2008 AGM Minutes

[Purple AK]

Minutes of AGM at Stoneleigh


4th May 2008

Those Present: -

John Cooke
Tony Merrick
Peter Jones
Marion Jones
Russell Derbyshire
Julie Butteriss
James Norris
Chris Barnes

Apologies for absence were received from:-
Glen Pullen & Rob Stanley

Meeting opened at 14:05


John Cooke officially stood down as Chairman and handed the meeting over to Tony Merrick as the new Chairman. Tony thanked John for his work with the Club over the past years and opened the meeting, thanking everyone for their attendance.


Accounts.

Russell Derbyshire gave an overview of the Club Accounts for 2007

This showed,
The Total Income for 2007 was £24548. This was down by 23% (£7140) on 2006. This was solely due to a 30% (£8244) reduction in membership fees. Advertising income was up 26% (£122 directly proportionate to 5 magazines being produced in 2007 against 4 in 2006. Other sources of income, Merchandise, Magazines, Events and Bank Interest, were marginally down, But only by £120 overall.

Total Expenditure for 2007 was £31541. This was 17% (£6280) down on 2006. Mainly due to there being only 5 magazines in 2007 against 4 magazines and 2 calendars in 2006 with a subsequent reduction in printing and postage costs of £5817, and a £1007 reduction in Show Expenses. Most other expenses were static or slightly reduced apart from a £1591 spend on new Merchandise.

The Profit and Loss Summery for 2007 showed a loss of £6993 against a loss of £6138 for 2006.

The Reserves Balance for 2007 showed the opening balance for the Current Account as £2333.57 and the High Interest Account as £5765.97. The closing balances were £635.24 and £415.96 respectively. This gave a total reserve remaining of £1051.20. A reduction of £7048.34
Russell Highlighted that there was Zero flexibility for overspend in 2008. And Tony promised the Floor that there would be No overspend at all in 2008 as the Committee had already agreed to print a maximum of 4 magazines, or less in 2008, as funds provided. It was also noted that the number of copies printed would be reduced inline with the membership numbers at the time of issue in order to save costs.

Questions were raised from the Floor as to ways of increasing Membership/Income.

It was suggested that it is still not easy for people to join, and that the link on the Website needed to clearer.
It was suggested that members be offered the option of setting up a Direct Debit/Standing Order for renewal as some tend to forget.
It was suggested that the Website be owned by the Club and that some areas of it be restricted to Members only as at present there is no incentive for people to join the Club as all the information is there for all to see. Tony agreed to talk to Robert to see if it was possible, and how much it would cost.
It was suggested that Back Issues of the Magazine be uploaded onto the website so that prospective members could see what they were likely to get by joining.
The Accounts were accepted with No objections.

Tony introduced Julie Butteriss, Chris Barnes, Rob Stanley and James Norris as new Committee Members.

James apologized to the Floor for failing to organize the Rolling Road at the Show, but Health and Safety and Noise Abatement issues had not allowed it to happen. It was agreed the Show Organizers should be contacted to ask why Westfield were still allowed their Slalom Course, whilst we were refused.
John Cooke offered the Club the opportunity to stage a Rolling Road event at his new Peterborough Show.

Voting was started for the committee members who had elected to stand: -
Tony Merrick was voted in as Chairman
Russell Derbyshire was voted in as Treasurer
Peter Jones was voted in as Magazine Editor
Marion Jones was voted in as Membership Secretary
Glen Pullen was voted in as Magazine Distribution
Chris Barnes was voted in as Club Secretary/Area Rep Liaison
Robert Stanley was voted in as Webmaster
Julie Butteriss was voted in as Regalia Buyer
James Norris was voted in as Events Coordinator

It was agreed that as Membership Fees should be increased to £28 as of, 01st July 2008.

Chris noted that 56 Proxy Voting Forms had been returned. 55 “For”, 0 “Against” and 1 spoiled paper. Therefore, all Resolutions were carried unanimously.


Any Other Business: -

It was agreed that Area Reps should be asked to promote the Club as far as possible in order to try and boost membership. Tony said that non members should be included in events and encouraged to participate as possibly they may wish to join or rejoin the club..
It was decided that the Club needs to find an Area Rep for Wales.

Meeting closed at 15:05

[andicole0]

Thanks for that Chris, very interesting.

Andi.

[robert]

Originally Posted by Purple AK

It was suggested that the Website be owned by the Club and that some areas of it be restricted to Members only as at present there is no incentive for people to join the Club as all the information is there for all to see. Tony agreed to talk to Robert to see if it was possible, and how much it would cost.

There seems to be a misnomer doing the rounds regarding the CRC site, so I thought it best to put some of this to bed.

Advertising

I run the google ads on the site and also the banner ads, now some of you might have the misconception that this brings in a shed load of cash. I wish that were so. Last month, this site generated the grand sum of $115, thats DOLLARS, not sterling. Please see screen shot attached. Unfortunately, under the google terms and conditions, I can only display the revenue, not the impressions and CTR etc.




There are some additional funds through the banner ads, but those are £100 per quarter, so again not a great deal of cash.

In comparison, the resources needed to run this site mean that I spend £300 a month on hosting charges, thankfully I have a couple of paid sites on this server which helps to cover the costs.

So, as you can see, I don't run the site for money, in fact it is losing revenue but I am happy to cover the loss.

Restricited Access

This has been mentioned a number of times in the past, and I have resisted restricting visibility of the site as that would not be beneificial to anyone. I have seen paid access models fail in the past and I am not prepared to see this site fail, I have put 9 years into this forum and I don't want that to go to waste.

Restricting access to the website will do us no favours at all and will fragment the users, instead we need to look at reinforcing membership at a grassroots level, members parking at event, member only event etc. The forum is only a small part of the equation here and forcing restricted access is a knee jerk reaction to a wider issue.

Membership

There also seems to be a misnomer that due to the open access on the forum, we have lost members. When I initially started the membership system on the website, we increased membership significantly to over 1500 members. Membership dropped off over the last couple of years, probably due to lack of direction within the club, so we need to understand where and why we lost members during that period and what we need to do to bring them back.

Any comments are more than welcomed.

[robert]

And just to put this into perspective, since starting this website before I placed the google ads on the site, I have only ever invoiced the club for the funds to run the site once, as I was more than aware of the financial constraints the club are under.

So for the past 8 years, the club has effectively had a free web presence, and I am not even counting the software costs, integration costs and time spent looking after the site.

[dingocooke]

Just a couple of thoughts from an outsider:
Although the finances dont look very rosy (from what I can see another loss like 2007 and the CRC will be close to trading insolvent?) a lot of special interest vehicle clubs are seeing a decline in membership and are in the same boat, eking out previous years reserves to survive.

Im pretty sure the downfall of club life/membership has been the success of the internet, but thats only my gut feeling.

I think the key to the clubs survival is recruiting new members and getting more proftiable revenue from existing ones, heres a few ideas:

1-get the area reps to develop relationships with their local kit companies, that way when people go browsing for a kit, they might just get pointed at the club by the company, and old/excess club magazines can be given to these companies to give to punters to entice them to join.
2-Make the club easier to join online, and find a system that works for giving the new mebers that feelgood factor (think of all the posts from people who have joined and commented that they had not got anything for ages) I know its a volunteer job, but there must be a way of making it simpler for the volunteer and getting info etc out to a new member quickly. You only get one chance to make a first impression..
3-Give out a screen sticker with membership (not just offer them 'when theyre in stock') with this website address on it so people browsing at a show or car meet will find their way here.
4-Give the club more prominence on the website home page, and have a big 'join the CRC'banner alternating between the paid for banners
5-Give a small referal discount (against their renewal) to exisiting members who recruit a new member to encourage exisiting members to recruit new ones
6-Have club events within other events (like the ill fated stoneleigh dyno run; shame about that; spot on idea) but throw them open to non members to encourage them in, with a discount for members.

Just a few thoughts from a non CRC member; made with best poss intentions!!

[wilf]

Rob - just to be clear, no-one (that I know) has suggested that you are on your way to millionaire status by running this website, nor that you get any pecuniary advantage at all from doing so. The opposite in fact, we are very well aware that without you and your time it would not exist.

The trouble is that very shortly, neither will the CRC unless we do some serious soul-searching and then enact change.

We simply have to regenerate the membership. All and every means available to do so must be embraced somehow.

My personal belief is that the technical help available here to builders (and repairers) of Cobra replicas has to be worth the membership fee for the CRC.
If it is true what so many people say ("I could never have done it without the help from the forum") then that has a value.
If you wanted technical advice from the Superformance Cars Owners Forum, you are not even allowed to join that forum until you have taken delivery of your Superformance car - i.e. put your money where your mouth is. £twenty-odd seems little by comparison.

MHO is all.

[robert]

Originally Posted by wilf

Rob - just to be clear, no-one (that I know) has suggested that you are on your way to millionaire status by running this website, nor that you get any pecuniary advantage at all from doing so. The opposite in fact, we are very well aware that without you and your time it would not exist.

Unfortunately, some do have that belief.

[Andy S]

So why not make a charge for the website ie £5 or £10 per annum, discounted off the full membership costs if signed up within say 6 months.
Non of us would object to paying the club this sum of money for the use of the forum, after all for a great many of us the club is the forum.
Then just restrict the site to non members ie those that havnt paid at all so they can read only but not post and dont have access to technical sections either.

[kevchard]

Hi Rob
You have done a brilliant job on this site, I can well believe you would have been out of pocket, with both money and time.
How about letting the non members have a certain amount of free post's. after they have used them, then they have to join to continue putting on post's.
Cheers
Kevin

[craggle]

Out of interest, How do Google ads work out how much they owe you?

Is it simply done by the amount of people clicking on the ad links?

If so I will go on a clicking frenzy for you!

If you wanted to add a voluntary contribution towards the website I would have no problem with paying that.

Craig.