St. Louis Area Geocaching Association

MEETING MINUTES 2021

19 January 2021/ 6:30 PM / via Zoom (internet meeting platform)

ATTENDEES

Steve Bromley, Michael Smith, Robert Klemme, Nan Dabler, Melissa Pierce, Jan Salvaggio,  David DeWitt, Bill Lange

Meeting called to order at 6:34 pm.

Motion called to approve November 2020 minutes by Michael, seconded by Nan.

One correction had been made to add our new officers into the minutes.

Motion called to approve November 2020, December 2020 and the 2020 Yearly treasurer's report by Michael, seconded by Melissa.

• Several issues were brought up for discussion prior to approval.
  • We had a loss this past year.  The probable cause would be due to Covid. We were unable to hold as many events where we could get new members, have additional raffles, sell available coins, etc. Biggest expenses were:
    • 20th anniversary coins
      • Paid a total of $872. $300 was paid in 2019, remaining $572 was paid in 2020.
      • We have sold 25 of the 125 coins total and returned about half the cost.
    • UPS Store for SLAGA mailbox
      • We paid $450, next renewal is February 2022.
      • Is there a cheaper alternative? What do we need to make sure of before switching? 
        • Due to the incorporation, we must have a “physical address”. We do not want to use an officers address as they only serve for 2 years and we would have to redo the paperwork frequently.
    • Membership awards
      • We paid $612.93 this year in awards.
      • Some people won’t pay for the membership until they qualify for the award and then they won’t pay until they have another award opportunity.
      • Had 57 renewals in 2020.
        • We have 124 paying members. Out of that 34 are family lifetime and 32 are individual lifetime. Leaving 58 other members
      • May need to reevaluate our policy on giving out awards
        • Suggestion was to maybe require membership for a certain time period before being able to qualify for an award. Such as 3 years for a 5,000 finds award, 5 years for a 10,000 finds award 7 years for a 25,000 finds award. Another suggestion was to allow lifetime members to get these awards regardless of time period.
        • Tracking this could be problematic.
      • May need to reevaluate our membership rates
        • $12 new, $10 renewal
    • Paypal account currently holds around $2000. Is there a reason why?
      • Hasn’t been transferred into the SLAGA bank account for a while. Usually keep up to $500 in that account.
      • David uses this account to pay for website related costs
      • Treasurer, President, and David have access to this account.
    • Who has access to the SLAGA bank account?
      • Currently Steve has a debit card and Nan has checks.
      • After much discussion regarding who has access to the account and why, it was decided that Steve will retain a debit card as he is responsible for getting items for picnics (food, supplies, gift cards, etc)
      • Nan will retain the check book for the account in order to reimburse those who purchase things for SLAGA events. Examples: picnic hosts, GC 101 lunches.
      • Robert will also have a debit card as he is in charge of purchasing awards and shipping items
        • Motion was called that the Vice President in charge of the awards should have a debit card for the SLAGA account. Approved by Michael, seconded by Melissa

Retrospective

• Zoom get togethers were held November 20, 2020, December 4, 2020, December 17, 2020 and January 6, 2021
  • All established members, no new cachers were there.
  • Tend to have 15 or more attendees to each session.
  • Seems to be people wanting some form of social interaction at this point.
• GC 101 classes are currently scheduled for March 27, 2021, June 12, 2021, and October 2, 2021
  • Steve will check with Laura MacLeod about the location of the classes as there had been talk of renovating the space. 
  • David to check if these dates are on the SLAGA website and add if not.

   Events

• No events scheduled at this time
• Will skip the spring picnic, usually held in April or May, and plan on having a summer event, probably in July.
  • Have traditionally used St Louis County Parks for picnics, can go elsewhere if desired.

  Ongoing Business

• 20th Anniversary geocoins
  • Have sold 41 currently
    • 17 left for pick up
      • One is unpaid with arrangements to pay at time of pick up
    • Six have been picked up already
    • Rest have been shipped with no outstanding shipments waiting.
      • Had one coin with tracking issues. We sent a new coin only to have the first coin show up. 
  • Double orders have been identified and individuals contacted and refunds issued where needed.
  • Thinking of having a pick up event for coins
    • Michael is willing to use his business to arrange pick ups from there
    • Nan is also willing to work with people to get pick up arranged.
      • Robert will get with Michael and Nan on the list of people.
  • Bring coins to the summer picnic for sale also.
• Officer transition
  • Bank accounts will be taken care of on Friday, January 22, 2021
• Award Coins and additional achievement awards
  • We have two 1000 finds coins, nine 5000 finds coins, five chairs, and one jacket to award.
  • Chairs and jacket will be given to Kathy DeWitt on Friday, January 22, 2021 for embroidery
    • Robert will send a list of the awardees to David
  • How to award?
    • Maybe Facebook live stream if awardee is ok with that.
    • Maybe film as mp4 and upload for a premiere to everyone on Facebook
    • Steve willing to go out to take care of these
      • Both filming options would be a good way to show new cachers what they can get as members.
    • Bill suggested that we could have a single event for the coins then do the chairs and jacket as separate videos.

New Business

• 2020 MOGA shirts
  • Michael has the remaining 6 shirts that have not been picked up as of yet.
  • Michael and Robert will work together on the shipping cost.
  • Michael can then confer with the individuals to see if they want their shirts shipped or if they would prefer to pick up.
• SLAGA Rend Lake CITO
  • Corp of Engineers reached out about the availability to do this.
  • Had had plans to do this last spring, however it had to be cancelled due to Covid restrictions.
  • Host is looking at either May 8th or May 22, 2021
    • May 8th is the same as the Mingo weekend event
    • May 22nd is the weekend before MOGA, so may not be heavily attended
    • Is there another date in May that would work? Could it be moved to June? Excluding June 12th, which is a GC 101 class date.
    • Will Illinois allow events such as these by that time?
  • Steve will reach out to host about these concerns and issues.
• Shipworks demonstration by Robert
  • Robert is allowing SLAGA to use his ShipWorks account to mail our coins at this time.
    • This is Robert’s personal account through his work. Thank you to Robert for allowing us to use this resource.
  • SLAGA will pay for postage and insurance, as per usual. ShipWorks allows us to import orders, track the orders, and the ability to print out our own postage.
    • It also allows us to be able to see the status of the packages, ie: pick up, mailed, delivered, waiting. 
    • We are also able to print an invoice for postage and insurance.
  • Usual cost for this service is $49 per month.
  • SLAGA owes Robert $64.16 for shipping costs currently.
    • Will turn in the invoice for payment.
• SLAGA website training provided by David
  • David has created two videos for help in updating the website.
    • One is for the home page picture slider. The other is for adding events onto the homepage calendar.
  • David walked us through how to upload and caption photos
    • Including albums as well as the slider.
  • David showed us where to find the membership list
    • Can use this to sort by membership types, get email addresses or phone numbers for SLAGA related business if needed.
  • Discussion was started about what to include or not include on the front page of the SLAGA website and to look at it as a new cacher would.
    • Should keep inside jokes to a minimum
    • Use few abbreviations/acronyms
      • Spell them out?
      • Make a glossary of terms under caching tools?
    • Goal should be both educational and promotional
      • Pictures of group events, awardees, educational venues
    • Keep older pictures to a minimum and make sure they are well captioned.
      • Example used was a 2014 picture of RGS and MrsRGS. On it’s own it looks like an old picture that maybe shows we haven’t updated our website recently. With a caption of “Founding SLAGA members etc.” it becomes more relevant.
    • We have not had any new submissions for articles in a long time.
      • Could be due to Covid?
      • Maybe put in an article about CuriousGeorge and embed the video from the last event?
    • Michael only one who has been submitting photos as well
  • It was decided to let Michael and David do the updates to the website as far as pictures go at this time.
    • Concern about too many people trying to go in and change things only to have them changed back.

Meeting adjourned at 8:56 pm by Nan, seconded by Michael

NEXT MONTH’S INFORMATION

February XX, 2021 at 6:30 pm.