And now…BREAKING NEWS! from ACI International President Jenny Schnettler
I’m starting a new feature of our web page today! I will be sharing updates for our entire membership on what’s happening with your International Board of Trustees. This will detail some of the items discussed in working sessions, meetings, and conversations you will find informative regarding everything from motions we have looked into, new policies on the workings of the Club, and best of all, sneak peeks at cool stuff we are working on for YOU!
Today we had our 4th quarter IBT meeting. We have these four times a year where all of our Region Presidents and the Executive Council get together to look at project updates, hear reports from our Club’s Standing Committees, review financial data and look at budgeting, review the results of our International Rally’s final wrap-ups and hear about what’s on the horizon for the next IRs, check in with our Executive Director for the latest membership numbers and any new information from HQ, and debate motions up for votes. The final segment of our IBT meetings is a brief summary from each Region President on their rallies and exciting adventures which is of course why we love this Club so dearly.
Notes from today’s IBT:
All Region Presidents and Executive Council members have teamed-up to serve our Intra-Clubs as liaisons to the IBT. It is exciting to see this partnership which can offer so much more for inclusion of our Intra-Clubs with our Club leadership.
In just 11 days we are convening in Jackson Center, Ohio at our Club Headquarters (“HQ”) for our 3rd Annual Strategy Session. This 3-day event gives your IBT the opportunity to develop the long-range strategy for the Club. Also, we will be talking about cyber security, developments in technology, how to draft a motion, and we will have a brief presentation on the long view of our financial projections, as well as best practices for managing the business of this Club. We are excited to hear the latest updates from Airstream, Inc. with talks from both Mollie Hansen, CMO and Brian Melton, VP. It should be a productive time, and I will follow up with more details.
One of the most exciting things we spoke about in today’s IBT was the positive outcome from our 67th International Rally in York. Rally fees paid by our attendees pay for camping fees, all the facilities and lighting, sound, technology rentals, awards, security, entertainment, rally giveaways, ribbons, printed materials, supplies, swag bags with pins, commemorative rally badges, and probably a whole bunch of stuff I’m forgetting about. So when we have a profit at the end of a rally, it isn’t from our fees, it’s from the dollars raised from our AMAZING sponsors who have demonstrated passionate commitment to our Club and these rallies. We really want to tip our hats to the rally team for managing all of this! Here’s how I look at this…our International Rallies host about 12% of our membership. The money remaining after we wrap up all rally expenses, the “profit”, goes back into the entire club and thus benefits 100% of our membership. Something to be very proud of if you ask me!
We will be meeting on November 7th to start talking about our Caravan program. Now I have heard that there are rumors floating around that the caravan program is going to be jobbed out to third party consigners. NOTHING could be further from the truth! No. No. No we are not changing anything about how caravans are led. Our caravan leaders do a fantastic job taking members on adventures of a lifetime! All that we are looking into are basically 4 things that we see could be improved and that’s what we are starting to have discussions about. We have heard that these things have been causing challenges for quite some time, and it’s not fair to ignore them any longer. They are:
- Caravan sign-ups: They can be confusing, ambiguous, and for some folks, we have heard that they have tried to get on caravans for years and are never chosen for the popular ones. Can we look into ways to give every member the same fair chance to get chosen for a caravan? We will be looking into options for this.
- Wait-lists: This is a really complicated one; folks often have no idea if they’re going to be joining a caravan because they have no idea where they currently sit on the list. This has led to some people signing up for lots of caravans that are often running simultaneously just in the hope that they get selected to at least one of them. This clogs the system! Can we figure out a better system?
- Payments: Long before the advent of credit and debit cards, all payments were in the form of personal checks or cash. The lack of consistency and security can make this part of a caravan leader’s job very difficult. There are absolutely better ways to centralize payments and free the leaders from the responsibility of managing this by taking advantage of today’s banking products, such as debit cards. It may surprise you to know that there was a time when caravan leaders actually had members send checks made out to them personally and they ran all expenses through their own personal accounts! We definitely see the need to provide secure, transparent accounting for YOUR money!
- Reporting: One of the least favorite parts of leading any caravan is the drudgery of post-caravan reports. By streamlining forms and developing clear training for our caravan leaders, we hope to make this important component less of a challenge. We are just starting to look into the opportunities to overcome these challenges, and we ask for your patience as we start this important work.
My dream is to create platforms for our caravan leaders to have a simplified managerial process so that they can enjoy the process of taking new friends across this continent to share these incredible adventures with as many Airstreamers as would like to go. And, to dream a little more, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could each go on our own personal member portal on the website to see in real time just what we signed up for, how much we have paid, what balances are due when, and if we are on a wait list for a caravan, we can see exactly where we sit on that list.
This is possible with technology, and that brings me to the final note for today…I have appointed an interim Technology Director. As things keep becoming more complex and more sophisticated (ok…true confession – technology passed me up with the switch from Beta to VHS tapes), our need for someone with advanced skills is more evident than ever. Marc Nijdam has agreed to take on this challenge and I couldn’t be more grateful. It won’t happen overnight, but we all will be prioritizing improvements to the web site and expansion of our individual interfaces to improve the member experience.
So that’s it for now folks. You can watch the entire IBT meeting on YouTube. And as always, let me know how things are going in your neck of the woods!
Stay Curious, Travel Safely,
Jenny Schnettler
ACI International President
BRN#151
jschnettler@airstreamclub.org
