Florida Marine Aquarium Society

FMAS BOD Meeting Minutes Dec 2 2015

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FMAS BOARD MEETING MINUTES

DECEMBER 1, 2015

EDDIE SOLER’S HOUSE: 17016 nw 22 STREET, PEMBROKE PINES, FL 33028

Meeting Started:  7:36PM

Attendees: Eddie Soler, Bobby Dickmann, Allan Strachan, Julio Perez, Dave Thompson, Lourdes Vasquez, Gayle Velazquez, Lulio Vasquez

APPROVAL NOVEMBER MEETING MINUTES: Dave approves minutes, Bobby seconds. All approve.

TREASURERS REPORT: Julio approves past report, Bobby seconds. All approve.

BUDGET: Julio will get with Lulio and Eddie to start planning a budget. We need to transfer the QuickBooks account to an online service so that the BOD can create reports, instead of relying completely on Julio. This needs to be done in December so that we can create a budget for 2016.

Categories that need to be included in the budget:

Web / Software (Quickbooks, web hosting)

Schools

Scholarships

Bowling for Fish

Poker Run

Tank Hop

Raffles each month

Refreshments for meetings

Speakers – national vs local

Holiday Party

T-shirts

Advertising

BOD meetings

SPEAKERS –

SPEAKERSEVENTS
Dec 19thHOLIDAY PARTY: December 19th, Davie Women’s club We need to continue advertisingBudget for holiday party is $500Eddie Soler needs to send out an email about it ASAP
January 26thSpeaker for January: Reef.Org – Emily Stokes – a talk on lionfish and the lionfish invasion We will not need to pay them speaker fees, instead they would like us to give them an RO system. GoPro for raffle item for January meeting   
February 23rd Bowling for Fish on February 21st
March – school will be closed the fourth Tuesday. Either the 15th or 29th  

Ideas for Speakers / Meetings:

Joe Diorgio : Eddie is talking to him– he is interested in speaking for us. Sometime between February and May

Julian Sprung: Bobby will talk to him find out if he can speak early this year.

Todd Gardner – aquarist of the year, also doing some breeding

Dr G – from Dr G’s marine aquaculture

Mark Callahan – Mr. Saltwater – Eddie will reach out to him to set up a date

Forest Young – Marine Dynasty

Marc Levinson – Dave will reach out to him

Scott Leaf – rep for Neptune

Workshop ideas –

  • Make some food and take it home – Rogger Castells
  • Acrylic viewers?
  • Fragging, packing and shipping

We should take advantage of MASNA to bring national speakers in.

  • They have a list of approved speakers, and they will cover the first $300 of the speaker fees.
  • Julio will get more information about how to take advantage of this.

NEW BOD ELECTED OFFICIALS:

President: Eddie Soler

VP: Dave Thompson

Secretary: Gayle Velazquez

Treasurer: Julio Perez

Gayle will look into text messaging for MailChimp

EVENTS and FIELD TRIPS;

  • Poker Run went well –  we had about 20 participants, 5 winners
  • Bowling for Fish on February 21st
  • Frag Swap: late April or May
    • Jeff Hibetter (from Naples) puts together a calendar of all events for all aquarium clubs
    • Eddie will reach out to Mark E to find out if they are having a frag swap and if so, when
    • This should be a major topic for next month

RAFFLE:

  • Budget is $150 for normal items + $450 for big items
  • We will continue this for the first quarter

SCHOOL PROJECTS:

  • Dave is still working at iMater
  • We just gave South Plantation a big water storage container

CONTESTS:

  • SPS Contest: Eddie needs to find an SPS for the contest. We will need to buy a coral that we can get about 25-30 frags from.

MEMBERSHIP:

Is Web site ready for new RENEWALS? – We should send out an email reminding members to renew their memberships online.

Bobby makes a motion that we change our membership. Membership will be active for a year from the time you sign up. If you sign up on January 2nd, 2015, you will be a member until January 31st, 2016.

We decided we are going to leave the membership as it is, if Gayle can figure out how to set the memberships for the calendar years.

WEB SITE:

  • Minutes should be posted to the website for members only.  Is this done? Gayle will do this

OPEN DISCUSSION:

            Responding to Website emails.  We need guidelines. 

  • Demographics of the club? Lulio wants to reach out to get new members.
    • Keep in contacts with members: emails, texts, advertising through facebook
    • Lulio will look into advertising with FB
    • Design a couple of avatars that people can use if they want to for RC that feature FMAS
    • Flash cash: the first member that spends $100 at a specific store in a specific month, FMAS will reimburse you for $25. Maybe 1 Broward store and 1 Dade store each month. Is this members only? – Yes, existing member only. 11 – 1PM, everyone drops their receipts in a box and we pick one and reimburse them. Or we pick one and give them a $25 gift certificate to that store, which the store will match, for a total of $50 store credit for the winner.
      • We are going to have a table, t-shirts, and computer for membership applications.
  • Order t-shirts again. Light blue color this time. Same embroidery. Gayle and Bobby will work on this for the next month.
  • Nova Southeastern’s stand is DONE
  • Matt Dudley has all of FMAS’ electrical things from the Frag Swap (splitters, extension cords, etc). Dave will get it from Matt
  • Meeting Adjourned: 9:39PM

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