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Re: Is there anybody out there?

Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 3:11 pm
by littleblkdog
_JohnnyCache wrote:Just seemed liked a fitting post for the thread :whistle:

Is There Anybody Out There?
An excellent choice and an anthem of my childhood. Of course, youtube asked me how old I was when I clicked thru. Guess I will have to listen tonight.

Re: Is there anybody out there?

Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 3:18 pm
by littleblkdog
Trainbug wrote:Looking back through the forums I find little information about 2017 or 2018. A few meeting minutes but no Treasurer's Report for 2017 or 2018 nor any request for an audit for those years which is called for by the By-Laws. I searched the MGS News section for these items, if they are posted
somewhere else can we have them moved to that thread.

Trainbug, thanks for your contributions to MGS. I can't speak for 2017, we will take a look around for it. As for 2018, the 2018 treasurer wasn't as involved as she wanted to be for personal reasons. The 2019 treasurer (lpauriddle who commented above) was just recently able to get ahold of the books and get his own access to the bank accounts.

When Paul was taking over, your name and Cindy's was the name I gave to him to make sure he got off on the right foot. Because we didn't have access to the books since the outgoing treasurer was unavailable we didn't ask for an audit at that time. Once Paul has a handle on things, we will definitely be having an audit as required by the bylaws.

Re: Is there anybody out there?

Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 3:23 pm
by littleblkdog
AL's Guide wrote:I read through all the posts and noticed that there was a perception that I was attacking LBD. Not at all. Phil, you are working your hind end off. And doing a good job but you are not alone. I will help if you delegate some responsibility. So will many others. Just call and say "Hey can you go check on this for me, just don't tell anyone and report back this weekend". It would be done. You are not alone, many of us want MGS success.
Jerry, thank you. I don't take it personal and I do share a good deal of your frustration. If we need anything out west, I will definitely give you call.

Re: Is there anybody out there?

Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 5:13 pm
by littleblkdog
Calvertcachers wrote:As a long time, proud member of the MGS, former Officer, Director and GW Coordinating member, we did leave the MGS with plenty of funds to last a long time!!! I served the MGS many years and worked thousands of volunteer hours, serving an organization that is very near & dear to my heart.
Sue, thank you for your service to MGS. You probably don't remember when we first met at Sideling Hill during the Fall 2012 picnic where you offered me a pathtag. I definitely appreciate your singular contributions to MGS and geocaching at large. I know you had a strong hand in creating some of the aspects of geocaching that are near and dear to my heart. I am also a proud member of MGS.
Calvertcachers wrote:I too have been concerned about the financial health and overall well being of the MGS. I had questioned and requested former officers to publicly post minutes, monthly & yearly treasury reports, etc... Unfortunately, my requests were not honored.


I can't speak to what went on before but you haven't asked me. Our new treasurer is still getting his feet wet but we will provide a report for 2018.
Calvertcachers wrote:I also noticed over the past few years, what appeared to be a wasteful use of MGS funds. Such as minting the CAM coins in multiple metals. This is a total waste of money and we only need one CAM coin!! AN anniversary edition could be an exception.


While you can debate the need for coins in multiple colors there is NO additional cost. Surprising as it may be there is ZERO COST for additional finishes. I guess that wasn't the case when you were involved. I was surprised as well but this has been the case for all the coins I have been involved with including the 15th Anniversary, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Sales of the LE coins nicely offset costs of the Standard CAM completers coin. We paid $3015 for 400 coins at 7.54 a piece in 2019. It is a pretty nice design too, I am very excited to show it off, I hope you like it. Thanks to Diamondback7 for the excellent concept and especially thanks to Mrs. Bocco for bringing it to life! If you find 10 CAM caches and go to the picnic your coin is free. If you can't make the picnic, sorry, but we will sell one to your for $10. For the LE coins we sell them for $15.

As you can see, each LE coin (MADE AT NO ADDITIONAL COST) pays for one SE coin. I don't have the exact inventory on hand as I type this but we sold about 80 LE coins last. At 80 coins that covered nearly 40 percent of the SE coins cost given that we handed out around 220 SE coins in 2018. We sold several more at later events as well. In the end we probably came close to covering about 50% of the SE coin costs with LE sales. And we have more on hand to sell. In 2018, despite their contributions to CAM my officers paid for their own CAM coins as well.

Calvertcachers wrote:I also noticed business cards that were printed, fancy name tags, attire, etc.... I do not know for certain these items were paid for out of MGS funds but one officer told me it was. In the old days, IF we needed a business card for a meeting, we would just make and print a few using Word. And in our day, we were having big meetings in Washington, DC with members of Congress, Senate, NatGeo, NPS, and many more, in an effort to lay the groundwork for the acceptance of geocaching. I would love to see a complete and thorough audit of the MGS going back 4 - 5 years.
In both 2018 and 2019 we had 250 business cards printed to had out. The cost per year was $14. They have all the names of the officers on them. We probably could have printed our own but in me experience home printed ones don't look as nice or as professional. This practice dates back several years.

In 2018 we had 5 nametags made at a cost of $41 dollars for five officers. For 2019 we had three additional made. They are not trackable. We agreed as officers that they did help when engaging with the public.

As I understand it some officers in past years did buy, with their own money, some MGS apparel. I believe some t-shirts were made that officers paid for themselves. In 2018 and 2019, NO MGS money was spent on apparel for the officers. I know that I personally bought at least two t-shirts to wear to events including CAM apparel as did other officers. You didn't ask but sales for CAM apparel barely break the threshold to place an order. We talked it up last year but had little interest. I personally bought a shirt to make sure we would meet the threshold and that is my intent this year as well.
Calvertcachers wrote:I also questioned and have a concern over our non-profit status. Has the proper yearly paperwork been filed? We had worked hard years ago to gain this status and I would hate to see it lost.
Yes, the paperwork for 2017 was filed. And it is our intention to file for 2018. (*after posting edit to correct the dates)

Calvertcachers wrote:As for the website, it should be the primary foundation and source of information of the MGS. However, social media is an important outlet and as long as posts drive folks back to our website, I am OK with it.
Agreed. That has consistently been my practice. Since the beginning of the year I have posted on Facebook 12 times (by my quick count). All but one of those pointed to an MGS event on Groundspeak or the website. As I told my officers, I don't want to loose the website and I am unwilling to do "facebook events". Hopefully the website is not already lost due to lack of MEMBER particpation. I will say that nearly every geocacher who has come along since I joined in 2011 has gotten more of their information from the Facebook than the website. But I continue to point people to the website at every opportunity.

I hope we all can remember that the officers are volunteers. I have a job as do all the other officers. I hope we call all assume "noble intent" going forward.

I hope to see you soon at an MGS event. Unfortunately we haven't crossed paths since CAM 2018. If we do, lets take some time to talk more indepth about the issues we face as a Society going forward.

Re: Is there anybody out there?

Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:47 pm
by The9Searchers
And AL's Guide, just so you know, there are more Maryland Geocaching Society members out there that know you than there are those who do not. And as a former MGS officer and director, I want to thank you for all you've done for the MGS and for caching as a whole through the years.

Re: Is there anybody out there?

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 6:22 am
by zekester
I am not on most social media sites, so I can't speak comparisons of utility or postings with any authority. That being said, anyone who runs an organization these days will tell you that you need to be on multiple sites to truly engage a full demographic of the public. As the president of two other organizations, I can attest to that. Fully engaging all social media outlets is a full time position (in many cases more than one) for most for-profit organizations; most major non-profits approach it the same. The MGS has a PR officer, and I would think this would fall under their duties and responsibilities. But the MGS is small, and run by volunteers. Perhaps a little expectations management is in order here.

As for the changing demographics, that I can speak to, as I am one of the people to whom LitteBlackDog has referred to, I have been fading away. Go look at my caching stats. At our height, Simon and I were at 1.98 finds per day in 2014. Thus far this year, we are at .0089 per day, i.e. one find thus far, not counting the events we've attended (only our own, I am afraid. Begs the question of why we are not caching. Here's some thoughts:

1. Competing interests:
- As president of the Frederick Chess Club, I run formal tournaments on two Saturdays a month and an informal gathering every Wednesday. Note that I live 45 minutes from Frederick.
- I organize and attend regional gatherings of an international post card exchange organization.
- I also have two other hobbies that occupy a significant amount of my time.
2. Caching changes:
- One of the most intriguing aspects of caching for me is trackables. With the proliferation of micro and smaller sized caches, and the enabling of discovery logs, the movement and tracking of trackables has been significantly diminished, as has the pleasure of this activity. After being spammed to death by Groundspeak with discovery logs, I finally moved their email to spam. Net result: I did not get key messages regarding cache maintenance on my own hides. Working on recovering from that now.
- The proliferation of puzzle caches is another down-check, as that sort of cache has little appeal to me.

You will note that none of the reasons my participation has diminished anything to do with the MGS. People have lives outside of geocaching, and priorities shift. For some people, one hobby cannot fill all of their needs. That's just the way it is.

If one is truly concerned about the state of this activity, or the state of the Maryland Geocaching Society, I would argue that the best thing one could do is dedicate more of one's own time to promoting either one or both. While I never acted as an officer of the MGS, I spent a significant amount of my time promoting their activities when I was more active in the hobby, and I still do at the events that I host. I tried to find one thing every day that I could do to make it better. maybe one day that was a new hide. maybe one day that was a great log entry. maybe one day that was a recommendation to an officer. maybe one day that was maintenance of one of my hides. Maybe that was attendance or scheduling of an event. Maybe one day that was taking a new cacher under my wing, or teaching someone about a new aspect of navigation or GNSS.

If every cacher did that, the hobby would grow. But the reality is that only a handful of cachers in the state do that, and they are few in number, and overburdened in ways you cannot imagine. Those people, the dedicated core of caching in Maryland, they are the current and former officers and directors of the Maryland Geocaching Society. If you want the hobby and the organization to be bigger, badder more, then step-up and help make it so.