QShipWagon

Re: your comment about "man hours."

Those of us who are committed to providing for the membership of various "Motorsport Clubs" know all too well what goes into holding events.

Consider for a moment, if you will, that if the NAAC Board of Directors meets just 12 times a year for 2 hours (it's more) and they meet a quorum (they do) and average drive time for 80% of the meetings to and from is 1 hour, that represents over 200 hours and probably in excess of 3000 miles of travel.

These meetings are just to REPORT on the actual work and planning that takes place outside the BoD meetings.

We're not even touching committee meetings, letter and e-mail writing, procurement of contracts, various risk management tasks, website development, REGISTRATION tasks, classroom preparation, newsletter production, social dinners, conference calls, etc, etc, etc, etc.

After many years of being involved at the ground level one thing that is frequently lacking is the idea that we are a club whose volunteers work very hard on behalf of the members. Many, many, people understand this, but some people seem to think that various events just seem to pull themselves together all by themselves.

The folks that just show up as though they've bought a ticket to a show or Skippy School are treated just as well as those who understand what goes into these events and lend a hand to make it success.

GBW

I was graciously invited to the business meeting last night as a non-member, and can vouch for the sincere effort and hours put into identifying possible options and scenarios to make this work. A lot of stuff was thrown on the table and considered.

I walked away with a new understanding of how much money it takes to run one of these events, and the complexity of the effort. I think it's safe to say that the profit for these events is razor thin in general and that any significant drop in anticipated students has the potential to make the event a loss for the club, which in this case it would have been. I fully support the decision that was made last night, although I'm not a member of the club.

Everybody is disappointed with the outcome. But the club is making every effort to make everybody whole again, and has been working with everyone's best interest in mind. I was impressed with how they addressed this issue last night, and I'm confident they will look at the events leading up to this decision and identify ways and checkpoints where possible to minimize this situation in the future. Lessons will be learned, but I believe much of this is attributable to a lingering winter and struggling economy.

Suffolk

The contract deadline is one far out from the actual track date.

In this case a week prior to the "hard" track deadline and 40 days prior to the event we "pushed" the event again.

The sign ups (enough) didn't come.........and we then spoke for nearly 2 hours to decide if we could take a loss and how much, based on the registration to the event up to Thursday night.

The numbers weren't there Cy.

And we contacted other clubs about their events and we see low numbers for NHMS and other ACNA venues.

Based upon these items discussed, we had to pull the plug.

Additionally, the club web site has had a sign up along with Motorsport regs for a while now.

If you're a current ACNA member, come to our monthly Board meetings and help us provide what you're looking for.

Early April track dates are usually a challenge to full up. Lots of people ski to the bitter end in Northern New England. Weather is also a concern.

-Scott

Suffolk

It would have made things a lot easier to decide to carry on.

But that's the way things played out.

We're planning another event, so watch for details........

NoahD

getting more involved with us in the future!

-Noah