MASNA February, 2005 BOD Meeting Minutes

(This meeting was held electronically on February 9th, 2005 9: PM EST)

 

Attendance:

 

BOD Present:

 

Cheri Phillips (President)

Charles Scannell (Past President/Webmaster)

Amy Larsan (Membership)

Robert Lemcke (Treasurer)

Joe Scavo (Public Relations)

John Brandt (Industry/Legislation/Ocean Conservation Rep.)

 

Members Other Than BOD Present:

 

Steve Howard (WAMAS President)

Kelly Jedlicki (President, Louisville Marine Aquarium Society)

 

OFFICER REPORTS:

 

NOTE: All officer reports were distributed via email to the BOD in advance of this meeting.  They have been formatted and are inserted into these minutes.

 

1) President’s Report:

 

·         Membership: Covered for Amy w/ regard to Membership duties from 1/20/05 to 2/3/05. Convinced Reed Mariculture to become a MASNA corporate sponsor.

·         Newsletter: Worked w/ Marc proofreading the Newsletter and trying to create a .pdf file from his HTML I also worked w/ Frank Marini to get his article into the newsletter and supplied the Bangaii Cardinal pictures.

·         Connecticut Area Reef Society – have accepted an invitation to give a presentation on MASNA (conservation theme) on May 14. I’d like to hear John and/or Chuck comment on any similar presentations they’ve done in the past. I’ll be sure to bring plenty of MASNA brochures w/ me!

·         MACNA XVII: I have been active in participating/starting threads in the WAMAS MACNA planning forums. Attended 1/22/05 conference call meeting w/ WAMAS MACNA Planning group. I was asked to please provide help in obtaining past MACNA attendee lists and vendor contact lists. I have sent requests for this information in any form possible to folks at DFWMAS, Kelly Jedlicki at LMAS and Joe Scavo at BRS. I also have spent hours going through all the diskettes passed on to me. Everything of any value has been copied onto my hard disk. It looks like the last MACNA attendee records MASNA has is from the Baltimore MACNA. I am still combing through the paper records for anything useful for WAMAS or future hosting clubs. WAMAS is entering all their contact information into ACT. They would like to see two things happen in the future that the board should consider:

 

1.       This ACT DB becomes available in a protected area of the MASNA website to be used/updated going forward for future hosting clubs and anything we can gather from the past few MACNAs be added to it. Steve correctly pointed out that many MACNA attendees only attend every other year or every third year, so having this past information is very important to hosting club. We need Chuck’s input to figure out what is technically possible. WAMAS has a 10-user license for ACT. MASNA has a single-user license for ACT that David procured for us.

2.       The MACNA XVII website be preserved and ownership be transferred to MASNA for use by the next hosting club so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This needs to be thought through since the WAMAS folks need the site up and available up until MACNA XVII starts and ideally for a while afterwards, whereas the next club needs to get something up and available as soon as MACNA XVIII starts (no advertising allowed until then).

 

• MACNA XVIII: Worked w/ Lee and Chuck to get our website pages related to the Bid updated and sent out announcement of the Bid on 1/18/05. Deadline for Bid submission is 3/1/05. Exchanged eMAILs w/ MAAST (South Texas) about a possible San Antonio bid early in the month.
• Future MACNAs: have been fielding questions/inquiries for 2007 from three different clubs
• Reef Protection International (RPI): met Drew Weiner lunch on 2/1/05. I’ve sent a separate eMAIL to the BOD regarding what we discussed.
• Aquarium Hobbyist: has invited a MASNA representative(s) to participate in their annual Chat symposium for their PetHobbyist community. The chat will last approximately an hour and will be moderated by a staff member. The chat requires a Windows-based PC and access to the Internet. The topic will be MASNA, its member clubs and the organization in general. The format will be question/answer. The Chat will take place on Friday, 3/4/05 at 6pm PST in order to catch the maximum number of marine hobbyists. I have accepted the invitation and have invited any other interested BOD members to join me.
• Questions: responded to MACNA and MASNA questions from a variety of people via eMAIL – a club seeking 501(c) advice, educational programs advice.

 

 

2) Vice President’s Report:

 

No report this month

 

3) Treasurer’s Report:

 

CREDIT CARD PROCESSOR:

 

• Unable to process any credit card transactions since January 5th.
• Our current Credit Card Merchant Processor (EMS) required me to initialize our credit card terminal to process our new merchant account.  Unfortunately, the current credit card terminal shuts down before their download can finish.
•  Ordered and received a used credit card terminal (Hypercom T7E) for $36.99 to replace our non-working (see above bullet)credit card terminal.
• Called EMS on 1/28 to create a new software program to download since this model differs from the previous (Hypercom T7P/T8) model.
• EMS is scheduled to download the new software program onto the replacement machine on 1/31 after which I should be able to process all of our outstanding credit card transactions.

 

     OTHER:

 

• Keyed in three (3) Membership applications received via mail to expedite membership info to BOD.
• Emailed the following:

 

1.       Karl of BRS requesting that he provide supporting documentation related to food and beverage costs provided at Sept MASNA BOD meeting that he wants MASNA to pay

2.       John Janda of C-SEA that they overpaid their 2004-05 dues and that a check of $12.50 was mailed to them

3.       Webmaster to mail WestHost invoice to Treasurer before paying

4.       John Brandt for supporting documentation of USCTF travel expenses which have already been paid to him.

     

     FUTURE:

 

• Plan to send an email to WAMUS (i.e., S. Howard) by February 15th, if MACNA registration fees have not been received per MACNA XVII Hosting Agreement.

 

[* - Secretary note: due to the size and formatting of the Draft Balance Sheet and Draft Income Statement, they are left as an addendum to the monthly minutes]

 

4) Director of Membership  Report:

 

NOTE: Cheri Phillips put together February’s Membership Report due to Amy Larsan being out of the country.

 

MASNA Current Membership – February 2005:

 

	2002-2003	2003-2004	2004-2005	Diff From 2003-2004	Change Since 01/05	Comment
Individual Members	88	64	61	-3	+4	3 New (Kevin Caskey, William Voss, Nancy Odonohue); 1 Renewal (Howard Hoag - used to be LVMAS club); Mike Hughes removed
Club Members	20	27	29	+ 2	+3	C-SEA renewal; Puget Sound Aquarium Society Added; Mike Hughes individual membership upgraded to “The Coral Reef” Club Membership
Corporate Members	10	10	15	+5	+3	Added Fragtraders, Tindall Aquaculture and Reed Mariculture

 

 

 

5) Secretary’s Report:

 

No report this month

 

6) Editor’s Report:

 

• The December newsletter was finished  on 1/23/05 and a zip file emailed
  to Cheri and Chuck.
• I received a new ad for the March Newsletter from Drs Foster & Smith.
• I need to email all the other sponsors again that did not respond to get
  their ads on file.  I'll follow up on the two sponsors that want to
  purchase "Buy 3 ads, Get one FREE", and get with Chuck to update the
  Advertising Rates link so that they can process their purchase.
• I'll need some articles for the next newsletter, so let others know we
  are looking.
• I'd like to include the Calendar Project in the next newsletter, and if
  Joe could submit the guidelines so those can be included, that would be
  ideal.  My thinking is that we are going to run out of time as MACNA
  approaches quickly, so a deadline should be firmly established in the
  newsletter so that we have enough time to organize the judging and get
  the calendar printed in time.

 

7) Webmaster’s Report:

 

• Added the club link very visible on the main page so all can use it.
•  Dealt with a few members and there access and general updating of the website as well as membership banners etc updated.

 

8) Industry/Legislation/Ocean Conservation Representative’s Report:

 

No report this month

 

9) Public Relations/Internet Promotion Officer’s Report:

 

No report this month

 

MEETING: 

 

NOTE: The February meeting was not recorded, all business listed below was given by MASNA BOD members who were in attendance

 

10) MACNA update/discussion

 

• Steve Howard gave an update on the progress WAMAS has made in the past month

 

11) New business:

 

• We had been made aware that David Anderson would resign as MASNA Vice President due to family matters that needed his attention. We were all sad to see him go and wish the very best to him and his family. We would also like to note just how much we appreciate all of the work he had done for MASNA while he was our Vice President. 

.

12) New Business:

 

• B. Lemcke presented the idea of moving MASNA’s banking from Bank One to Washington Mutual. There was a long discussion over the pros and cons of this move. B. Lemcke pointed out that the move in brief were a saving of $120 per year in monthly fees. Also quicker deposits of mailed in membership dues.

 

• One point seen by the BOD was that no one knew for sure how many branches Washington Mutual had around the US. A fear of baking with Washington Mutual would be that any future treasure might not be able to comfortably handle any MASNA banking transactions if there were not a near by branch.

 

• More information was needed before any votes could be made.

 

13) New Business:

 

• B. Lemcke brought up the concept of accepting PayPal as a method of payment which passed. This would include creating an email address for PayPal payments. As well as adding a PayPal icon to the application page on the MASNA website (being sure to require the application to be filled out prior to payment being sent in). 

 

• The BOD agreed that this would be of a benefit for members to pay but that it would be important to find out what charges (if any) PayPal includes.

 

 14) New Business:

      

• B. Lemcke proposed to further investigation regarding moving MASNA’s credit card     merchant processor to another company.  That currently, MASNA has $500 annual EMS credit card processing costs. It was noted that preliminary discussions with other processing companie show a savings of $200 a year.