We held our first committee meeting of the year last night at Ned's. It was attended by 7 of the 8 committee members with Wayne absent in Atlanta. The following are the minutes from the meeting:
Finance:
A new bank account will be set up with Glenn and George as signatories.
Each month on the members only section Glenn will post a cash statement for the previous month as well as a tournament statement showing the financial details from the previous months tournament. This will be posted within a week of the tournament.
We adopted the suggestion made at the AGM that Ed Skelly will become our internal auditor and will review the finances on a regular basis. His review will also be posted to the website.
It was agreed to continue to accept tournament fees on the day of the event, cash preferred.
We are committed to moving forward with the tax exempt status. Glenn will contact Al G and Ed today and will report back to the committee by the next meeting.
We need to collect the $45 renewal (includes the hanidcap fee) or $20 if you are a new member. Please forward to Glenn as soon as possible or leave the money in an envelope at Ned's with a manager.
Handicaps:
Johnny will continue as handicap chairman. All handicaps will be kept at Pleasant Valley. Johnny will provide a report to members within a few weeks as to how the system will work. All cards from Ned's events will be entered and each member will be able to enter cards from individual rounds as they play. Dave and Johnny will meet with PV staff to discuss transferring our current handicaps to their system.
Under Ned's rules individual handicaps may be cut "on general play" by the handicap chairman.
At each tournament one of the committee members will be in the clubhouse as each player finishes his/her round and will assist in inputting the scores into the terminal in the pro shop.
Individual cards will be kept instead of 4 on the same card. The card should be filled out by the other person in the cart and both player and scorer will sign the card.
Matchplay:
The 2006 matchplay will commence in April. The auction will take place sometime in March so stay tuned. We will also be having a two man team matchplay event which will be run separately by Johnny.
Calendar for the Year:
We have endeavored to come up with a schedule that involves hard and easy courses. The following is a tentative schedule and will be finalized by the end of the month.
January: Par 3, Sterling 1/28
February: Charleston SC 2/25 to 2/27
March: Old Hickory 3/31
April: Pleasant Valley 4/29
May: Virginia National/General's Ridge or Worthington Manor 5/27
June: Pleasant Valley 6/24
July: Club Championship/Shenandoah 7/28
August: South Riding 9/3
September: Ryder Cup/Pleasant Valley 9/29 and 9/30
October: Overnight/Williamsburg/Delaware or Wintergreen 10/27 and 10/28
November: Virginia Oaks or Reston 11/25
December: Herndon 12/30
Trevor will be the Ryder Cup Captain assisted by Liam and Wayne will again captain the US team, assisted by Jack.
Ned's Wall:
By the end of this month Stevie will have the trophy cabinet up displaying the matchplay trophy and the strokeplay trophy. We will also have the lights up and the boards will be updated.
Raffle:
We will again have a raffle for 4 round trip tickets to Ireland plus a rental car. There will be only 500 tickets available at $20 each. The draw will be held at our social event in April. Stevie will be running that event to which wives etc are invited. Stay tuned for details.
Tournaments:
The payouts for each event will depend on the field for each event. We will have additional features at some events such as mulligans in team events and skins. We will have closest to the pin, long drive and straight drive prizes each month. Different formats are being evaluated including two man scrambles and 6/6/6. Draws for each event will be undertaken by at least two committee members.
We are trying to hold the cost for each event, even those at more expensive courses, to $65 or even $60.
Tax Exempt/Charitable donations:
Once we establish our status we will devise a plan to provide donations to various charities and to support our local community. We had a plan a year ago to donate money from each event but this was never done. Our initial donation will be to Kids Are First as we committed to them originally. After that it was decided to consider golf charities as we are a golf organization. This effort will be taken up again once our status has been finalized.
Sponsorship:
Our new Sponsorship Chairman, Carl Couey, presented an excellent overview of sponsorship possibilities. It all depends on what type of organization we become so stay tuned for that decision. Will be looking at the following possibilities for sponsorship:
Current Ned's suppliers such as beer vendors, food vendors
Local business
Members
Golf suppliers
We will be evaluating what we can promise sponsors in return such as one time access to the members list etc.
Carl will be soliciting help from other members to undertake this really important task. Sponsorship will enable us to keep the event costs down, pay for the strokeplay day out (bus, food, drink etc) and hopefully contribute towards trips such as Charleston or even Ireland in 2007 and fund a salary for your Captain (Just Kidding!!!!).
Membership:
After culling the membership by removing non participants we now are back to 75 active members. Our hope is to increase that to 100. We discussed advertising but decided not to as we don't want to encourage total strangers but, rather, people that are known to a current member. Please use your membership cards as a way to show people that are interested that we are a professional organization. Your cards are behind the bar so just ask a manager when you are next in Ned's. We will also put the schedule on the Ned's wall along with the matchplay draws and these will likely attract some people to inquire about the society. Remember that the application on the website allows for a proposer and seconder and we will use that to vet applicants.
There is a section on the site now that enable you to comment, complain or suggest. Your input will go straight to the committee for discussion.
Let's have a great year.
Dave Lewis, Captian
