AMC Meeting July 2010

Finances

Treasurer’s report--She talked fast and tossed out lots of numbers. Hard to take notes.

Investments down. Membership and Dues income up. Event and pubs income up. Testing income down. Licensing income up. Legal was largest expense. Net assets ugly on paper, but when you understand how the GAAP are applied, we are plenty comfortable and Mensa will be fine. Biggest concern is continued sinking testing income.

Dues motion- basically saying that we’ll have a motion in November to increase dues. Cyndi: We’re doing this because of the timing of the AMC meetings Marc: I feel foolish voting on a motion that says there will be a motion next meeting.  Lori: can we have 1^st vote in Nov, and 2^nd vote in March? Pam: It has to be approved by Nov to get it applied to the budget for 2011-12. We can put it in the Bulletin or we can do a teleconf in Oct. But we want to have the members have a proper amount of time to comment on it, and squeezing it in the other way would not be in the right spirit, although it would be legal. Debra is cool with it. Nick wants a teleconf in Oct to be the first notice and the vote in Nov. Heather: We used to have a motion about the dues increase on every agenda. Nick: Wants to consider increasing dues in order to significantly support the Foundation to improve the world. Set the dues we want now, then set a constant rate of increase for every year so members know and predict and we get fewer people quitting in reaction to raises. Guy: Something supportive of Nick’s idea about regular predictable increases. Cyndi: The committee discussed this and decided already that every other year is a wiser pace for dues adjustments. Also, data shows that dues increases do not hurt membership levels. Pam talked about using the Strategic Plan to guide our decisions regarding how much the dues need to go up. Peggy: Kiwanis is ~$200 a year. Why did we get rid of the permanent rolling motion about dues increases? Elissa this is a bylaws compliance motion. 

Someone suggested changing this to a sense motion. Dan suggested postponing and voting on it in Nov when we have an actual dollar amount. John moved to amend to strike “place on the agenda to.”

Cyndi moved to postpone, Dan seconded. Vote to postpone: opposed Art. Nick & Guy abstain.