President’s Report for February

/ FOAM Business, Officer Reports, President / By

Hey fellow FOAMers,

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at tonight’s meeting. The beer for February is Fruit Beer. If you have any homebrewed examples you are encouraged to bring them to the meeting to share. Of course you can bring any homebrewed beer you would like to share. We FOAMers love all beer!

The agenda for tonight is packed so we will do our best to get through it as timely as possible, but I’m not going to rush through it. I want to make sure everyone’s word is heard, acknowledged, and discussed.

We will go over last year’s financials and talk briefly about the proposed budget. I won’t dwell on these too long. The budget will be discussed in detail next month when we vote on it.

Next up is the vote on the constitutional changes.

Right now the only feedback I’ve received concerns the membership dues change. I thought I would give my views on this before the meeting. First, this was something that was already voted on 4 years ago when we were switching to a new website. The family membership was to be eliminated and the dues were to be increased. This was because of the inability to create a membership that had 2 accounts associated with it. But then Marion found a work around, resulting in FOAM dropping the approved changes. That has, to be quite frank, been quite a pain in the butt, hard to maintain and difficult for the additional member to actually create an account. We will be moving to a new hosted site this year and once again this issue is going to rear it’s ugly head.

Next, when you look at the revenue for 2021 you will see that we had 67 regular memberships and 31 family memberships that resulted in $2700 in revenue. We are budgeting 90 regular memberships at the $30 membership fee (that will be adjusted if the changes are voted down) which is also $2700 in projected revenue. This is taking into consideration that many of the memberships that were family will be renewed as a regular membership and the other person in the family membership will just attend meetings as a non-member. It isn’t required to be a member to attend FOAM meetings so this is a decision many will make. Some will want the ability to vote in club business and officer elections and will decide to become a stand alone member, but in essence, raising the membership to $30 ensures the revenue from membership dues will not be greatly affected.

Lastly, I’ve received feedback that the membership shouldn’t change considering the revenue we brought in through TCBI and FOAM has quite a bit in it’s coffers. That is a very valid point. I would say that TCBI is not a guarantee of revenue that goes on forever and we should make sure our basic way of raising money can cover basic expenses. Ensuring that FOAM can do that, we can then take revenue from TCBI and possibly other external sources and create opportunities to think outside the box and start doing projects that encourage members to expand their brewing skills, further the promotion of homebrewing, and brings in more people to enjoy this very cool hobby. Some things that have been suggested are brewing mentor days where FOAM covers the expenses and the resulting beer is served at FOAM meetings. Another idea is to pay for the BJCP exams for FOAMers that take the test and pass the exam.

For years FOAM has focused on basically breaking even every year because of the limitations of being a 501c7 social organization. Increasing membership dues, switching to a 501c3,  and adding revenue generators like TCBI gives FOAM the opportunity to more for the brewing community, and even more importantly, more for the members of FOAM. I look forward to a robust discussion tonight.

As a reminder, the changes to be voted on tonight are listed below. You can view the Entire Constitution with proposed changes by clicking here.

Proposed FOAM Constitution Changes

      1. Article III – MEMBERSHIP
        1. Eliminate the Family membership (We actually did this a few years ago when we migrated the website) Change “There shall be a Membership classification and a Dual Family Membership classification. Each Dual Family Membership classification shall include two members.” to “There shall be a Membership classification which consists of one person.”
        2. Add an additional section clarifying membership is subscription based. “Section 4. Membership is purchased on the alemakers.org website and as a subscription with a recurring annual membership charge. Members will be notified via email prior to renewal to give them the option of canceling before the renewal occurs.”
      2. BY-LAWS Article III – DUES
        1. Increase dues to $30 per person.
        2. Update the following  “Annual dues shall be $20.00 per Single membership. Dual Family membership dues shall be $30.00.” to “Annual dues shall be $30.00 per membership.”
      3. Article IV – MEETINGS AND EVENTS
        1. Section 1 is ambiguous. It states “The annual meeting and installation of Officers shall be held in December of each year. The Executive Board shall determine the time and place.” No one really knows what is meant by the annual meeting. And the Executive Board meetings are laid out in Article IV – MEETINGS.
        2. Suggest we reword it to say “The installation of Officers shall be held at the December meeting of each year.”
      4. BY-LAWS Article VI – ELECTION OF OFFICERS
        1. An additional section needs to be added to deal with ties.
        2. Suggested wording: Ties: In the event of a tie in the election of an officer the winner will be decided via a coin toss. The President will conduct the toss. If there is an incumbent in the running, the incumbent will call heads or tails. If there is not an incumbent the President will determine who calls heads or tails.
      5. BY-LAWS Article V – DUTIES OF OFFICERS
        1. Section 1: President’s duties state that the President shall retain one original signed copy of the Constitution.
          1. Propose it be changed to “When a revision is made to the constitution the President shall ensure the revised version is digitally signed by all current officers and placed on the FOAM Google Drive. The President will also ensure the current version is on the alemakers.org website.”
        2. Section 4: States the VP of Membership is responsible for receiving and notating dues. It was agreed at last year’s officer’s meeting this should be removed.
          1. Propose the following: “VP of Membership is responsible for resolving membership issues, connecting with new members, new membership campaigns, and continued interaction with club members.”
        3. Section 7: The description is very wordy. It states “VP of Events is responsible for managing the logistics of event coordination. The events would include, but may not be limited to FOAM Picnic, BJCP study groups, FOAM Cup, FOAM Christmas Party, and the various festivals that the club participates heavily in (such as First Draft, Sip for Sight, New Leaf, Splash!, WildBrew, and HarvestFest) The VP of Events will also work closely with High Gravity to co-ordinate their assistance in the organization of FOAM Cup.”
          1. Propose we clean it up.  “VP of Events is responsible for managing the logistics of event coordination. These include internal club events and the various festivals that the club participates in. The VP of Events will work closely with committee chairs as needed when Events/Festivals have standing committees.”

 

See everyone on tonight at Hope Church!

Cheers,
Desiree Knott
FOAM President
president@alemakers.org