2024-09 Board Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

 

In Attendance

Robert Jacobsen

Bailey Bishop

Mark Shane

Glenn Champagne

BettyMae Mosley

Luis Rivera

Kristin Larsen

 

Guests:

Peter Palermo– co-VP Communication Candidate

Kevin Moran – co-VP Communication Candidate

 

Not in Attendance:

Stephen Hall

 

Open 6:36

 

President – Glenn

Will attend the Zone 1 president’s meeting in November and will send the agenda once received. He asked the board to share topics that could be introduced.

Glenn asked the guests to introduce themselves. Peter and Kevin both have shared interest into the Communication role to replace Luis.

Treasurer – Bailey

Few changes to report for August the prior month, and has looked around monthly motorsport as additional funds came in for the following events: Concours, Dow rally, Summer Party, and Watkins Glen.

Financials were presented.

Approved – Kristin

Luis – 2d Approved.

All approved.

 

VP Communications – Luis

Ryan is doing an excellent job maintaining Website updates. The advertising logo(s) were repositioned on the landing page and are now easily viewable on the desktop version.

September Events are posted, along with future upcoming events and asked if there are any other events that need further support.

The Dow Rally can use help. Luis will connect with Bill around support in terms of driving traffic to the home page/social pages. Ramble & Concours are areas of suggestion in terms of a great page to emulate.

Operations – VP Comms Candidates Kevin and Peter were in attendance. Luis shared that he is willing to support onboarding for the first 60 days to help ramp up onboarding faster and more effectively.

NER’s Ramblemeister has offered to help with email messaging. The board agreed to revisit in 2025.

The first Aditoral is completed. The team is currently looking into leveraging templates for future usage. The reason, for the template is due t the amount of considerable time it takes to complete.

Traffic Flow was an area of concern, the team continues to review a variety of data. Traffic flow is relatively low, in certain age categories and the team has identified a significant change. However, in the age group 25-34 are up year over year by 20%. This group has played a significant part in terms website traffic and event attendance.

The communications team also noticed there seems to be an increase with our members in this age category driving 4-door cars vs. older air-cooled cars.

The team will continue to present data and how the board might leverage this information to allow our chairs to think towards 2025 club events.

 

Kristin VP Driving

Palmer is the last event for NER and a great lunch time education has improved DE continues to show how the program has evolved and received great reviews, and the focus is around education and adding value to the program.

AutoX – VP of Driving shared ongoing discussions around how to assist the AX committee to increase registrations which has been an issue among all clubs.

The issue around sound has also affected other clubs. The team had an idea for a tech session focusing on tech session specifically focused on autocross.

Ramble – The concourse is moving along well, and the ramble is progressing well and the year 2025 is set and the Ramblemeister is looking at 2026 venues the team is in a good place in terms of securing dates/venues.

The Dow Rally is moving along. The registrations are down. and it not that unusual currently. (13 cars registered) but typically will get thirty cars if we consider how last year progressed in terms of registrations. Luis will connect with the DOW chair to help with driving more interest for the DOW event.

 

Mark VP Admin

Last 2 Porsches / Coffee have had a great turn out and go into October for the final event.

Summer Party – Ended up with ninety-one adults and two youths it was few registered early, then 2 weeks prior we got a jump in terms of interest. Mark noted that while a few unregistered “walk-ins” for the Summer Party some came and paid in cash.

A small few folks did not have cash or a check, and Mark inquired about a better process to make this better and thinking about a unique way to support a member how may be a walk-in. Peter suggested implementing a Venmo, Zell etc., PayPal to address potential walk-ins.

Peter discussed the Venmo option in further detail. The board appreciated Peter, sharing his authentic thoughts and ideas and will revisit this topic with the 2025 board and work with Mark to investigate more workable options for our members.

The Gala is continuing along and plans to open registration soon. The venue will be held at Lake Pearl in Wrentham on 12/21/2024. The event will be in primary building used for formal events such as weddings and is NOT the same building used for the summer party.

Mark started a discussion around event promotion and a “Save the date” website page if the communications team has bandwidth to support. Betty recommended he ask for Gala volunteers.

Mark noted that the club will receive a 10% discount on the food since the club produced the Summer Party. Glenn was pleasantly surprised that the 10% discount was on the food.

Tech Session – Justin would like to do a combined Cars/Tech/FI event and capture a larger interest for the day.

 

Election and Nominee Updates

The process is continuing along. The chair has identified candidates for all positions at this point and will send a notice for any other for any other member expressing interest.

VP of Communications inquired around the upcoming timeline. The chair shared the timelines was 10/1 for the nominee slate to be finalized.

The board approved the 10/1 posting date.

 

Glenn President

Mark inquired about revisiting a website redesign. Glenn does have a mockup website he can share for 2025 utilizing WordPress.

Final discussion of the meeting regarded increasing the number of consecutive terms in one office from 2 to 3 years. Due to time constraints the conversation was asked to be tabled and will be resumed on September 26th meeting seeking a final resolution. Luis suggest we can think about the roles and do a side-by-side comparison.

Glenn wanted to commend the turnaround DE has had this year. He called the work of the chairs truly outstanding.

 

Motion to conclude was passed and concluded at 7:48pm