Attendance: 36 members

The monthly meeting was called to order at 8:05 pm by Vice President, Dino Perez.

Past Events – Memorial Service for Caroline Twist – 18 CMGC members were present at the memorial service celebrating Caroline’s life, achievements, and contributions. Caroline Twist passed away mid-January after a long illness. John and Caroline were early members of the CMGC and strong supporters for many years.

Upcoming Events – See details in the Driveline or on the Website of the many events available for club members in the near future.
02/28/10 – Swap Meet – The 14th Annual Swap Meet will be open to all European sportscars and motorcycles. This is a major fundraiser for the club to subsidize the club’s yearly activities. Club members are urged to assist and to participate in this event. A volunteer list was passed among the members tonight to fill remaining vacancies. Jim Evans noted vendor participation entries were higher this year that at this time last year. 84 of 100 vendor spots are currently occupied.

CMGC year-end audit - Nicolas Nichols provided audit assistance by reviewing the club records for the past year and reported that the financial information presented for the Chicagoland NG Club is in good order.

Annual Business Meeting
(Brief synopses of the meeting high points follow in the below meeting minutes. A packet of submitted documents can be made available upon request to Secretary@chicagolandMGclub.com)

2009 Summary – Jim Evans
Scorecard for goals itemized last year:
    Resolve Driveline delivery problems
        Achieved
    Expand interest in eBay program
        progress made
    Finish financial plan (includes more than budget)
        Good progress made
    Evaluate web site issues for advertising
        Policy decision made
    Improve Driving Program participation
        Some progress made
    Continued improvement to monthly meeting programs
        Achieved
    Investigate regalia alternatives
        Achieved
    Not anticipated but achieved:   club presence on Facebook

2010 Initiatives – (Dave Peterson)
    Strengthen Driving Events – both planning and participation
    Maximize benefits of both Facebook and web site
    Encourage use of on-demand regalia

Membership report – Victor L’Heureux
Membership has been stable for the past two years with 39 new members joining the CMGC in 2009. Our attrition rate has been 30-35 per year. Prior to the 2010 Membership Renewal campaign the club had a membership of 303 members.

Library report – Wilbur Mennell
In calendar year 2009 we added ten (10) books, two (2) videos and three (3) workshop Manuals to the library. This is in keeping with the goal of having one new item each month. Expenditures this year were $188.54, or $1.46 under our budget of $200.

Website report – Barney Gaylord
The most notable recent change on our club web site ChicagolandMGclub.com is that there has been about 50% drop in visitors this past year. Although this has been cyclical during the year – higher traffic in summer than winter – this year the traffic was flat. There were some interesting traffic patterns. It seems that people like to visit our web site 2 or 3 times more on Monday than other days of the week, and they do so in a big way from 6 to 8 AM. It looks like a regular morning coffee eye opener to see how the club is doing to get your work day started. There is also more traffic during the first few days of the month, which I presume means some of our club members are reading the newsletter on line when it is first available.

Driving Events report – Seth Jones
In this past year we had many tours and quite a few rallies, but only two autocrosses (done in cooperation with the AHCA Chicago chapter). On the whole the competitive events seem to be struggling. Tours gain in popularity all the time and seem to have the largest attendance. Some of our accomplishments the past year were:
- Standardization of the guidelines for Driving Events
- Reimplementation of event dash plaques

Driveline report – Bill Reece
This has been a very exciting year with the Driveline. The first two months of 2009 we were plagued with delivery issues. These issues were resolved with the help of the Postmasters of various postal centers and distribution centers.
Goals for 2010:
    -Obtain more member involvement by showcasing their cars in the inside front cover.
    -Investigate electronic delivery to affiliate clubs instead of printed version
    -Investigate adding additional pages and offset cost by increasing small advertising
    -Take advantage of color printing in a redesign of newsletter layout.

eBay Parts report – Dave Evans
Parts sales through the web site page were improving steadily in calendar year 2009, the first full year of sales through the web site and eBay. Last year concerns about the program involved response rate from the club web page ads and the difficulty of shipping large items. Ebay and swap meet sales account for the majority of the sales volume. 30 items were sold in 2009 via eBay. For all sales methods, expenses are very low since shipping costs are borne by the buyer.