Announcement

**skyway** · 03-19-2023, 10:10 AM

Indeed!
As fairly long time SDC member I’ve sat quietly by as:
1) TW was changed to a “vertical” format;
2) Under the guise of “making it easier for host chapters”, leadership has taken WAY too much control over our International meets to the point that hosts are now required to provide fenced or otherwise physically restricted meet locations & are financially “encouraged” to award the usual, run of the mill, trophies; and last but not least,
3) A past President was (apparently) replaced after having been so bold as to reach out or otherwise try to find common ground with the Avanti Owners Association.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s been enough foolishness on this issue by the leaderships of both the SDC & AOAI (yes, in my opinion the ASC deserves to be left out of this rant) to go around. Truth is most of these 3 Clubs’ members get along just fine, and all would greatly benefit if the SDC & AOAI leaderships would end their “turf war”.
Anyone else miss our past joint, or at least cooperative, annual meets? Anyone else think some sort of integrated registration and mebbe even prorated meet fees, would be a good thing? If so, say so.

**mbstude** · 03-19-2023, 10:36 AM

Originally posted by skyway View Post

3) A past President was (apparently) replaced after having been so bold as to reach out or otherwise try to find common ground with the Avanti Owners Association.

Anyone else miss our past joint, or at least cooperative, annual meets?

He wasn’t technically “replaced”; he was bullied so much by another past President that he resigned and walked away from the whole thing.

And yes, I agree with that last sentence completely.

**Jane Stinson** · 03-19-2023, 01:54 PM

My Goodness!! I have endeavored to make an admittedly cursory attempt to read all the posts in this thread. Whew! They are a bit all over the map but let me try to respond to that which I am somewhat qualified.

First, the current cost to maintain the forum is $3,400 per year. This includes web hosting and monitoring. There are no plans or discussions aimed at closing the forum or removing non SDC members. We did look at the possibility of having threads exclusively for SDC members to share SDC business but as has been already discussed, it was too cumbersome to employ.

Second, the Executive Committee does not make decisions, except trivial ones, without the buy in of the entire BOD. The Executive Committee does the grunt work necessary to pull together information and analysis to answer questions or make recommendations to the full Board of Directors so that the full Board can make informed decisions without wasting their time on the busy work or getting into heated discussions because of a lack of reliable information.

Next, the goal of the International Meet is to NOT LOSE money while providing a cost-effective venue for SDC members as well as affiliated club members to enjoy getting together for some fun as well as providing access to vendors. International Meets were losing money as about one third of the attendees felt it was not up to them to register for the meet in order to contribute to the cost of the venue. Once the meet was moved into gated venues such as fairgrounds, we were able to lower the cost of registration for everyone because everyone participated in supporting the cost of the meet.

Some affiliated club management felt that since SDC members were already paying for the venue, their membership should be able to attend for free. We do not hold International Meets utilizing an untold amount of volunteer hours and ask some members to pay a registration fee in order to provide a venue to anyone else for free. This issue is the basis for many of the complains regarding so called "closed meets."

Part of this is also a tax issue. The IRS will ask us to report all the income and expense of the meet for both the national and the host chapter as a for-profit entity if we open it to the public. We have a car show on Saturday and charge for parking/attending to help the chapter pay for the fairgrounds.

Ah, trophies... We use a trophy vendor who will take on the responsibility of figuring out how many of each type of trophy we need by keeping track of judging registrations. He comes to the meet and finishes up the final work on some of the trophies we'll need so we never have to worry about quantities or having "leftover" trophies. He charges a fair price for a very nice product. The host chapter typically does not want to take this on and is thankful they only have to approve the design. We had a host chapter once who insisted on their own very expensive trophies. They were allowed all of the trophy donations to help them cover the cost but they were so expensive that they drove the host chapter into lower than desired profits. They were nice trophies but more costly than we could afford.

Another host chapter wanting to "do their own thing" ordered twice as many trophies as they needed and had a lot of leftovers. We don't insist on using only our preferred vendor but expect the host chapter to be act responsibly regarding cost and quantity.

And finally, Group Works - No one has to sign up for Group Works. The email is an invitation. Nothing more. I can say that I signed up for Group Works as part of the initial investigation / discovery mode we used to vet the product. I have not received any spam, ads, or nonsense because of it. Since I am not working on the Group Works initiative, I can't say for certain, but I don't believe that the vendor has access to any of the information used to send out invitations. And I haven't seen the video.

Thanks for reading,

Jane

**skyway** · 03-19-2023, 04:27 PM

“An trophies…” indeed!
Since Treasurer Stinson’s first example of trophy irresponsibility seems to refer to the 2015 St. Louis meet, here’s the other side of that story.
The trophies given in St. Louis were, in fact, souvenirs purchased from the Gateway Arch store. They consisted of an actual section of “retired” cable from the Arch’s tram system, bent into the shape of the Arch & anchored into a base. We dressed them up with ribbon and a personalized plaque; cost was about $5000 at $45-50 each.
The SDC solicits “trophy donations”, with any excess used for other expenses. We (the St. Louis host chapter) got the SDC give us “all the trophy donations” which amounted to $2400, and we ( the host chapter) paid the balance. Furthermore, there was very little if any waste; at the end of the banquet excess trophies were offered, and sold at cost. The few remaining ones were given to specially deserving (and I wasn’t not one of them😉) volunteers & to at least one deserving SDC office holder.
In summary, the only way that those trophies were “more costly than the SDC could afford”, is if the SDC wanted excess trophy donations to spend on other costs.

**Jane Stinson** · 03-19-2023, 05:21 PM

SDC National typically pays the total cost of the trophies using trophy sponsorships and sometimes has enough to help pay for toy trophies, memorabilia trophies, etc. The full cost of the St. Louis trophies was more than the national could afford and we made that very clear up front. The host chapter insisted that they would pay the "extra" for the trophies. This caused them to not make the minimum $5,000 in profit that we guarantee. They were quite indignant when we could not make up the difference to get them up to the guarantee because the loss was generated by the very high trophy cost that was more than we could afford. Better?

**mbstude** · 03-19-2023, 07:33 PM

Originally posted by Jane Stinson View Post

Some affiliated club management felt that since SDC members were already paying for the venue, their membership should be able to attend for free. We do not hold International Meets utilizing an untold amount of volunteer hours and ask some members to pay a registration fee in order to provide a venue to anyone else for free. This issue is the basis for many of the complains regarding so called "closed meets."

Jane

Okay. You brought it up.

At some point in the past, SDC asked both the AOAI and ASC to join in and participate with the international meets. The goal was simple: More Studebakers to look at. More people in attendance. More potential for SDC to gain new members.

When the current SDC leadership reneged on that offer, AOAI and ASC went elsewhere.

Since it’s all about money, let’s consider the two logical ways that this could play out.

SDC could reinstate their offer to both other clubs. The result would be: The same amount of registration revenue whether the AOAI and ASC were in attendance or not, yet with more Studebakers in the parking lot, more people in attendance, more potential members for SDC, and more potential sales for the vendors. And as a plus, a much more positive experience for everyone in attendance.

Or, SDC can continue the current course. The result of that decision is a known reality: The same amount of registration revenue, but with less Studebakers in the parking lot, less people in attendance, less potential new members for SDC, and less potential sales for the vendors. And of course, a lot of very disgruntled people.

Since SDC has chosen the latter option.. The money being made off of meet registrations is the same either way, since AOAI and ASC weren’t paying for registrations. So while registration revenue hasn’t necessarily decreased with the two other clubs not being there, the quality of the meets has certainly gone down hill. Instead of a slew of Avantis and Prewar Studebakers in the parking lot, now there’s an all makes generic car show.. Because that’s more profitable.

SDC leadership should consider making more decisions that are good for the membership, instead of having every single goal based around what’s best for the bank account.

Strong armed responses from the leadership when club members bring up concerns aren’t helping the overall situation whatsoever.

——

BTW, I do have to say thanks for letting this discussion stay open. Too many times in the past, issues have been brought up on this forum, only to be deleted and swept under the rug.

**Charlie D** · 03-19-2023, 10:33 PM

Thank you, Jane for your National Officer explanation.
Charlie D.

**Jane Stinson** · 03-20-2023, 05:09 AM

Actually, I did not "bring it up." It is in a list of grievances by skyway.

I don't really know how to grab bits of prior posts for reference.

I would very much like to know who, what, where, and what the agreement was regarding affiliated clubs attending SDC International Meets. I hear that the impression is that there was one but there are no specifics.

We would very much like to hold joint meets, however, we cannot keep asking the members who always register for the meets to constantly pay more to support the meet. It is not fair.

The first meet that was gated, was Mansfield. Because everyone had to register, the registrations were at least 50% higher than they were for similar meets, in numbers not dollars. That means that at least 1/3 of attendees were not registering in the past. It was not just affiliated clubs. It was SDC members as well. In order to be fair to the members of each club who registered and supported the meet each year, we needed to continue with the gated meet.

It is not about wanting to take in more money. We lowered the early registration amount to $35 and offered this lower rate to all three clubs. I really don't understand why anyone believes that any group should be able to attend without supporting the meet by registering. We really do want to be fair, but that means being fair to the SDC members as well.

The offer made by the past president that was mentioned in another post was made without any discussion with the remainder of the BOD. It was never even mentioned. According to our bylaws, that action was inappropriate. The rest of the board first heard about it when reading the Avanti magazine. That person was not bullied and was not removed. His autocratic style did not mesh well with the volunteer army that makes up the BOD. The BOD refused to be pushed and he quit. No one forced him out.

As I said, we really do want to be fair, but fair to everyone. "Our group never had to pay before" is not an argument that can be used to promote fairness today. We are still willing to entertain proposals that promote fairness to all three clubs' members.

Jane

**mbstude** · 03-20-2023, 09:39 AM

Originally posted by skyway View Post

.... It was because the SDC used the trophies as an excuse to deny our host chapter ANY of the $5000.
I believe the official explanation was “because you cost us money.”

Sounds like, "You didn't follow our rules, so we're keeping the profits".

At one of the recent International Meets, someone from my local SDC chapter talked with the SDC leadership about the possibility of hosting a meet here in Florida. He told them that "We'd want to do it our way, and we'd pay the expenses ourselves". The response from the leadership was, "We wouldn't be able to endorse that type of event".

In other words - "We wouldn't profit from your event, so we aren't interested."

**Skip Lackie** · 03-20-2023, 11:27 AM

Originally posted by Jane Stinson View Post

I would very much like to know who, what, where, and what the agreement was regarding affiliated clubs attending SDC International Meets. I hear that the impression is that there was one but there are no specifics.

Jane

Jane-
Thanks for providing a bit of explanation of how some things happened. IRT your question above, AFAIK, joint meets (usually every other year) have been going on since at least the late 1970s. There may have been a board decision to invite the other clubs, but I doubt that there is any kind of MOA or other formal paperwork. Relations between the clubs were once so good that when I was on the board, I sponsored a motion to give both AOAI and ASC two pages of free advertising each year in TW. It passed unanimously. Since there has been little-to-no discussion in TW of what provoked the breakup, I have no idea what offers or demands were made by any of the clubs WRT joint meets. Like a lot of people, I belong to both SDC and AOAI -- and I thought the joint meets were much more enjoyable for it. I always paid the registration fee for both, but never followed how the proceeds or labor were distributed.

Speaking of poor communications, this thread started out as question-and-bitch session about the GroupWorks initiative. It seems to have hit almost everyone as either spam or a mistake. Yes, I know that Denny has mentioned it in a couple of president's letters, but I never got enough info from them about why SDC was doing it. For example, it would have been nice to know this fact (from your earlier post); "We did look at the possibility of having threads exclusively for SDC members to share SDC business but as has been already discussed, it was too cumbersome to employ."

From Cool Hank Luke: "What we have here is a failure to communicate." The board is elected to run the club, but also to keep the members informed of what's going on. Failure to execute both functions with full openness fosters the notion that secrets are being kept by a management cabal (evident in several of the posts above),

**Avantidon** · 03-20-2023, 12:37 PM

Matt,

"At one of the recent International Meets, someone from my local SDC chapter talked with the SDC leadership about the possibility of hosting a meet here in Florida. He told them that "We'd want to do it our way, and we'd pay the expenses ourselves". The response from the leadership was, "We wouldn't be able to endorse that type of event".

Statements like this are the cause of many false rumors because they are unverifiable as no verifiable source has been identified. You are walking in the gray area and I'd suggest that you move back above the line.

**Jane Stinson** · 03-20-2023, 12:47 PM

Originally posted by mbstude View Post

Sounds like, "You didn't follow our rules, so we're keeping the profits".

At one of the recent International Meets, someone from my local SDC chapter talked with the SDC leadership about the possibility of hosting a meet here in Florida. He told them that "We'd want to do it our way, and we'd pay the expenses ourselves". The response from the leadership was, "We wouldn't be able to endorse that type of event".

In other words - "We wouldn't profit from your event, so we aren't interested."

Matthew,

Do you have nothing better to do than throw mud at someone who is trying to help make things better?

One of the primary tenets of the IM policy is that we don't want chapters to be afraid they will lose money hosting an IM so we guarantee a minimum level of profit provided they seriously work toward making the $5,000 minimum on their own. St. Louis made it very clear that they had no intention of making anything on their own. Their goal was to breakeven and their pricing and spending proved it. They did several things that we warned against because we knew it would be impossible for them to make the $5k if they continued to be happy with breaking even.

Well, they were successful. It was a fun meet. The trophies were a hit and they did break even except for the $5,600 they cleared selling memorabilia. However, they were not eligible for the guarantee.

I, as IM Chair, was the person who approached Mr. Cade regarding hosting an international meet in Florida. And he did say he wanted to do it his way and had many things he wanted to do differently. Where that sounds like a fun meet and I would love to attend, many things we do differently one year seem to evolve into the standard. Most SDC chapters cannot manage the loss that Mr. Cade can and the National certainly can't. I would hate to have an IM that raised expectations to an unsustainable level. Therefore, we could not use it for an International Meet but I do hope he has it anyway.

Jane

**mbstude** · 03-20-2023, 12:55 PM

Originally posted by Avantidon View Post

Matt,

"At one of the recent International Meets, someone from my local SDC chapter talked with the SDC leadership about the possibility of hosting a meet here in Florida. He told them that "We'd want to do it our way, and we'd pay the expenses ourselves". The response from the leadership was, "We wouldn't be able to endorse that type of event".

Statements like this are the cause of many false rumors because they are unverifiable as no verifiable source has been identified. You are walking in the gray area and I'd suggest that you move back above the line.

I haven’t named names in any of my comments in this thread, nor do I intend to.

I may well be stirring the pot but one thing I am not, however, is a liar.

**mbstude** · 03-20-2023, 12:59 PM

Originally posted by Jane Stinson View Post

Where that sounds like a fun meet and I would love to attend, many things we do differently one year seem to evolve into the standard…. I would hate to have an IM that raised expectations to an unsustainable level. Therefore, we could not use it for an International Meet but I do hope he has it anyway.

Jane

So you’re saying that you wouldn’t support a meet with all of the costs covered because it’d be too much fun? Interesting.

Therefore, we could not use it for an International Meet but I do hope he has it anyway.

We did, and we’ll do it again. See my full report in the February 2023 issue of Turning Wheels. Pages 39-43.

Announcement

SDC Meet & finances discussion

SDC Meet & finances discussion

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment