MACA Board Meeting Minutes
April 2nd 2017
Panera, Cambridge
Minutes prepared by Bob Messenger
President Nathan Smolensky called the meeting to order at 12:34 p.m. Present were Vice President John Sadoff, Treasurer Bob Messenger and Directors Edward Chiu, Paul Arond, and Oleg Poliannikov. Director Jeff Caruso arrived at 12:38 p.m. and Director Steve Frymer arrived at 12:39 p.m.
The board approved the minutes of the January meeting by a 5-0-1 vote.
Treasurer’s Report
Mr. Messenger presented his report for November 2016 to January 2017, with General Fund net income of $5,659.34 for the quarter and $6,638.38 for the fiscal year to date May 2016 to January 2017; special funds net expense of $998.18 for the quarter and $1,008.24 for the fiscal year to date; $87,623.56 total assets; $155.00 liabilities; and $87,668.56 total fund balances. Mr. Messenger pointed out that the large net income for the quarter was partly because of annual transfers from the Life Membership Fund and the Prison Fund to pay for Chess Horizons being mailed to life members and prison inmates respectively and partly because of Chess Horizons expenses which were incurred in the fourth quarter and therefore were included in the report for the third quarter. Chess Horizons revenue and expenses are now being reported on a cash basis and there is no longer a Reserve for Chess Horizons Expenses liability.
Budget Committee Report
Mr. Messenger presented the proposed budget for the fiscal year May 2017 to April 2018 (FY18). Mr. Smolensky proposed amendments which were accepted by unanimous consent of the board.
MOTION 0417-1: Move to approve the FY18 budget as amended (Smolensky/Caruso). PASSED 7-0-1.
Revenue:
Memberships and subscriptions $6,500.00
Transfer from Life Membership Fund $1,140.00
Transfer from Prison Chess Fund $3,100,00
Adult tournaments (net) $2,000.00
Scholastic tournaments (net) $1,200.00
Donations (not including tournaments) $200.00
Other revenue (interest, labels, etc.) $45.00
Total revenue: $14,185.00
Expenses:
Chess Horizons (1 double, 2 single issues) $6,700.00
Player travel $2,500.00
Special projects $1,000.00
Promotion $250.00
Education $300.00
Election expenses $50.00
Administrative expenses $1,100.00
PayPal service fees $1,400.00
Insurance $725.00
Miscellaneous expenses $160.00
Total expenses: $14.185.00
Tournament Committee Report
Mr. Messenger reported that the Massachusetts G/60 Championship would be held on April 23rd and the Massachusetts Open would be held on Memorial Day weekend.
Scholastic Committee Report
Mr. Frymer reported that the last two tournaments of the scholastic year would be the Hurvitz Cup on April 9th and the Massachusetts Girls Championship on May 7th. Mr. Messenger reported that the 4th Spiegel Cup Qualifier held on March 5th had 95 players and net income of $275.02, and the Spiegel Cup finals held on March 19th had 53 players and a loss of $1,131.10.
Membership Report
Mr. Messenger presented the membership report for April: 217 adults, 464 juniors, 202 life, for a total of 883 members; 7 affiliates, 1 complimentary, 5 library, 26 subscriptions, 13 exchange, 396 prison, for a total of 448 non-members in the database; grand total of 1331 current in the database. He also presented a report showing membership trends since 2013: 854 members in May 2013 vs. 883 in April 2017; 328 non-members in May 2013 vs. 448 in April 2017; grand total of 1182 in May 2013 vs. 1331 in April 2017.
Election Commission Report
Mr. Caruso emailed an Election Commission report to the board before the meeting (see below).
Education Committee Report
Mr. Smolensky reported that there had been further discussion with the Medford Public Schools about the Mass. Early Education Teacher Training Initiative.
Publications Report
Mr. Smolensky reported that a new issue of Chess Horizons should be coming out within the next month.
Promotions Committee
Mr. Chiu emailed a report to the board before the meeting. He expected this to be his last board meeting as he is going to graduate school outside Massachusetts.
MOTION 0417-2: Move to thank Edward Chiu for his work on promotions (Messenger/Caruso). PASSED BY ACCLAMATION 7-0-1.
MOTION 0417-3: Move to authorize the Elections Commissioner to destroy the ballots from the 2016 election (Caruso/Messenger). PASSED 7-0-1.
The meeting adjourned at 2:04 p.m.
Elections Commission Report emailed by Jeff Caruso:
Report of the Elections Commission
April 2, 2017
New voter registration closed on February 28. As of that date there were 86 voters registered online, and 9 paper-ballot voters.
The nominations period closed on February 15. The following candidates were nominated:
PRESIDENT
NATHAN SMOLENSKY Somerville, MA (incumbent)
VICE PRESIDENT
JOHN SADOFF Somerville, MA (incumbent)
TREASURER
ROBERT MESSENGER Nashua, NH (incumbent)
CLERK
ANDREW HOY Mansfield, MA
DIRECTOR (8 positions)
PAUL AROND Lexington, MA (incumbent)
DMITRY BARASH Brighton, MA (incumbent)
JEFFREY CARUSO Concord, MA (incumbent)
STEVEN FRYMER Lexington, MA (incumbent)
OLEG POLIANNIKOV Sharon, MA (incumbent)
TIFFANY WANG Boston, MA (incumbent)
STEPHEN DANN Worcester, MA
LAWRENCE GLADDING Leominster, MA
FRANCIS JOHN HOGAN Boston, MA
ROBERT E. KING Amherst, MA
NICHOLAS STERLING Needham, MA
STEVEN WINER Belmont, MA
As in previous years, candidates for a given office are listed incumbents first in alphabetical order, followed by the non-incumbents in alphabetical order.
Candidates were advised of the need to have MACA membership through June 2018. Five candidates whose membership was not already paid up were notified on February 22, and all of them extended their memberships as required.
Candidate statements were solicited from all candidates. Ten candidate statements were submitted and posted in the Chess News section of masschess.org.
The commission decided to use electionrunner.com as our election platform this year, and have approved the online and paper ballot design.
The projected timeline for the election is as follows:
April 24: mail out paper ballots
April 30: send out electronic ballots
May 24: voting deadline for online ballots
May 26: voting deadline for mailed paper ballots
May 27: voting deadline for hand-delivered paper ballots
May 27-29: publication of results
Respectfully submitted,
Jeffrey Caruso, Chair of the Elections Commission
Promotions Report emailed by Edward Chiu:
I am devoting this report on our e-mail marketing efforts. We are now a full year into our e-mail targeting efforts. We started breaking our full membership list into segments (adult, junior and out of state) to ensure that our total number of e-mails totaled less than 2,000 (Mailchimp is no longer free once our list grows over 2,000). We now have a total e-mail distribution list of over 1,400. This includes current members and former members who do not opt out. Our targeting efforts have ensured that over half of our distribution list open e-mails about MACA activities (e.g. adult tournaments, scholastics, Chess Horizons, elections, membership engagement etc.). Our unsubscribe rate is under 1% per e-mail sent, which suggests our current and former members want to continue to hear from us and don't feel harassed by us. As our activities and resources grow, we can definitely do more in the future. We now have another established tool for the organization to reach our member based.
We have come a long way from the days of Bob sending e-mails from his personal account. As I reported two meetings ago, our e-mail, social and website news section are aligned and consistent to ensure members receive the same communication regardless of their preferred digital channel. While this has helped our branding, our e-mail efforts have also saved time overall by leveraging a variety of templates that we customize for individual campaigns.
Edward Chiu
Board Member
Prison Chess and Living Memorial Chess Fund reports emailed by Steve Frymer:
Prison Chess Comm.: this week we shall reach the
16,000 figure of chess magazines mailed to prisons
in the last two years. dr. dom cangelosi of baton rouge
has assisted in this effort.
thanks go to howard goldowsky
for overseeing a prison visit on 4 march. cornel osadea,
bill michael, steve frymer and a friend of howard joined
in this effort. the president of the prison's chess club sent
a very nice thank you note to us.
Living Memorial Chess Fund: a grant went out to a school
in northfield mass. we're happy to assist western mass. schools
whenever possible.
steve f.
prison chess coord.
lmcf coord.
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