The May meeting was held last night, 5/9/006 at Ned's attended by all the committee except Paddy and Wayne.
Membership:
We now have 81 members. Only 3 have still to pay but we expect to collect those remaining dues this week.
Finance:
Every month the accounting from the previous month's event and the monthly cash statement will be posted to the member's only section. If there are any questions or concerns please use the comments section of the site to let us know the issue. Currently we have $1474 in the bank. We have outstanding debts of about $1000 for the 501C7 excercise but that will be paid out over time.
Next Tournament:
The May tournament will be held on 6/3 (Saturday) at Virginia National. There is a link on the calendar to the course home page which will give you details and directions. The format will be a two man modified scramble aimed at speeding up play. Each player will drive, the best ball will be selected and then BOTH players will finish out the hole with their own ball. The low (net) score of the two counts. Each team must use three drives from each player. As most of the delays on a golf course stem from looking for lost balls from the tee the format should really help.
Prizes will be determined once we know the turnout. Each team will consist of a lower and a higher handicap. As with the last tournament, no checks please. Please bring cash and DO NOT pay the course, pay the committee member who will be on site collecting. A random draw will take place on the Thursday before and all the details will be sent out on the 2nd.
For THIS TOURNAMENT ONLY we will institute a rule that says you do not hit a provisional but if a ball is lost you penalize yourself one shot and not the distance. So, you look for a maximum of 5 minutes, you can't find it, you drop close to the spot and take a penalty. Remember, THIS IS NOT the rules of golf which stipulate a penalty of STROKE AND DISTANCE, meaning you go back and rehit, and is for this tournament only.
Bar Tabs:
As we have now got over 40 playing each event we are instituting a start time for the bar tab back at Ned's. The idea for the social is for everybody to participate and socialize. With the numbers we are getting we have some players going straight to Ned's Drinking for two hours, going home and never seeing another member!
So, the bar will open one hour after the first group finishes and can drive back to Ned's. For example at the Virginia National event the first tee time is 10.45 Add 5 hours for the round, 1/2 hour for the drive and 1 hour and the bar tab will start at 5.15.
Matchplay:
All first round matches have been played except for Andre and Ryan who, after a tie, are replaying this weekend and Carl and Ray who play today. Attached is the completed bracket. The payouts are $4500 to the winner's owner, $2000 to the runner up's owner and $1000/$500 to the 3rd and 4th place owners.
Handicaps:
All members now have official USGA handicaps. The cards will be available over the next few weeks. The membership numbers and handicaps are now shown on the website. Per instructions I sent out earlier this week, we will use the USGA index as it stands on the first of the appropriate month for all future events, including the matchplay. Please keep your handicaps up to date by using the simple on line process. Johnny will be letting us know over the next few days what the rules are. For instance certain handicaps cannot take more than a 7 for handicap purposes so if you are a 7 handicap and shoot 80 with a 10 then you really shot a 77. Stay tuned for details.
Monthly Tournament:
This month's event is the Fidelity Mortgage Individual Strokeplay at Pleasant Valley on 4/30. I have sent out details separately. Please note that, in order to speed the pace of play, 9 is the maximum that can be taken on a hole. If you have hit 9 times PICK up. One more thing, NO CHECKS please. Please bring cash to pay for the round.
Matchplay:
The matchplay is now well under way with several matches already having been played and many more scheduled. Please note several additional rules:
Ned's Golfing Society Pub:
Thanks to Graham we now have an awesome section of Ned's that we can call our own. All of our functions will now be held there. It is nearly finished and should have the occupancy permit any day. All the stuff from the wall on the Kelly's side has been moved. We will eventually have framed photos of captains and vice captains and club and strokeplay champions throughout the years (for posterity!!). We also have a dresser that will be locked to hold all of our stuff, cards, VSGA cards, shirts etc. The bartender will always have a key as will several of the committee. So, for example, when a member needs to leave $$ for the raffle or for a renewal you can leave it in the dresser for us to collect. When a new member wants a shirt, he or she can go to the dresser and get one. Stop by and check it out.
The plaques on the honors boards and the trophies are being redone and the writing will be in black, making it easy to read.
Website:
We have a meeting next week to start the process of completely upgrading the site to make it look really professional. Today, it is very functional and better than any other society like ours but stay tuned for the improvements. Believe it or not the site attracted a golf tour operator in Portugal who wants to set up a trip there for us!!
Raffle:
We have 480 tickets bought or committed leaving only 120 for sale. PLEASE leave the cash in Ned's with the stubs AS SOON AS POSSIBLE so we can reconcile where we are. If you still want tickets or can sell them let me know soon.
Golf Clinics:
We are arranging with Pleasant Valley to put on clinics initially for the higher handicaps. John O'Leary, PGA teaching pro and one of the other pros will put on 3 1 and 1/ hour clinics covering anything you would want to know about the game. The cost (after subsidy from the society) will be $45 for the three sessions. Please let us know if you are interested. We will cap the participation at 10 for these first 3 sessions so its first come first served. Depending on the interest level we can arrange specific lessons for, say, bunker play, or for lower handicap golfers also. Thanks to Carl and Stevie for working on this.
Charitable Donations:
We gave our first donation from the Pleasant Valley tournament: $100 to Kids R First. We have also bought a foursome in their tournament on 6/26. We will be auctioning this foursome off after the 6/3 event. Kid R First is a great local charity serving the educational needs for local underpriveledged kids. Judy Bowns, George's wife, has been involved for years. 99% of all donations go to the kids.
Each year NGS will have a dedicated charity to which we will contribute. This year it is Kids R First. In addition we will donate something after each event and 50% will go to our main charity and the winner can nominate his own choice to receive the other 50%.
We are accepting nominations for next years main charity. The only criteria are as follows:
1. The charity must be registered
2. The charity must be local
3. The charity must be affiliated in some way with a member (the member works with the charity, the member's next door neighbor's kid is terminally ill and we can help, etc etc.)
4. The member must meet with the committee and in 5 minutes explain why we should select that charity.
We will make the decision on next year's charity soon and would like nominations in time to be heard at the next committee meeting in early June. It is possible we could sleect multiple charities.
Sponsorship Opportunities:
Carl, our sponsorship chairman, has spent a lot of time thinking about this. The aim is to raise lots of money to a) keep the society solvent, b) enable us to do more for the members such as the subsidized clinics, the day trip for the matchplay, maybe even an overseas trip down the road and c) allow us to contribute significant amounts to charity.
Carl is working on a plan which will be presented to the committee next meeting and then posted to the website. It will cover three main areas:
1. Direct sponsorship opportunities whereby corporations give us $$$ for a particular event.
2. Current Neds' suppliers who can give us money just because they do business with Ned's. Carl will get together with Johnny G and Gordo (and Graham of course) the general managers of the two pubs to discuss this further.
3. Local merchants who might see this as an opportuntiy to get business.
For this to be successful we need to offer these potential sponsors something in return. We have the 501C7 vehicle so they can legally deduct some of the cost. We need, however, demographic information, that will attract them to us. We will be sending out a questionnaire and would encourage you ALL to fill it out and return it to us. We need to know ages, sex, occupation, zip codes etc so Carl can go to a company and say, for example, we have 47 members who live within 10 miles who have 73 children under the age of 10 etc etc. Please help us by completing the survey.
As an aside we really need to know what everyone does so if a member wants a mortgage, some painting done, a new car, whatever, then you can talk to a member first. Let's promote within. In addition to that list of services being made available, we are offering a page on the new website for $10 for which you can post a business card for a year letting your peers know what you do. Please email Carl and myself if you are interested.
Thanks Carl for your insight and effort in this area.
E-BAY Type Sale/Barter Opportunity:
Each of us have lots of stuff: clubs, bags, shoes etc etc that we never use. We conservatively estimate that among 81 members we might have $30,000 or $40,000 of stuff laying around. Here's what we are going to do:
There are three ways you can contribute:
1. Donate the item, we will sell it and 100% goes to charity. You will get an official tax receipt.
2. Donate the item, we will sell it, 50% goes to your charity, 50% goes to the society.
3. Sell the item through the society. You get 75% of the proceeds, the society gets 25%
4. Donate the item as a prize.
Carl has volunteered to run this program. It is a great idea so start thinking and email me and Carl to get this rolling.
Inter Pub League:
We envision an inter pub league with participating teams from O'Faolain's, Four Provinces, Auld Shebeen, McMahons and others. We are going to get it started with a match between O'Faolain's and Ned's. Our team for this first match will be the committee. In future we will work out some sort of mechanism whereby we select the team from the membership.
Thanks everyone and here's to the future of this great society. You make it a success so let's increase the participation!
Dave Lewis, Captian
