As the newly elected BOD President, one of my main goals for this year is fairly simple... Let's get more people involved!
I feel that a club becomes more like a family if our members actually get together and do things as a group. Having an event, meeting, outing, road trip, etc. are all good ways to have our members meet each other face to face and grow better relationships with those who have common interests.
So to insure we get more people involved, the BOD wants to come up with plenty of ways to get our members together. In order to make that goal happen, we're opening up all of our committees to new volunteers. If you're a new member that never had an opportunity or if you're a long-time member who wants to get more involved, then now is the time to step up and volunteer.
The following is a list of our committees and a short description of what they do and what's involved when you join them:
Conservation & Education
This is a group that helps plan beach cleanups, educational speakers/seminars, share articles or news about general conservation awareness or even just new ideas/trends in the hobby that might help educate our members. If you want to help make our beaches clean, have any contacts in the hobby that our members would benefit from seeing/hearing, or if you just have a knack for finding cool ideas on the internet... then this one's for you!
Membership
This is a group that is mainly consisted of BOD members to keep records of paid memberships and sponsors, and make & mail out membership cards. That said, I'd like to expand this group to include a few go-getters interested in expanding our community. We'd be looking for people who might be interested in actively recruiting new members and new sponsors. Some avenues for recruiting new members would be via meeting them at your LFS, finding NJ folks on other forums that may want a more "local" club, etc. As far as new sponsors, we'd be looking for people to contact hobby-related businesses that could benefit from having access to our large community. If any of that interests you, then please ask to join this group!
Tank of the Month / Pic of the Month
This is a committee that currently includes only Malulu (David) and the BOD. While David does an excellent job of running the POTM contest, we're looking to expand this group too. We'd like to try to mix this up a little bit and instead of just having a monthly free for all... we want to try doing topic specific contests that will change every month/quarter. For instance, we want to have a "clownfish/anemone" month, or "coolest invert shots", or "fish only" month, or "open-water/diving pics" month... etc. We also want to include either a separate contest or mix in a quarterly or end of the year "Tank of the Month" (full tank shots, or perhaps even a short video of the whole tank). We feel this new approach will give people a topic to focus on for taking new pics and will create a buzz to get more entries. It will also make it more interesting for spectators too when they know what they should be expecting.
So, as long as David wants to continue to create the new announcements and voting polls, we'll just need to add a few more people to help come up with new and interesting photo topics, and perhaps help plan a schedule so that David has a game plan when going to make the threads. If anyone is a photo or camera buff or if you think you can contribute good ideas for this contest, this is your chance!
Group Buys
While we have a few long-time volunteers who handle our members-only group buys, there's always room for a couple more options to run these. Not only would we like to see a few people that would like to run these, but we'd also be looking for a few people to possibly accept deliveries (central location preferred, but not necessary). This group could also use a few people that would just like to help with ideas for new group buy vendors or types of buys that might benefit the club, as well as help putting the schedule together for the next year. If interested in this one, please let us know!
Meetings
This one has been mostly just finding a member to host our monthly meetings. However, we'd like to expand this to also include a think tank to make our meetings more interesting and desirable. We want some discussions on new themes or topics to center a meeting around so that we get more involvement from members. Some recent ideas we came up with were having Suntuity at Brian's meeting to demo solar systems and the current promos, etc. available... or the Homemade Fish/Coral Frozen Food demo that we're doing for this month's meeting. Got any ideas on what would make a club meeting more interesting? If so, please help out and join this committee!
Website
For the most part, the BOD does the basic Admin work for the website. We also have a handful of moderators that will scour our site for unwanted spam, inappropriate posts, closing sales threads upon completion, etc. Although Moderators need to be proven trusted members, we'll consider adding a few more of these to help out. Also, this committee is for people who have a good understanding of building websites and those who may help make suggestions to improve our website (adding smilies, new features you like on other boards, etc.) If you'd like to help out with that sort of thing, then please request to join this group!
Suggestions
While this would also include website related improvements, this committee is mainly responsible for asking and getting feedback from our members about any/all club related activities. We need a few people to help with relations with the general membership and review any suggestions they may have for the club as well as come up with their own suggestions to bring to the membership for their thoughts and ideas on the matter. So this group would propose ideas like road trips to Dr. Mac, or a public Aquarium, or local Frag Swap, or MACNA, etc. Maybe the group would like to propose another organization that we may want to get involved with? Basically, anything new that our members would like to see our club do. Sound like fun? If so, sign up for this one!
Fundraising
This is a new committee that we're creating. It will consist of members who want to help come up with new ways to generate income for the club and also get involved with the fund raising activities. Our club needs funds to not only provide our annual frag swap and other speaker events, as well as basic operating expenses (website hosting, paypal, membership card machine and mailing expenses, various advertisements and publications, etc.) but we also donate a portion of our proceeds to conservation and education societies. More money will mean bigger/better/more opportunities for us as a club.
Please reply here if you're interested in joining any of the committees above. Also, feel free to add any notes as to your intentions or qualifications that may be of help to the respective committee. Thank you all in advance and looking forward to working with whoever steps up!
I feel that a club becomes more like a family if our members actually get together and do things as a group. Having an event, meeting, outing, road trip, etc. are all good ways to have our members meet each other face to face and grow better relationships with those who have common interests.
So to insure we get more people involved, the BOD wants to come up with plenty of ways to get our members together. In order to make that goal happen, we're opening up all of our committees to new volunteers. If you're a new member that never had an opportunity or if you're a long-time member who wants to get more involved, then now is the time to step up and volunteer.
The following is a list of our committees and a short description of what they do and what's involved when you join them:
Conservation & Education
This is a group that helps plan beach cleanups, educational speakers/seminars, share articles or news about general conservation awareness or even just new ideas/trends in the hobby that might help educate our members. If you want to help make our beaches clean, have any contacts in the hobby that our members would benefit from seeing/hearing, or if you just have a knack for finding cool ideas on the internet... then this one's for you!
Membership
This is a group that is mainly consisted of BOD members to keep records of paid memberships and sponsors, and make & mail out membership cards. That said, I'd like to expand this group to include a few go-getters interested in expanding our community. We'd be looking for people who might be interested in actively recruiting new members and new sponsors. Some avenues for recruiting new members would be via meeting them at your LFS, finding NJ folks on other forums that may want a more "local" club, etc. As far as new sponsors, we'd be looking for people to contact hobby-related businesses that could benefit from having access to our large community. If any of that interests you, then please ask to join this group!
Tank of the Month / Pic of the Month
This is a committee that currently includes only Malulu (David) and the BOD. While David does an excellent job of running the POTM contest, we're looking to expand this group too. We'd like to try to mix this up a little bit and instead of just having a monthly free for all... we want to try doing topic specific contests that will change every month/quarter. For instance, we want to have a "clownfish/anemone" month, or "coolest invert shots", or "fish only" month, or "open-water/diving pics" month... etc. We also want to include either a separate contest or mix in a quarterly or end of the year "Tank of the Month" (full tank shots, or perhaps even a short video of the whole tank). We feel this new approach will give people a topic to focus on for taking new pics and will create a buzz to get more entries. It will also make it more interesting for spectators too when they know what they should be expecting.
So, as long as David wants to continue to create the new announcements and voting polls, we'll just need to add a few more people to help come up with new and interesting photo topics, and perhaps help plan a schedule so that David has a game plan when going to make the threads. If anyone is a photo or camera buff or if you think you can contribute good ideas for this contest, this is your chance!
Group Buys
While we have a few long-time volunteers who handle our members-only group buys, there's always room for a couple more options to run these. Not only would we like to see a few people that would like to run these, but we'd also be looking for a few people to possibly accept deliveries (central location preferred, but not necessary). This group could also use a few people that would just like to help with ideas for new group buy vendors or types of buys that might benefit the club, as well as help putting the schedule together for the next year. If interested in this one, please let us know!
Meetings
This one has been mostly just finding a member to host our monthly meetings. However, we'd like to expand this to also include a think tank to make our meetings more interesting and desirable. We want some discussions on new themes or topics to center a meeting around so that we get more involvement from members. Some recent ideas we came up with were having Suntuity at Brian's meeting to demo solar systems and the current promos, etc. available... or the Homemade Fish/Coral Frozen Food demo that we're doing for this month's meeting. Got any ideas on what would make a club meeting more interesting? If so, please help out and join this committee!
Website
For the most part, the BOD does the basic Admin work for the website. We also have a handful of moderators that will scour our site for unwanted spam, inappropriate posts, closing sales threads upon completion, etc. Although Moderators need to be proven trusted members, we'll consider adding a few more of these to help out. Also, this committee is for people who have a good understanding of building websites and those who may help make suggestions to improve our website (adding smilies, new features you like on other boards, etc.) If you'd like to help out with that sort of thing, then please request to join this group!
Suggestions
While this would also include website related improvements, this committee is mainly responsible for asking and getting feedback from our members about any/all club related activities. We need a few people to help with relations with the general membership and review any suggestions they may have for the club as well as come up with their own suggestions to bring to the membership for their thoughts and ideas on the matter. So this group would propose ideas like road trips to Dr. Mac, or a public Aquarium, or local Frag Swap, or MACNA, etc. Maybe the group would like to propose another organization that we may want to get involved with? Basically, anything new that our members would like to see our club do. Sound like fun? If so, sign up for this one!
Fundraising
This is a new committee that we're creating. It will consist of members who want to help come up with new ways to generate income for the club and also get involved with the fund raising activities. Our club needs funds to not only provide our annual frag swap and other speaker events, as well as basic operating expenses (website hosting, paypal, membership card machine and mailing expenses, various advertisements and publications, etc.) but we also donate a portion of our proceeds to conservation and education societies. More money will mean bigger/better/more opportunities for us as a club.
Please reply here if you're interested in joining any of the committees above. Also, feel free to add any notes as to your intentions or qualifications that may be of help to the respective committee. Thank you all in advance and looking forward to working with whoever steps up!
