Rudy,
Our club is primarily funded by Membership Dues. The dues are $40.00/yr for a "Family" membership (i.e. domestic couple). Our club has an average annual paying membership of approx. 50 paying members. With the exception of the club funded Spring breakfast, and Fall "Dry Dock" meal, we have never turned away somebody from events for non-payment of dues.

We also have had boats and gear donated to the club, mostly from the estates of deceased members but sometimes from people who have simply heard of us. These donations are sold to club members at several events per year, and the funds go into our treasury.

As mentioned, club funds are used for the Spring breakfast meeting, and the Dry Dock year end party. We also use the funds for equipment such as an LCD projector, a tent canopy which is used when we have displays at non club events, funding the club website, and this year to buy and build 2 vac-u-tugs which we intend to make available for youth to use during club events.

We are fortunate to have a good relationship with the City of Edina who let us use a storage cage in the city's park maintenance garage, as well as use of a room for meetings, and also the use of the Hughes Pavilion at the park ponds for our 4 major events each year.

We do have a Commodore, and board members, monthly meetings (the last two had 21 & 29 persons in attendance) where we briefly discuss club business and then open the meeting up to anybody who wants to show a boat or project they are working on, or ask for advice from more seasoned modelers. This part of the meeting has also had members give presentations on battery types and care, soldering techniques, planking process, etc.

Although we are structured to the point that we have a Commodore and board members, monthly scheduled meetings, and events we display at ... It is a pretty laid back club.

I hope this gives you some ideas for your club.

Link to our club website: www.emyc.org

I have attached last months newsletter, and the 2024 Calendar of Events .pdfs

Dave B

Lew, great website. Congratulations to you for all your hard work. I wish I was closer to you but LI is were I am with my family and will not be moving.
I would like to join your club if you will have me.
Len

Thanks' for the positive reply! I made that web site many year ago. I am not a Facebook fan. Its like a bucket of spiders. I use once or twice a month to check in on some friends. Much easier and quicker to have a web site and make the related choices, not all that gobbledygook in Facebook. KISMIF. That's me.

Made my first web page back in the mid 1990's written completely in html. Learned about the internet ell before that when the company I worked for was one of about 6-8 sites in the world that had access to it. No pictures or anything fancy, pretty much text only. They were working on "mosaic" for the next step in graphics. Fantastic to see it grow from a simple monochrome screen with a few sentences on it to vivid moving displays we have today.

Lew
Florida, USA

Lew z
what a fantastic website you have made. Definetly there some good ideas for our website.
I like the list with the participants- scale -sort of boat.
Are you also on facebook with your club. This is at the moment an hot item. Should we be on facebook or not to try to attract new people who are interested in modelboats.
Do you have any experience with this matter?
great to hear from you

Recently I mentioned the downfall of the previous club (BAEB) here in Seminole, Florida. The BEAB was mostly self funded by membership fees ($US 25 yr).

The park shelter fees per meet, rain or shine, was identical. So that required six months of the club's income.

The rest of the income came from the bank account balance when the club previously had many more members and from regattas which also had entry fees, hobby shop (gift certificates), and mail order suppliers (Loyalhanna donated some radio sets).

There were some club "officers" which many can understand were 😔"cheepo's" (not CPO's). As a new member I was drafted to become "Commodore ". After that club sunk on its own "officers" greed and individual goals.

I brought back the SSMBC (in 2012) after about being absent 35 years. Back to no dues but now we had the internet. No one cared about being the leader, so I became the defacto "Coordinator".

So how's the SSMBC funded? We cut one expense by using a different "free" unreserved shelter (no fees). No volunteers killed the regattas, so that income ceased. I pay the internet fees, server, domains, emails, etc. I do all the website work and updates and email, as well as YouTube videos.

I'm not looking for any pats on the back, just happy faces at boat meets. So far this has worked well for the last 10+ years. I'm sure you can extrapolate some funding tips herein.

Sorry Model-Boats.com, this is why I stopped with my financial support. At 80, I hope to continue to keep postings.

Lew
Florida ⛱️, USA
http://ssmbc-fl.org

http://ssmbc-fl.org

Indeed we did in earlier times. We had one of the remaining hobbyshops but due to covid they stopped. We edit every month a clubmagazine and the printer is not charging us the full cost. Our PR service is calling people or companies but it is not very rewarding. When we need wood or something else we try to get the best price and sometimes it helps sometimes not

Have you ever embarked on fundraisers for your model boat club? If so, what was the result? We are looking to do the same and hope to gain some insight in how to go about it. The funds we intend to raise will be used to improve our local municipal dam.