It’s a short survey, and should take only a couple of minutes of your time, unless you wish to write a lot of thoughts in the free-form response on the last page.

https://forms.gle/FPMFkWFbwbTSXkSr8

Thank you in advance for your help, and we look forward to seeing everyone in person again soon!

With things opening back up, it’s time to get the club meeting in-person again. We have a number of issues to work out regarding safety protocols, location, lease details and related issues.

I had hoped to have the survey done by this point, but it’s going to be another day or two. Please be patient, as we want to get this right. I hope that this reaches everyone, but I am sure that one of these communication methods will miss some interested people.

I understand this may not be a popular decision for some members, and it will be popular with others.

The 3 meetings in July & August were sparsely attended, with well below half the regular turnout. We had prepaid credit for these dates due to payments made before the pandemic shutdown. Deciding to meet wasn’t an easy decision, but we tried our hardest to make it work. Some wanted to come, some didn’t want to come, and some couldn’t do so in good conscience, given their family situations.

It became apparent that we had to decide when & how to have a financial issue. The Mall graciously decided to not force us to continue to pay them rent for the rest of the year, and let us out of the rest of the lease. We told them that if we did meet the rest of the year, we’d likely not be back in 2021.

If we continued to meet, we would be incurring expenses with minimal offsetting revenue from daily dues. No raffle would be run at the meetings, and we were unable to generate our normal amount of revenue from auction sales at conventions. This would result in us spending down the club’s funds to below zero. That is clearly unacceptable, and .

However, if we chose to not meet for the rest of the year, we would be increasing the credit given in 2021 to members who have prepaid for the 2020 year, and face a potential revenue issue next year. The positive from this option is that we wouldn’t be spending further money right now, only reducing future revenues from annual memberships. Additionally, it will give us time to get up raise funds by having more games fully checked and ready for sale to members or at auction and possibly in other ways.

This is yet another challenge for the club, and I like to think that our leadership group is up to the task of dealing with the various challenges that are thrown at us. I guess it’s a bit like we are playing a co-operative game where we’re trying to defeat challenges; and no, I won’t name names of games, because that would be too easy.

I want to say that I feel that the procedures we put in place for the meetings worked pretty well, as far as people feeling safe and that we were enforcing the mandated precautions, plus taking extra steps as well. I got positive feedback on multiple points, but most notably our solution to having designated eating areas in the room, since some members bring their own food, and couldn’t sit and eat that in the food court area. That was something that we had to come up with on the fly, but it worked.

If you have any questions or comments, please let us know.

We have discussed the situation with dues, and Mike has come
up with what we both feel is a very fair way to deal with prepaid dues
around the number of cancelled meetings. Here it is:

– First half-year memberships will be extended to cover the missed
meetings. At this moment, that will mean they end at the end of October. Meetings after that would be at the usual $7 per meeting rate.

– No second half memberships will be sold to existing members.

– Full year members will get a prorated credit towards next years
regular priced dues based on a percentage of cancelled meetings.

Right now, we’re at 8 cancelled out of 24 total, so that’s $20 off. This
discount can’t be combined with the family discount, but the family
discounted membership(s) will also get the $20 off if they existed for
2020, so they will be discounted. So each membership would be $40
($60-$20) right now, if no more meetings are cancelled.