Minutes of July 17, 2017
With former Club President Bob Beaumont filling in for newly installed Club President Bob Guerette (at his cottage in the County per previously agreed upon schedule) the meeting was called to order at 07:15 and Bob led us all in the Pledge of Allegiance. In the absence of still vacationing Pastor Ron Bob then gave a nice invocation. After reminding us all that this was to be a club working meeting Bob called upon Fred Burgess for Happy / Sad dollars.
Fred started it off with Bob Davis who got a rise out of Fred by putting in a happy dollar for a no loss week for the Bruins, acknowledging that their season does not start for several months. Bob Beaumont had several happy dollars for Summer in Maine and the great location that we live in. He also told of going to the US Courthouse in Portland and attending the swearing in ceremony for about 30 new US citizens, representing about 24 different countries. Bob had a long time friend, originally from Canada, taking the Oath of Allegiance to the US and becoming a citizen. Bob also reflected how his father had come to the US from England through Ellis Island and had become a US citizen the same way. Joel Merry had a happy dollar for a nice weekend and glad to be at the meeting. Russ Andrews had a sad dollar for no name tag, forgetting to take it off prior to leaving last weeks meeting, and leaving it at home. He had several happy dollars for great weekend weather filled with a 4 mile run and 9 inning baseball game leading to early bed times. He also had a happy dollar for an upcoming vacation at Wilson Lake with his extended family. Fred had a sad dollar for a friend recently killed in a motorcycle accident when an oncoming car crossed the centerline into opposing traffic. Gordon had a happy dollar for time spent over the weekend detailing several cars including getting his daughters ’09 Ford Escape ready to sell. His Presidential question was a bit obscure. Which President was nicknamed the Human Icicle for being very stiff with people. None of us got Benjamin Harrison.
Acting Prez. Bob then turned over the meeting to Bob Davis who led us in a very interesting, wide ranging discussion regarding advance planning for our major fundraiser including exploring options for possibly increasing the revenue.
One option considered was increasing ticket sales and attendance but since we are presently close to capacity at the Maritime Museum function room that led to the discussion of other possible venues. After a lively discussion of several other possible options we circled back to the Maritime Museum as having the nicest function room by far and it not being affiliated with a restaurant avoids requiring factoring in the cost of a meal in the ticket prices.
We next discussed timing. While our early February date has worked well it is tight from a publicity standpoint as invites and other publicity really can’t get started until after the Christmas Holidays to avoid getting lost in the junk mail and publicity of Holiday related activities. The other risk of early February is being snowed out. While we set the following day as a snow date the real risk, which has not yet happened to us, is a medium snow storm on the event day, not so severe as to clearly require cancelling the event but severe enough to significantly reduce attendance (and bidders at the auction part of the event). We cancelled once due to a blizzard that also required us to cancel the snow date the following date. That led us to reschedule until May and we had a successful spring event. Bob suggested we consider a permanent shift of the schedule to late April / early May. After some discussion we agreed study that option. Bob Davis will contact the Museum to check for available dates and Bob Beaumont and Joel will check for dates of competing events.
Bob then suggested we consider exploring two on-line activities. First consider ticket sales on line including on-line purchase, thinking that it both centralizes the sale of the tickets but may allow us to reach a slightly wider (read younger) demographic.
The second idea was some type of on-line auction of items the children served by Family Focus had a hand in making. Bob spoke of a charity fundraising project his daughter runs in the Detroit area where a number of bowls are signed by local celebrities and auctioned off on line with a goal of getting employees of several companies bidding for individual bowls but competing to see which company can get the highest bid on the bowl important to their company.
We agreed we need to find some local organization with experience / expertise with an on-line auction to give us some pointers to aid us in making a decision to move forward. MSMT ran an on-line auction last year and might be a good source of info.
Very interesting discussion. More to follow.
Tomorrows speaker is Put Armstrong of the Maine Aviation Business Association. Hope to see you there.
Submitted:
Tom