Is membership a Joke

[The Witzl]

Ben,

the club is incorporated in NSW - which makes it pretty difficult to expand and operate in other states, without a whole new round of incoroporation, which such more dong than the entire oxford st community combined.


Ive been on the board before, and i have to admit that what these guys do in their SPARE TIME, as a VOLUNTEER is pretty good. Granted its not the same service you might expect from your local coffee shop, but hey - THEY ARENT BEING PAID TO DO IT.


Its so easy to sit behind a keyboard and type out a bunch of harsh words - it takes about a nanogram of testicular material to do that - but it takes some actual commitment to volunteer your time to the Toymods car club.
Other than Ben here, i dont see anyone volunteering........


I must admit i was pretty disappointed at the lack of people putting their hand up to assist the club. Myself included. I attended the AGM and was pretty shocked at the low attendance.

And before someone points out the obvious... i didnt volunteer because i know what is involved with the job, and I know that i cant commit to that without letting the club and its members down.
Perhaps in the near future I will be able to assist, but not right now.

[greywolf]

What this thread has illustrated to me is not the lack of movement on the boards behalf in regards to merchandise, or even forum access. It's the fact that they have manged to bring together such a fantastic community and that probably 90% or more of us get the benefit of this community for free, myself included.

So much so that the next spare $50 I do get, I'll be joining as a financial member. Not for the merchandise but because the money can go to help maintain server costs, any expenses in regards to the software upgrade, and to just help support such a fantastic club that allows us all to gather and share our knowledge.

I can understand where both sides come from, and can only hope that what ever solutions are presented that everyone walks away happy. I'd hate to think that to try and please financial members and make it a more speedy service that the current board members find the extra work load unbearable and decide not to do it more. On the flip side, I do hope that new financial members are discouraged from joining by long waits.

[WiLo]

just throwing it out there but maybe the OP is possibly the first person to not have membership granted? seeing as he has said that he is only joining so he can have a sticker for his cars?

[Enigma-Penguin]

None of the following should be taken as professional advice and I'm not putting this forward as a solution to anyone's problems.

I understand people in other states want to help and understand that they can't, but a concerted organized effort by enough people might actually get something going. If there is enough interstate interest in helping with the day to day running of the club as a whole, you might consider registering the organisation with ASIC.

Company incorporations and business names are done at state level (I can see the NSW name registration listed) and if you wanted to do it each time it gets kinda tedious and you also get issues with similar/taken names in Asic's database. Registered companies come under the Corporations act 2001 and can operate around the country without the need for separate registrations per state. (so can ARBs aka registered bodies)

I used to work in Asic company compliance/corporate affairs, the process isn't too bad when you get down to it; ABN/ACN, Structure (not for profit, trust [requires a deed], partnership, public, private), Constitution(if you dont use replacable rules),Trustees/Officers/Member/Shareholders, PoB, Asic lodgements: financial statements, yearly reviews. Of all that most of it is a one time thing you'll have to deal with unless laws change with yearly review being the only reoccurring.

It's the initial cost that can be the real kicker, if you choose a good compliance company most of it is automated (eg: Panther corp or Reckon Espreon) but the cost can be ongoing due to review every year and costs for changing details (stakeholders, address etc) unless you want to lodge the forms yourself (which isn't hard); but I'd suggest letting the company at least do the startup. Basic startup costs are usually about 5-600$, so as I said; it would take a concerted effort from our community to cover the cost.

As long as you can nail down what structure you want to use, I think it could work rather well, at least compared to separate incorporated mini toymods in each state that can get up the numbers. If you get the interest I think you might get you would have more hands available to do the work. I understand its volunteer work and it's limited to NSW at the moment, maybe this would give you a larger pool to work with. At the very least I'd suggest investigating options.

I fully intend on joining this year myself and I hope we can sort out a way or speeding the process one way or another.



Edit: Just did a double check: I was thinking right Australian Registered Body was the registration path I was thinking, it's an extension of the not for profit structure and the suggested path for incorporated associations.

[greywolf]

I really like the idea that Enigma-Penguin has put forth. Toymods started out as state-wide membership, now it has members in every state and territory. If the board would be aimiable to the idea of nationwide incorporation, I'd be more than happy to donate some money to the cause (above what I'd pay for a yearly membership).

[TheToyman75]

Enigma,

Thanks for the info - If you get a spre chance could you PM the info to Lambolica. he is looking after all thinsg incorporation related at the moment and I'd like him to look into it for future reference.

The dream of us older Toymods members was always to have a true Australia wide club with a chapter in every state. The honest hurdle with that has been two key stages.

Hurdle 1 - Actually get the NSW house in order. Sounds easy but its soooo Not. Each year the number of people happy to help out on the Toymods Board dwindles. Its a time consuming role and if you take it and dont do your tasks the whole club suffers to some degree.

Being on the board has a constant time comitment requirement and incures a financial cost too. Board meetings, officials shirts and travel costs not to mention just time, time and more time are all worn by the Board member. The club does not pay them or even subsidise their memberships. So I am not surprised its a hard role to get people to fill.

We have been lucky to get people filling most roles in the past and some have done so better than others, its not uncommon for people to join and then ralise how much work is involved and then have them not re-run or bow out mid year.

Your probably saying - Why not give them free membership, why not offer financial incentive. The short answer is that if you need to be paid to do it, then you dont have the dedication we want you to have anyway.

Hurdle 2 - Protecting the Toymods Name. In NSW we constantly work hard at cruises, on the forums and at our events to try and ensure that the Toymods name is kept clean and not linked to the currently targetted Hoons groups or socially undesirable. The club has a good name and a sound social outlook. protecting that interstate means placing alot of pressure and faith in any chosen state representatives. The fact that these interstate representatives cannot easily attend month board meetings also means they are constantly behind onthe evorts and challenges of the club. As it is with Stitt based in teh ACT we struggle for a desirable level of communication. Its only that he has been around so long that it works at all.

[oldcorollas]

Re: interstate clubs.

1. there is NOTHING stopping any of you interstaters from starting your own club. it doesn't have to be financially/legally/responsibility linked to toymods, but it can still involve all the people who post on toymods...
think of it as your own cruise club.... heck you can even start your own forum to discuss local events and chitchat and whatnot...
It does not have to be a direct part of toymods, but can be a spinoff. you can even make your own name

2. there are ALREADY many interstate clubs.. many are toyota dedicated clubs, with toymodders already in them. some were started by toymods people as an interstate club (re:1)

3. generally, if there are people driven enough to want to start a club, and run it, then they have already started it, as evidenced by the other clubs out there.

given the current number of financial members, and the attendances... the interstate factions would have like 10 or 20 members and struggle to get 5 to anything..... not enough for meetings, to plan events, to fundraise etc...

it's all well and good to whinge, but it seems the "do-ers" are already doing...

[Lambolica]

Enigma,

Please send me some links for the National non-for profit organisation set up, I'll re read your post once I get things sorted out.

Rod has pretty much spelled out the concerns with going nation wide. However as a starting point, we may be able to come up with a way of benifiting interstate members some way or another.

The other thing to realise is the board are active avid members and we also have cars. and like most of you who attend events like dyno day spend a fair bit of time in the weeks leading up to dyno day preparing. Case point is the Classic Celica Cruise this weekend, 4 of the Board members have Celicas and would like to attend in them. I'm hoping to have mine blue slipped by Saturday to attend Sunday, after Sunday My other one comes back from the panel shop, and I'll be prepareing for dyno day and hopefully the broke cruise.

There is definatly inefficiency in the current system, and the board is waiting with bated breath for the new forums to happen as the new forums have the potential to automate such things as memberships

[Kyosho]

One thing I noticed...
You guys carry paper work around and take it to the meeting...

We're in an electronic era!

Now I'm guessing you all vote on whether membership should be given or not... So: Change form to be electronic, it gets sent to a special "area" for you guys to view, as each of you gets time to "view" the membership during your daily/weekly chores, you click "yes or no"
After majority is up, it emails off who ever is in charge (Kirsty I'm guessing atm) with all of the details...

That just basically removed a 3 week wait if you can cut it down to say it taking one week for you to log in and click "yes or no"

Please, expand if the whole membership paper work going to a meeting is for a different reason.

[oldcorollas]

Please, expand if the whole membership paper work going to a meeting is for a different reason.

traceability.....

[Enigma-Penguin]

Sent Lambolica.

[Kyosho]

traceability.....

I work in IT.
We have many large contracts, for all sorts of things, we need signatures and everything for all sorts of things. Do you know where I look when I need to trace a job? My computer.
And no, we don't have those "cool" things the courier drivers have to sign.
But everything is actually MORE easy to trace on computer, then it is on paper.
Dates, times, who did it, where from, ALL traceable, and all you need to do is log in.

Traceability is not an excuse for keeping it on paper and holding it up 3 - 4 weeks.

[oldcorollas]

as long as you have enough backups and a consistent backup regime
will you donate say.. two portable HDD's to the cause?

and then you have 100 people sending $50 to the bank account with the note "toymods membership fee"

[RONA]

IIRC Toymods can't receive electronic payment due an issue regarding the bank account.

[TheToyman75]

Its also part of the constitution That all members FORM have an original signature onthem from the applicatant.

As part of being a registered non profit organisation we also have to keep records, our membership forms and renewal formsa re part of this too.

And to be honest - Toymods wil never finance a digital storage sytem that has backup system reliable enough to count on as 100% available. In the last decade our electronic records have been wiped or lost 4 times ! The paper forms dont give this issue.