[BCReefer]

My thoughts on the club:

1. We do need elected members – as I understand it we should have at least a President/Chairperson Vice President/Chair and Secretary/Treasurer and depending on the amount of member you have other members that could handle other departments. The President usually has the final vote if a tie takes place. I have down loaded the “Starting Your Own” Marine Aquarium Society from MASNA and I am going to contact Vancouver Volunteer, which is non-profit group who helps people start up non-profit societies.

2. A member ship fee should be levied as it makes the club more, IMHO, legitimate. The member ship dues would go to pay for stuff like advertising, paying for meeting rooms, mail outs, printing costs and other miscellaneous costs.

3. There would be 2 types of meetings, the monthly meeting where we can discuss the topic of the day, exchange frags, guest speakers, field trips or what ever we want to do. The 2nd type of meetings are were we as a society must bring in new bylaws and/or elect officials. An agenda must be drawn up in advanced and distributed to all members. The agenda should be followed closely so the meeting does not get off track but still allow for good discussions to take place.

4. From my experience in a Strata Council for my Condo building I understand the following - in the original meeting we would have to vote on the bylaws that would govern the society, these bylaws would be enforced until a AGM (annual general meeting) or a EGM is called (Emergency General Meeting). The memo on the meeting must be issued in advance so that all members have sufficient time to plan for the meeting (in my building it is 2 weeks).

5. I am very leery of having any major sponsors as many of us would feel obligated to shop at the sponsors store. I really believe that we should stay non-partisan so we do not get into any political battle between members over what each stores does or does not do. Today we could be happy with a certain store but in 2 years what happens if they get new owners/employees and some people feel slighted.

6. Politics will be the biggest stumbling block for this society to grow and thrive – as you can read on many of BB there are several ways to do everything and no one way is the best, yet when you get 20 people in a room there will be some heated discussion. The discussions themselves will not be the problem, it will the little groups that get organized with each thinking they are right. Because of this I feel strong about my point #5.

I will try and find out some information from the Vancouver site today and post my findings tonight.

Patrick