President’s report for January

Hey there fellow FOAMers! Welcome to 2022. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone this Thursday, the 13th, at Hope Unitarian Church. Setup starts at 7 with the meeting officially starting at 7:30. The beer theme for January is big beers. Bring your winter warmers, big stouts, and any other big beers you want to share. If you don’t have a homebrew you are welcome to bring commercial versions. There is no tech talk this month.

The first meeting of the year also brings us an opportunity to make changes to improve our club. So I’m going to jump right in and talk about the officers meeting held on January 8th.

The first item on the agenda was discussing the official kick off of our Club Member of the Year and Homebrewer of the Year in 2022! Points for Club Member will be given to FOAM members for participating in FOAM meetings and events. Homebrewer of the Year earns points for entering beers into the High Plains Competition Circuit. We will discuss at the meeting.

We are also requesting changes to the FOAM Constitution, the most prominent being FOAM memberships. We are requesting that we eliminate the family membership (we actually did this a few years ago and it was approved but then it wasn’t implemented so we have to vote on it again). We are also requesting an increase in membership fees to $30. Voting for the changes will be done at the February meeting.

The following are all the proposed changes. 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.

Next up was proposing an update to the FOAM Logo. A few years ago it was decided to update the FOAM logo and “modernize” it. Sara Thompson, Vice-President at the time, drew up a draft proposal of one of the possibilities. We paid an outside person to design a few choices and one of them incorporated Sara’s ideas, kind of. For some reason we went with a very generic crest. The current officers agree it doesn’t represent the club or Oklahoma very well and we would like to reintroduce Sara’s concept. We will publish several variations to be voted on by the members.

The creation of a “suggestion box” was discussed. Often at meetings we fall into our groups and discuss things we like and don’t like and ideas are thrown about but it rarely goes beyond that. We’d like to change that. We will have a form online to submit comments and also have a box at the meetings. FAOMers can make comments or suggestions anonymously if they wish. Our hope is that new ideas will invigorate the club and spur participation. All suggestions or comments will be discussed at the following meeting.

The officers are looking at the pros and cons of switching from a 501c7 (non-profit social club) to a 501c3 (charity). There are several constraints on social clubs that severely curtails the ability to raise money for club events and outside projects. This will be discussed in more detail in later meetings once we have documentation to present tot he club.

The last new business discussed at the officers meeting was the addition of a new club competition that is a “reverse” pro-am. A pro-am is when a commercial brewery brews an award winning beer from a homebrew comp and enters it into a commercial comp. This would be FOAM partnering with a local brewery and that brewery gives us the recipe for one of their beers. Brewers scale down the beer to a 5 gallon batch and the commercial brewer joins us at one of the meetings and judge the beers to determine which mostly matches their beer. This gives FOAM a competition for each quarter along with the Food and Beer Pairing, Iron Brewer, and Oktoberfesticuffs. The first Reverse Pro-Am will be in January 2023.

Other topics discussed were meeting themes, the budget, pub meetups, TCBI, FOAM Cup, and committees. These will be in the meeting minutes that Ryan Friedl will publish in the next few weeks. It was a good productive meeting and it honestly makes me excited for the club and whats coming in 2022.

See everyone on Thursday!

Cheers,
Desiree Knott
FOAM President
president@alemakers.org