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Sales Forums

SeahorseKeeper

SeahorseKeeper

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
After a prolonged discussion the Board of Directors have decided, in the best interest of the club, to keep the For Sale thread limited to NJRC Members only. If you have any concerns with this information please feel free to reach out to a BOD member.

Thank You
NJRC Board of Directors



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redfishbluefish

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
The decision has been made, but I am compelled to throw in my two cents.....

1. In many cases the stuff being offered for sale is the kind of stuff newbies are looking for....that us old-timers have no need. Many newbies are not educated enough to become paying members and therefore can't see these great deals, and this is a double loss for the purchaser and the seller.

2. Those selling are now only able to show their goods to paying members...that in all honesty are not the numbers we had a couple years ago. In addition, as mentioned above, probably stuff a long-time reefer might not need. By the way, what are our numbers as far as paid members? I'm curious!

3. The lack of open sales drives members to other sites that allow sales visible to all. I've got a 55 gallon I'm looking to sell....who here on this site is going to buy it? (You don't need to answer this question because I know the answer. But please, answer the question in point #2.)

4. Take a hard look at the benefits of being a paid member......think long and hard, because pretty much all the benefits we had a couple years ago have disappeared. This sales forum for paid members only to post, but visible to all, would at least give us back one benefit.

5. Done hearing about protecting our 501c3.....get rid of it because we only needed it for MACNA in 2009, and afterwards only needed to maintain for five years to benefit from the tax break.

6. Curious as to how the Board members voted.....willing to share?
 
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MadReefer

MadReefer

Vice President
Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
Paul put his 2 cents in so I will put my 3 cents in.
I thought it was going to open to non-members as read only?
When a new account is made can't an auto email be sent to the inbox with all the info to become a paid member?
If you open it up the seller is the one deciding who they want to sell to. Did pending on fast they need to unload it can make all the difference.
 
SeahorseKeeper

SeahorseKeeper

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
The first thing I would like to say is that I appreciate your feedback. Trust me this isn't a decision that has been made lightly. The BOD has been meeting weekly since we have taken office. This has been a topic that has been a top focus for us.

Responses to your points:

1. We are reaching out directly to new members and encouraging them to become paid members. Since February the club has seen an increase of about 14 new paid members; granted we don't know how that compares to past years.

2. We have approximately 220 paid members. I do agree that we do not have the member numbers that we used to have and the current BOD is looking at different ways to change this. Again, this is something that we are working on in our weekly meetings. As so well pointed out currently there isn't many/if any benefit to becoming a NJRC Members and making the sale forum public removes another 'benefit'.

3. I do understand where you are coming from. The BOD does understand having the sale thread private might drive folks away to other sites. We have discussed this during our meetings and we feel that many of those folks might be more about selling/finding dirty cheap equipment than becoming a valuable members of our club. We feel they will only sell/buy but not contribute any other way to help improve the club as a whole. We truly and sincerely want to improve the club as a whole with the focus of education.

4. We have looked at the benefits of being a paid member and are actively searching for more benefits for paid members. We understand the frustration. During the discussions we did entertain the idea of making posting for paid members only but allowing others to view. We feel that this might get abuse with people doing deals in PMs; which could be happening now but we just feel it might increase. We also have the Want to BUY forum where a new member can post they are looking for something. Again, we understand that this might not be the perfect solution but currently it is an option.

5. 501c3 is an important topic. It shows other vendors that we are a nonprofit club. The status can potentially help us to support our mission of educating others. If we lose our 501c3 status then we will need to pay taxes as a club. Paying taxes will pull money away from the club which is used to pay for expenses; such as our website. We can also use the status to get donations for: frag swaps, club meetings, etc. We can also use it to get discounts on event spaces rentals. Also being part of MASNA provides the club an avenue to get guest speakers for events.

6. The BOD is willing to share the voting process in the spirit of transparency. We have discussed every aspect of the sales forum for the last couple of months. As a group, we decided to take a vote of what option to go with. The BOD voted and the result was that for now it is going to remain as is.
 
SeahorseKeeper

SeahorseKeeper

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
MadReefer said:
When a new account is made can't an auto email be sent to the inbox with all the info to become a paid member?
Click to expand...

This is what is sent to a new member that registers to our forum:

Welcome to the NJ Reefer Club! We are honored you joined us in our mission to restore the coral reefs one living room at a time. You can look forward to the friendships and knowledge shared that this group fosters.


Please take a moment to introduce yourself Welcome To NJRC! Take a minute to introduce yourself and join in the on-going conversations. We encourage that folks post up a tank thread in our Tale of the Tank section and please consider attending a upcoming monthly meetings. Our monthly meetings are general held at a local member's house, aquarium, or local retailer where we: discuss reefing, enjoy food, and friendship.


Please consider Join Us as a paid NJRC Member, which will unlock more forums and other options to you. Please note that applications can take between 1 and 2 days for a staff member to review and approve the application.


If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to: check out our FAQ, ask in one of the general forums, or contact us at officers@njreefers.org.


Thanks You


NJ Reef Club Board of Directors
 
9supratt4

9supratt4

No offense to the BOD, but I think you are all missing the point here. There are zero benefits of being a paid member....zero. There are zero benefits that can be worked on. Group Buys are dead...you get better deals on Amazon with free shipping. Stores don't care about giving discounts because they know they don't have too. What other benefits can there be? I have been a part of the benefits discussion A LOT. And there really is nothing.

Opening up the For Sale section...yes it will bring people in that only want to buy and sell. But it will also bring people to the site where they may see something interesting and click on it and possibly reply. Look at Manhattan Reefs....they have an open for sale section...no paid membership...and they put us to shame. Why do you think it is so dead around here? Because it is easier to sell something on any other site and just keep conversations going there. To Paul's statement....someone just getting into the hobby may in fact show up just to buy something that all of us long time members don't want. That new person may then ask a question on how to set something up or how something works...then BAM....new conversations start on the boards. This isn't rocket science.

Yes the club will have to pay taxes if we drop the 501 status. But drop the status and switch from Incorporation to LLC and you won't have to pay Corporation taxes any longer. Only taxes on income. Which would be extremely minimal given what I believe the income vs expenses of the club to be. As a For-profit LLC, you can still get speakers and items from sponsors...I do it all the time. Most companies just want people to know that they gave an item. They don't care if you are not-for-profit. They can write it off as a business expense regardless.

I am open to having an open conversation with anyone on the BOD if they would like. Feel free to reach out.
 
kschweer

kschweer

Administrator
Staff member
Officer Emeritus
Moderator
No offense to anyone posting but when these positions come up no one is jumping at the chance to be on the board with new ideas to help things. We practically had to beg for these positions to be filled with numerous people declining Nominations, but any time a decision is made there's plenty of people ready to jump in to say it was the wrong one. The way I'm looking at it there's no point to be on the bod if the only thing a person seems to be getting out of it is flack. I'm trying to be nice here but I'm having a hard time. The BOD positions are completely thankless jobs lately. I'm going to stop typing before I'm not as nice as I like to be.
 
9supratt4

9supratt4

kschweer said:
No offense to anyone posting but when these positions come up no one is jumping at the chance to be on the board with new ideas to help things. We practically had to beg for these positions to be filled with numerous people declining Nominations, but any time a decision is made there's plenty of people ready to jump in to say it was the wrong one. The way I'm looking at it there's no point to be on the bod if the only thing a person seems to be getting out of it is flack. I'm trying to be nice here but I'm having a hard time. The BOD positions are completely thankless jobs lately. I'm going to stop typing before I'm not as nice as I like to be.
Click to expand...

BOD's no matter what organization are thankless jobs and yes it is horrible. I personally do not have the time to volunteer to be on the BOD, but I do have time to give comments, advice, suggestions, help, etc. This club is extremely too time consuming for what it is. If we were bringing in tens of thousands of dollars and offering scholarships and such, I would understand. But for such a small club, it is way too time consuming.
 
myrjon

myrjon

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
+1 on kevin . It is a club for fish heads . I have read all of this seems like there are some unhappy people in here .We are here to help and learn . this is the Benefit for joining .............I have meet a lot of you and really like hanging with you talking gills and sticks That is the benefit. What have you done for the club? ??????? peace out.
 
9supratt4

9supratt4

myrjon said:
+1 on kevin . It is a club for fish heads . I have read all of this seems like there are some unhappy people in here .We are here to help and learn . this is the Benefit for joining .............I have meet a lot of you and really like hanging with you talking gills and sticks That is the benefit. What have you done for the club? ??????? peace out.
Click to expand...

You can help and learn without paying $12. This is not a benefit. Like I said...I have been a part of many conversations about what benefits we can bring to the club. All of the conversations come up short.....
 
MadReefer

MadReefer

Vice President
Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
I honestly don't feel like anyone is giving the BOD flack here. We are just trying to understand the decision and make the club better. I too joined for guidance and made many friends and the $12 won't kill me, heck even if it was more I would still pay. I do agree the BODs are in a bad spot cause you cannot make everyone happy. I am unable to attend each monthly meeting plus other persnonal reasons so didn't run. It is great for those that did step up and truly appreciate it.

Peace out
 
njtiger24 aquariums

njtiger24 aquariums

Officer Emeritus
Article Contributor
I can’t speak for the other members on the Board but I do not take any offense to any of these posts. We, bod members, knew that our finally choice would cause discussing among the club members.

I am going to try and address some of the comments that @SeahorseKeeper hasn’t already commented on.

Before I go on please note that the current BOD members are doing their best to try and make this club better just like everyone that is posting here.

About there being zero benefit becoming a member of the club. Benefits are looked at differently among different people. One could say that being able to post items for sale is a benefit; its limited to paid members only. Granted some might find this not to be a benefit due to limited market or what not. After I became a paid member I myself wonder “what is my fee going to?” I do agree that with cheap prices on Amazon and other online sites its hard to get bulk buys going but last year we had a nice bulk deal on some black worms. I also believe @Mark_C is working on some bulk buys for the meeting being held at his house; even with him being laid up because of health issues. We as a BOD have talked about other benefits we could offer to club members. Granted we are still in early stages of discussing these and trying to make sure they work before letting members know about them I personally became a member to give back to the club and to try and help improve the club as a whole.

Personally I have not been on Manhattan Reefs so I don’t know how their site runs. Before finding this site I was a very active member of multiple Facebook and Google+ groups; I was even an admin of a couple of them. I saw first hand how quickly members can turn on each other due to a poor sale or bad shipment or just because someone felt they were ripped off. These ‘fights’ made the group look bad and made users look bad. If the admins were not quick ontop of it then it got out of hand quickly. If we were to open up the sale form this most likely will happen here as well. That would require us to make sure we have active mods to help control everything. We are trying to fix our current permissions and look at creating a proper group to become mods and how they will be audit so that they are managed correctly. Now I came and kept coming to this site not because of a sale forum but because the friendly/family feel of the site. I am even a member of R2R but I spend more of my time here because of the members. Now I do understand everyone’s reason for being here are not the same. I also personally feel that folks who are looking to sell/buy are more willing to hit up Craig List, Facebook groups, eBay, and/or other sites for selling stuff because they are already on those sites. I think members who come to sites like this are already looking for advice. I think we need to get our name out there more. That is why we are working with @scott021467 on youtube videos. We already got one member who found us because of scott’s recent videos. We are trying being more active on other social media sites as well trying to get our name out there.

I do have agree that this small club is very time consuming but I believe only if your willing to put the time in other wise I don’t see it being time consuming. I mean I spend a lot of time on this club; not always on the website itself. I am a busy person I am out the door by 6:30am Mondays - Fridays and not home until 6:00pm most days. Then for the past 4 months I been out on the soccer field every week night (but for Thursday nights) either coaching my daughter’s soccer team or training goalkeepers until 8:00pm. I then was coaching soccer games on Sundays and attending coaches meeting when they have them. I then eat dinner, take a shower, and then work on club stuff. On Wednesday nights we have our BOD meeting where they run until 11:00pm or 12:00am as we discuss many topics. I have worked on plans to address our sites’ permissions issues. I have spent many hours clearing over 300,000 emails which were preventing our free backup from running. I worked on the redesign of our site itself. I am working on (with other BOD members) a BOD handbook which can be passed along to new board members so they know where to go for information without trying to track people down. I help setup that auto message sent to new members of our site. I even worked on creating the FAQ section. I have been looking into how to handle patching our site and handle other upgrades. I been reviewing server logs. I even worked on improving our spam filter and processing members accounts when payments go throw (due to the automation is down right now because of when we switch from one site to the other). Again some of this work we would be paying a tech company money to handled and I am doing it on my own time. I’m not asking for money nor a pat on the back I am just showing that yes this club takes a lot of time but I am willing to put the time in. Im not asking other members to do the same thing. I know we all have lives outside the club but as I told my wife (when I started to get active with my town’s soccer league) “if I want to see things change I need to get out there and change them” so that is why I am so active on this club. As it was also mentioned there many times conversations get going with our site but then they fall to the waste side. One of those was the websites’ redesign. We had a committee but it felt like there was maybe 2 or 3 people commenting on the changes I made and then when I ask for help in creating FAQs for our site not one person offer to help so I taken it in my own hands to handle them as I see a need. The sale form been a topic that has done that as well. The sale form isn’t a new topic for this current BOD but been a topic for awhile. No offense to the old BOD because they did a good job but the current BOD wanted to put this topic to bed. Again we understand our choice might not be the popular choice among the members but we felt, at this time, it is what is best for the club while we work on other areas that need attention. In Feb there will be a new BOD and they may decide to open it up to everyone and that will be their choice if they choose.

Again no offense taken by anyone’s post and I hope no one takes offense with this post. We all are here because we feel this club is beneficial to us in one way or another and we want to see it grow and improve.
 
myrjon

myrjon

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
well put / lots of time required to do this / thank you / + 1 We all are here because we feel this club is beneficial to us in one way or another and we want to see it grow and improve.
 
dan_k

dan_k

Why don't we let the paid members vote on it??????
I think opening it is a great idea if there is no one selling anything on deals and steals there no reason for me to renew my membership that's the only benefit of being a paid member.
 
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