MAPS Thursday Feb. 7 2019 video conference meeting:
Fritz, Ted, and I (Harry) just finished our Thursday video conference.
No quorum, so it wasn’t an official meeting.
But here’s what we chatted about:
- CONCERN FOR CARRIE AND ROB, and ROB’S SURGERY TODAY:
We talked about Carrie and husband Rob and hoped his surgery went OK today, and we hope Carrie will give us an update when she can. - SUMMER MEETING: Ted and Fritz expressed interest in traveling to the venue Carrie suggested for a summer meeting. In Flint, if I remember correctly? Hopefully Ted, Fritz, and Carrie can arrange to go see it together. We contemplate a July event, that can be Friday-Saturday-Sunday or shorter. We presume Saturday will be an all-day professional development session, covering various topics of interest to professional Santas. Ted will probably do a session on how to set up a web site. Fritz might discuss Santa business issues. I might discuss performance training. Group dinner in the evening, then folks can just brunch and meander on Sunday if they stay over.
- HARRY’S WEB SITE SUGGESTIONS: I would like to modify some things on the website. I would like us to have a “Suggested Donation Amount” instead of a price list for our merchandise. And that amount includes postage and card fees. And, let members fill out a form to order stuff and let them pay with credit card or PayPal that goes directly into our MAPS bank account. When people donate, let them choose to get free merchandise if they want, again with suggested donation amounts that gets them merchandise. Roger Minton, who manages our website for us, says that is all doable.
LAST SLEIGH RIDE: When we lose a member to the Last Sleigh Ride, I suggest we save that persons Member information and just move it to the Last Sleigh Ride section. The better to remember the details of that Santa’s life. Instead of just erasing their information into oblivion. This was inspired by Alec Orris, who asked us to save his late wife Geri’s information so he could copy it. Alec hated the idea of it disappearing forever from the MAPS site.
- AUDIT COMMITTEE AND BUDGET: We don’t have much to audit, and our budget is small and uncomplicated, but I think we need to adopt some sort of written annual budget so we know approximately how much money we need to raise.
That’s about it. Nothing about our conversation is official until the Board makes it official!