Bud Meade

At the Board of Directors meeting on April 25, it was my privilege to accept the position of Chartered Club Coordinator. My reasons for accepting were that I sensed that the Board was committed to supporting the Chartered Clubs. Also, I  believe that strong, healthy, growing Chartered Clubs are critical to the continued success of the BMW MOA.

            It has been a busy few months. I have attended rallies, both large and small, contacted numerous club officers and members, solicited submissions for the Ace of Clubs section of the ON, joined one of the newest Chartered Clubs (Shawnee Area Riders Association), assisted in the Chartered Club Leadership Summit held at the 2009 Rally in Tennessee as well as leading the Chartered Club President's meeting.

            The quality of Chartered Club volunteers is impressive. The amount of volunteer time give to the organization is invaluable. The results are priceless.

            The first Chartered Club Leadership Summit on July 15 was a result of an idea by Director Sue Rihn-Minke to have an event which would be oriented towards providing training, support and encouragement to Charter Club leaders. In a short period of time, Sue developed the event, solicited volunteers to assist and to present, organized the logistics and made it happen. It was my privilege to assist in this effort and to learn from Sue as she has had years of experience which she graciously shared.

            For those Charter Club leaders not able to attend, as well as give some insight into next year's event, here is a summary of what happened.

            The Summit was conducted in the grade school and used the gym for the opening session, lunch and wrap up session. The breakout sessions were held in various rooms in the school building adjacent to the gym at the National Rally site.

            While there was an announced cut-off for registration, in reality we encouraged attendance and took registrations at the door. This willingness to accommodate late minute participants was appreciated by those who did not make the announced deadline.

            Our keynote speaker was the recently deceased Mike Traynor, Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation and Ride for Kids founder. His organization depends heavily on volunteers to conduct the many Ride for Kids fundraising events held throughout the country. He was a life-long motorcycle rider and related very well to those in attendance. In addition to giving many excellent suggestions, he made a point to recognize the efforts made by those in attendance in their support of Charter Clubs. In addition, he reminded the attendees that BMW MOA also recognizes and appreciates the many hours they volunteer during the year towards the success of their local clubs. Special thanks go to Vince Winkel for suggesting Mike as the keynote speaker.

            After the keynote address, the attendees had three morning breakout session to choose from: Volunteers-Dealing with difficult volunteers led by Marc Souliere; Club Logo-Design and working within the new guidelines led by Jon Tessler and Burn Out-recognizing it, avoiding it and dealing with it led by Mike Traynor.

            The group then reconvened in the gym for lunch. Before lunch was served, I led a group exercise to encourage attendees to get to know new people. As they entered the gym, different color sticky notes were given which matched the color on various tables. Each person was asked to interview the person across from then and then tell one interesting fact. The table with the most interesting fact got to eat first. Much talking and laughing ensued. The winning fact regarded a Canadian rider stopped at 160 KPH and the results of the answer she gave for speeding.

            After lunch three more breakout sessions were available:  Improving Community Awareness-"Watch for Motorcycles Campaign" presented by Jerry Childers; Legal issues faced by motorcycle clubs and the officers of them presented by John T Schomisch, Jr. and Event Planning-A round table discussion presented by various club members and BOD members.

            At the conclusion of the afternoon sessions, we reconvened in the gym for a wrap up session, collection of evaluation forms, drawing for the door prize (a ventilated, black leather, armored riding jacket) and presentation of the Beemer U© hats.

            Sadly, we recently learned that Mike Traynor passed away in mid-September after a brief illness. Mike will be missed greatly by BMW MOA members as well as the greater motorcycling community.

            The evaluations forms included many positive responses and a desire to have another Leadership Summit on the Wednesday before the start of the Rally in Redmond. The evaluations also include a lot of positive suggestions as to how next year's event could be even better.

            At the President's meeting held on Saturday afternoon at the Rally, the issue of communication with the Charter Clubs was one of the main topics of discussion. Dave Swider, former BMW MOA President and Ray Zimmerman, BMW MOA Executive Director were in attendance and provided insight and answers which I was unable to address.

            The current communication process: Mailings from BMW MOA headquarters is costly in terms of both staff time and materials. The idea of having an efficient, cost effect method of electronic communications was discussed. Ray Zimmerman committed to having BMW MOA IT staff develop such a system and have it implemented by the end of August, 2009. As promised, the system became available and all clubs have been mailed written instructions with examples. One of the most important benefits of this system is that the Charter Club's can, on their own, decide who should have access to this system. Multiple Charter Club members can access the system in real time, which eliminates a "contact person" to have to decide who the appropriate person is to receive the information and then manually forward documents at Club expense.

If you have not read the August 2009 MotoSafe column in the ON, I encourage you to do so. The BMW MOA Foundation has generously offered to provide no-cost training to Charter Clubs. This training could be successfully used at your winter meetings. Roger Wiles, from the Foundation, is very supportive of Charter Clubs and is looking for other ways the Foundation could provide support and training. I hope that many Charter Clubs will take advantage of this offer and, if you find it helpful, would be willing to provide written feedback.

            If you haven't done so, I would encourage your club to write a submission for the Ace of Clubs column in the ON. It is a great way to highlight club members and activities as well as recruit new members for your club.

            As always, I'm here to serve the Charter Clubs. If you have questions, concerns or suggestions please contact me at .