsn77]

As a small courtesy, any Paid Members from last year will keep their Paid Member access to Paid Member's only parts of the website through the January meeting.  After then, I will reset everyone's status and update the list / permissions for 2010.

[scubaclimber]

more than fair

[Electrobes]

Sounds good but when and where is the Jan meeting??

[fsn77]

Sounds good but when and where is the Jan meeting??

Good question...  The date has been set, so I'll go ahead and post a thread about that, but we haven't figured out where or what time just yet.

[bb.red.sc]

The beach is nice, we went down to visit Bruce at Sea Critters Depot today.  He mentioned something last year about wanting to hosting a meeting and he has a good supply of fish and coral right now.  It was nice and toasty in his shop... Someone will need to caontact him b/c he said something about attending the swap in Wilmington

[salterclan]

Paid last week for a membership for the first time.  Unfortatunely I will miss the first meeting as it's on the one weekend I am out of town.  How far ahead do we typically know about the meetings?

thanks,
Salterclan

[fsn77]

Paid last week for a membership for the first time.  Unfortatunely I will miss the first meeting as it's on the one weekend I am out of town.  How far ahead do we typically know about the meetings?

thanks,
Salterclan

It varies month to month, but we try to announce it as early as we can.  Ideally, everything would be known by the prior month's meeting date so the info could be shared then.

[fsn77]

For anyone that hasn't noticed, CMAC's $10 dues remain quite affordable this year compared to the neighboring club in Charlotte, which charges $30 for membership.

Recent e-mail from RASOC:

To continue to provide educational and fun events for the local saltwater community, we need your support. We plan to venture in to new territory with the meetings this year and in the future, but this can only be done with the assistance of your annual membership dues. For your tax deductible $30 membership we can continue to bring in speakers and finance meeting facilities to help educate our local hobbyist. You can remit payment via paypal to paypal@rasoc.org Please add your current name, address and user name to the comment area, so that we can speed up your renewal or membership process. For those members that have not renewed as of 1/31/10, your status will return to guest, at that time.

Thank you for supporting RASOC, your local saltwater enthusiast club.

[Lori]

In my opinion, the club membership is not worth more than the $10. In the last 2 years CMAC has had 1 speaker. There is no place for meetings to be held. They are just all over the place. This dont make it easy for us people who have to drive 2 1/2 hours to get there and yet some complain about a 30 minute drive. Also there are hardly ever any raffles. If the raffles were like they were when David was in charge then I could see membership going up some.  Ok so each month there is a coral of the month. That seems to be the only thing constant. As you read ROSCO offers more than CMAC so it makes it worth the $30 member fee. In the last 2 years with CMAC I havent seen anything to make the member fee being $30 worth it.

[fsn77]

Things to keep in mind...
1) Last year's speaker cancelled (not CMAC's fault or the speaker's fault, and we didn't publicize the party that was at fault out of respect).  A replacement that was still available was not able to be found.

2) Meetings are held at various locations to help support many of the local shops that sponsor the club.  When that's not the case, meetings are scheduled at differing locations to provide some variety (members' homes, restaurants, etc.).  Until a free location that the club can meet at regularly is found, there's not many other options considering the club cannot afford to pay to rent a meeting place on a routine basis.

3) If companies were still freely donating as many items as they did when David was President, there would be more items to raffle.  More and more companies that are contacted openly admit that due to the economy they have had to reduce the amount of donations they make to local clubs and regretfully have to decline our request for sponsorship / donations.  Fewer donations, decreasing support for existing raffles, and vacant BOD positions / BOD members going MIA mid-year all result in fewer raffles.

4) Anyone that attends several club meetings in a year has very little trouble getting more than $10 out of the club events without participating in the Coral of the Month or any raffle.  The club provides refreshments at many of the meetings and buys at least some of the main staples for the annual picnic (or in the case of 2009, at three of the pot luck / cook out events) -- have a couple drinks and eat some of the food and anyone easily gets their $10 worth over the course of a year.

5) As Gris very plainly explained in the thread proposing changes to the bylaws for this year, it's quite easy to get much more than $10 worth out of club membership.  Despite how infrequently he uses the club's discount at the local sponsors, his $10 membership payment nets him more than $150 is savings in a year.  If saving $150 or more isn't worth spending $25 on dues, then so be it.

Ultimately, if a two-thirds majority is never reached to raise dues, that is the will of the club and a right of the club's members based on how CMAC was founded.  At some point, keeping dues at $10 annually will likely result in increasingly diminishing returns for CMAC's members.

Personally, considering the cost of nearly everything associated with this hobby, $10 for membership dues seems ridiculously cheap, even if that $10 in dues only got me the discount at the local shops.  I'd bet that the majority of us each spend $10 or more monthly on electricity, water, and food in support of our hobby.  I think the club did itself a severe disservice by ever setting dues as low as $10 annually, unless the original goals and expectations for the club were much more modest or there were intentions to progressively raise dues that never came to pass.

[coral hunter]

i fully agree with frank. i know in my case one trip to a sponsor more than covers the small membership fee in discounts.and this is our club and if we don't support it then who will.and as far as speakers with no more money than the club brings in from membership fees how can we afford to have more speakers.we can only get from the club what "we" as members put into it.

[BubbaPhish]

I believe the membership is worth more than $10, and feel it should be more to be a paid member. The club is only as good as the support the members give it.
With the costs of bringing in a national guest speaker it is understandable why the club has not had one in so long when club dues are $10 a year and only a handful of paid and or active members. As stated by Frank, the club does provide drinks, food ect.. at the clubs cost and are passed out freely to guests at meetings to both paid members and non paying members as well as anyone else who shows up. The paid membership also gets the member 10% off purchases at participating sponsors, and in most cases after the savings the membership pays for itself by shopping with the sponsors. In my opinion the discount is offered by the sponsors as a courtesy to help support the club by attracting people to become paid members.

As for items for raffles by the club, the sponsors/shops have a hard enough time getting some freebies for their own store's use with the economy llike it is. Why should a sponsor, vendor or manufacturer spend their shrinking promo budgets on a club with small numbers instead of a larger club? The promo/advertising is a better value to a larger audience by a donor, plus sponsors and manufacturers are swarmed by all of the other clubs in America everyday asking for stuff. Raffles are nice once in a while to help supplement the club's funds, but should in no way be a counted on as a source of income for the club.

The meeting place is hard to nail down, some may be somewhere public and sometimes a private home. To those of you who have hosted a meeting a big warm "Thank You" from myself for allowing the club into your home and sharing with the group.

I miss alot of (most) meetings due to my work schedule, but do stay very active in the forums. This post is of my own personal feelings and not a view expressed by myself or others on behalf of a certain business that I may be associated with.

If you want more from the club, speak up, step up and lets all work together to see what it will take to make it happen.The BOD is and has been receptive to ideas in the past. That being said the club has to have money to operate, plain and simple. If the club needs/wants to raise dues I am sure the board will use the money responsibly and make the membership experience better for all. Paid membership is not mandatory to be in CMAC or attend meetings, no I am not a paid member but hold a sponsor status.

Kevin...... stepping out on a limb

[fsn77]

FYI -- Everyone's Paid Member status has been updated to reflect membership payments for 2010.

[dragenfire0]

I am a new member to this club and i have already had my 10 worth of fun and i was thinking that raising it to 25 will help make the club even better.