2017 Board of Directors Meeting Minutes Everett Roehl Public Library, Marshfield, WI JP Adler Room 9:30 a.m. Meet and Greet
9:30 a.m. Meet and Greet
9:32 a.m. Call to Business
Treasurer as of 2/25/17 Renee reporting the treasury has a total of: $6,338.69 checking end of January
Renee has a lot of housekeeping details after officers are elected. The new officers will be set up with the PNC bank. Need signature cards/ IDs for the new officers. Pay pal account was recently updated from the Chili feed had mostly cash and not so many credit cards. Transfer of $47.67 to zero out PayPal plus sales $443. The biggest expenditures were made for the year and what is left are the operating costs for the rest of the year.
Secretary Report: Linda reported the minutes were distributed and these and future minutes are needed for State and Financial Reports. Correction noted to Add the 2016 Minutes to the Website.
Election of WGA Officers Everyone reviewed the Duties of all Officers from the by-laws and forum discussion before nominations.
Nomination for President: Dawn, Linda 1st, 2nd Jim Accepted and unopposed.
Nomination for VP: Lois, Dawn 1st, 2nd Pete Accepted and unopposed.
Nomination for Secretary: Linda Jim 1st, Jessica 2nd Brian, Lois 1st Aaron 2nd
Voted in: Brian 6-3
Nomination Treasurer: Renee, Pete 1st, Jim 2nd Accepted Jessica, Lois 1st Brian 2nd Accepted
Voted in: Jessica 5-4
WGA Committee Reports and Committee Assignments — It was discussed that new members for the committees need to be found, and that current members will need to be asked if they wish to continue. All board members are included in every committee by default.
Assigning/Volunteering: two board members (minimum) to co-chair our big events of the year (Winter Chili Feed, Spring Campout, Spring Pancake Breakfast, WB Vendor Sales and Pancake Breakfast, Fall Picnic). Everyone is welcome to be a part of the planning. Paring veterans with new board members. Peter brought up that three standing committees were usually three board members.
Community Education Committee:
Discussion of the duties and reasoning for Chris taking over as chair. Aaron volunteered to chair. Dawn working with him. Linda suggested that Chris be contacted about staying on as a member helper. Jim volunteered to be on the committee as well. Peter and Aaron made suggestions on how we can improve in this task.
Website Committee (content managers for website) (social media)
Discussion of committee duties. Lois and Jessica volunteered. Peter will stay on. Social media director was discussed. Discussion of the aspects of using facebook as a profile or a group to allow the general membership to post to the page. Lois and Peter to cochair.
WGA newsletter
Linda volunteered. Duties and expectation of the newsletter were discussed. Ideas for making the newsletter better were brought up. Board member bios requested. Aaron volunteered. Dawn to stay on.
WGA Webpage Articles
Discussion of duties. Brian will chair. Dawn suggests that all members of the Board should be involved.
WGA TB-Race
Jessica volunteered. Jim volunteered. Challenges of the task were discussed. Brian volunteered. Jim will chair.
Membership Committee
Co-Chairpersons: Linda, Brian and Renee
2016 meeting members are: at year-end at 691 in-state members, 57 out of state members
2017 meeting members 540 in state members 49 out of state. 2/25/17
Quick lesson on how to use the website for the purpose of adding members. Discussion on how to approach new members through email.
WGA Spring Campout – ALL Hands on Deck
Chairperson – Linda
Cache page submit on Feb. 20th Linda has this in the works. Campout at Big Eu Plaine May 19th through 21st. Cache pages for both Campout and Pancake Breakfast have been submitted. Jessica, Renee, and Brian will be unable to attend. Everyone will start working on specifics.
WGA Spring Pancake Feed — ALL Hands on Deck
Co-Chair- Linda and Dawn will co-chair.
Dawn has submitted the cache page on Feb. 21st and will continue to update.
West Bend Ca$h Bash – Liaison with the West Bend Chamber Chris will stay on to continue working with Craig from WB Chamber. Dawn will begin working with Chris and Craig.
West Bend Cache Ba$h – ALL Hands on Deck to staff the booth Friday and Saturday. Improvement of relations with the West Bend Chamber have led to an addition of space for the WGA. Rotation of members for staffing purposes. Work on general membership being involved in manning the booth. Friday is the more important day for merchandise sale. Renee has mapped out high volume sales times.
West Bend Cache Ba$h Pancake Breakfast – ALL Hands on Deck
Co-Chair– Peter and Jessica. This event has been grandfathered in so there is no issue with whether or not the event will occur. It has been cleared with the West Bend Chamber. Rough draft of cache page is created.
WGA Fall Picnic – ALL Hands on Deck
Chair-Jim. Jessica and Brian volunteered to help. Whitefish Dunes State Park. Look into the TB winners sticker being put on the back of the trailer. Jessica may be able to help with the sticker. September 23 date. Cache page has not been created. Possibly making the Fall Picnic the 15th Anniversary celebration was briefly discussed.
GIFF event at Horicon Marsh was brought up by Linda. The event is member driven, and the WGA has supported the events. Ideas of the Board members assisting the member that is running the event. Budget may be an issue if multiple events are held state wide.
2018 WGA Winter Chili Feed – ALL Hands on Deck
No chairperson was discussed. Discussion of when the event should be held in relation to the election and the BOD meeting. Most agree that the separation of the Chili feed and the meeting is appropriate. Date for next year would be the 17th. Aaron volunteered to help with planning.
Lonely Cache Game – Usually headed up by a WGA Member
Supported by monies from the WGA. Combination of the Chili feed event with the LCG seems to have worked out well. Member feedback on this may be needed. Suggestions for which member should be asked to host the event. Higher ranked player in the game?
Spring CITOs – Usually headed up by WGA Members
Supported $ by the WGA Six CITOs are typically supported a year. Approximately $150 per CITO. Members have asked for a lot of different items for reimbursement. How many we can support this year was discussed, but an exact number was not determined.
15th Year Celebration/ Event
Geocoin in the works. Pre-order may be a good idea so that there isn’t any overbuying. Logistics of a preorder would need to be ironed out. Shaped geocoin was brought up by Peter. An idea for utilizing the same back design as the prior year to save money. Oak coins is offering a deal for a commemorative coin. Details are in the forums. Shaped coin would make it more unique from the prior years. A theme is going to have to be determined before many more decisions are made. Renee brought up an idea of having an Earthcache type event near the Dells. Peter mentioned having individual events held by individual board members. Linda suggested that the next Google Hangout should focus on the anniversary. She also suggested that members might be encouraged to hide 15th anniversary caches. Discussion was tabled until the next Google Hangouts.
Unfinished Business
The following is from 2015-2016
- Motion to officially change the bylaws to reflect the address of the WGA financials as that of the Treasurer.
- Motion to update the duties of the officers in the bylaws: President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary.
- Discuss changing financial institutions and having former officers destroy their bank cards.
The changes to the bylaws was tabled until a later time after Linda has had a chance to look over some other organizations bylaws and see if there might be new ideas that could be applied to the WGA. Associated Bank was brought up as a replacement bank to be more statewide. Renee and Jessica to get together to form a plan on how to transition to a new bank. Dawn and Jessica to be placed on the current account to maintain the proper number of members. Dawn made a motion to remove Chris Walker and Rebecca Lillo and add Jessica Krueger and Dawn Children to the account at PNC Bank. Renee Vanselow will remain on the account for the transition of the treasurer position. Lois seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
Notice of any bylaw changes will need to be made known to the membership and allow for feedback prior to a vote being taken per the current bylaws.
Continuing from 2016: Deferred items from the January Google Hangout to the BOD Meeting:
Red Hat Store – Lois will repost the information to be sure we all have the information. All board members agreed that Red Hat seems to take away from our store and we have better avenues of selling our merchandise. The board is in favor of Dawn drafting a letter to Red Hat asking them to cease the sale of merchandise with our logo on it. Discussion of having a mobile “store” for each BOD member to take with them to events.
Old WGA Geocoins – Idea discussed was to distribute with using a randomizer and auction.
Quadrant Definitions – Division of the state has never been defined. The board unanimously decided that the quadrants of the state be defined by a north-south and an east-west line that runs through the center of the state in Pittsville. (44.6243 89.9941)(N44 37.458 W089 59.646).
Term Limits of BOD and/or Officers – Review discussion in the Forums. This was decided to be a non issue. More of an issue was non participation by a BOD member and methods of removal.
Travel Bug Winner’s Name on the Trailer – According to Chris, Icy Paws has volunteered to do it, but needs the font and size. Or we look at other options. Warm weather is needed for the stencil to adhere to the trailer. We could officially stick this on the trailer at the Spring Campout – celebrate the winner this way. Other options were covered earlier in the meeting.
Special WGA Volunteer Updates
Maintenance of the WGA GeoArt: Trailboss BigJim60 has been contacted and sent the coordinates. Peter and Lois receiving the emails and will continue. Michael shouldn’t be needed to run GSAK macros for needs maintenance. Lois has macro already set up.
Where will the WGA Trailer be stored?- Already being stored at Jim’s
WGA member volunteers: Asking them to help at events is good but they would need tasks. Nothing worse than getting volunteers to give up their free time and the have them get there, only to have nothing to do. 1st hand knowledge here with the WGA and other groups. Ongoing discussion as it pertains to individual events.
Social Media Committee FB help-Social Media Director position Held by a WGA Member not a BOD but will report to the Community Education Chair. Keeping Chris on this with Dawn joining in.
COTM – Interest seems to be waning. Loss of interest may be linked to less website traffic. Jon Sudar’s email pointed out that BOD members should be nominating more. Peter raised the point that a GSAK macro could be used to create a list with favorite points. Continuation is very easy. Interest of the membership should be taken into consideration. Notification of a cache being nominated needs to be increased. Decided to leave it as is, but add an increase in notifications to the cache owners and the general membership. Peter and Jim will continue as co-chair. Jim to copy Dawn on notification emails.
-The chair or co-chair would need to do a monthly update to the WGA website (linked to FB) congratulating the winners.
Cache Rescue/LCG administrator – As President, Dawn should confirm WisKid will continue as administrator. Peter brought up that there have been no rescue caches added to the list recently.
WGA Historian– Everyone agrees that John should stay on as historian. John will submit edits and a board member will make the changes to the website.
Events Map on the Webpage: Barry Butrymowicz has told us he will continue with this.
Hyperactivity: Squirrel will continue.
Webmaster: Dawn will confirm Brian will continue as Webmaster (Emeritus?). Chris Stolte has helped a lot and will be asked to continue to assist.
New Business:
Do we keep the Monthly meetings via Google Hangouts? Dawn, as President should initiate the calls. Need to agree on an evening for these calls and frequency (once a month was done last year) It was decided to continue with Sunday Google Hangouts with the first one occurring on March 5. First meeting to be about the 15th anniversary.
WGA Merchandise or revenue avenues – Not just for West Bend.
15th year WGA Geocoin – Have ready for sale no later than the West Bend Cache Ba$h. Renee is working on a design and Dawn researched a possibility of a design for purchase from Oak Coins. More discussion to happen at the next Google Hangouts.
New WGA 15th year shirt — Ideas have been brought up on the forums and will be discussed at the next Google Hangouts.
WGA Geoart Pathtag-Dawn has 4 pathtag ideas posted to the forums. Design to be sold to anyone regardless if they completed the Geoart. WGA tag backs should be promoted to the membership. Linda to run the BOD pathtag. Brian to help out.
West Bend: The sale of Bisons, Bolts, Nanos at West Bend from Candyman was lucrative for the WGA. Everyone agrees to bring Candyman back, but inventory needs to be established before and after the event to verify the sales. We will see if Chris will be able to get us more stickers.
Re- order hats. We are out. A new lighterweight style was previously decided. A new design was suggested, make sure it fits in the budget. Renee to get pricing. Jim asked about jackets that would be prepaid before ordering.
New Cachekinz? Another possibility for the 15th year, as our past Cachekinz may be getting low. Used for the TB race. Jim to count inventory. Using one of Becca’s designs is a viable option. 15 anniversary stickers to put on design to prohibit having old news after this year.
Guessing Games – Games of Skill vs. Games of Chance — Cache Containers in a bucket. Guess the weight of an ammo can. These items were discussed as they relate to the ability of the organization to hold them without needing a raffle license.
Silent Auction of donated/ hand-made WGA Member Items Last event worked out well. May need to look into again to finance some of the items that we want to do. Establishing a minimum average for the checking account was discussed. Donations are low, so looking into rewarding donors.
WGA Merchandise Inventory
How do we track and keep accurate inventory? Renee has found an app that will run the inventory instantly and interfaces with paypal. She will look into renaming store items to facilitate the inventory control.
Sales Kits for BOD members. Create sales kits for BOD who would take the responsibility for their inventory for the purpose of having “Mobile Sales.” If someone wants to do this, bring their own container, ie a large tote capable of holding all the inventory that they would want to take.
Member ideas for WGA (from last year and add more):
Discuss creating a WGA Facebook Group Page with a chat option. The website should be the focus for members to chat. There are other Facebook caching groups already out there.
WGA Supported GSAK class and other presentations hosted on website for members to use. This was brought to the attention of the education committee.
The Next big WGA Series: State Forests, Trails. Keep the State Park Series running as long as the trail bosses are maintaining. Notifications are currently going to the right people. Tabling the issue till a later time.
Member Suggestions:
Discuss ways to get purchased WGA merchandise to its members without them having to attend a WGA function. Perhaps a BOD member could take on this responsibility, or even an ongoing “unofficial” if a system gets developed. The WGA has members in all parts of Wisconsin, and there are many past members and even WGA fans who do not live in Wisconsin who may want WGA merchandise. This has been addressed in the BOD sales kits.
Maybe a county seat challenge. Find one seat cache for each letter the county starts with. (one from Winnebago,Waupaca,Walworth, etc) EauClaire is the only “E” county so that would be a must have. Not going to be discussed because it may be more of the Next Big Thing.
Work as closely as possible with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and other property management officials (County Governments) to protect the rights of individuals to geocache in the state of Wisconsin. Already a part of what we do. Look into areas that may be a little more resistant to caches.
Photo albums are gone from the website. Are individual albums and/or for WGA events being maintained? Albums have been missing since the new site. Recovery may not be possible.
MOGA Request to Host this Mega Event. – email sent in December with many forms to ask the WGA if this would be of interest to hosting. Tabled to the forums for discussion.
2017 BOD Plan
Focus on the 15th Anniversary of the WGA
Pick 1 or 2 Big items to bring to harvest.
To be relevant, the WGA needs to keep fresh ideas and events coming. The success of the WGA Geoart is evidence.
Use the members: They are our support system. We cannot do all and it is a great way to groom new BOD.
Meeting adjourned at 4:18