Report of the MCAA Membership Committee

Words: Donald McCauley

2012 Focus Points

The Membership Committee is excited to be implementing our biggest recruitment effort in years. With the help of Spec Mix, we are offering new members at this convention the opportunity to purchase a two year membership for a flat rate of $1,500.00. That rate will be good for two years in the MCAA. The twist on the deal is what they get in return. The first 25 companies to sign-up as new members will receive $1,500.00 plus in return in the form of goods from supplier firms and the MCAA. The staff has said they have fielded many calls before convention and are confident that we will sell out the 25 new member slots for this deal. Right after that deal is full, membership at the show will be discounted 40% for all new members (suppliers will get the 40% off from the start). We expect to recruit a fair number of suppliers as well.

One other very exciting thing we are looking forward to is our identity on Wednesday. Everyone who has registered who is a member of MCAA will be given a shirt to wear on Wednesday. They are special MCAA shirts. We also had special jerseys made for the Board and staff so that people would be able to easily identify them and hopefully ask them questions about the jersey and be directed to our member tent to become a part of the organization. One thing is for sure, with our members wearing the shirts, we should have no problem getting the word out about MCAA.

The committee has been busy working with staff to help identify which members of the organization are union and which are open shop, The sole purpose of looking for this information is to make union members aware of some new activities the MCAA has undertaken on their behalf through our union committee. This committee has been very active this past year trying to build bridges with the union leadership and also in working on pension reform issues.

Dues Numbers to Date

As of this January the MCAA has brought in $15,710.36 in new member dues. Of these 17 are mason contractors, 3 are students, 2 are national associates and 2 are Regional Associates. We have budgeted $38,000 in new dues and expect at least $20,000 in new dues to come from this year’s convention. If that happens, we will be on pace to exceed our budget for new dues this year. So far for renewals, we are at $392,763 and expect another $10,426 in monthly payments and have commitments for another $9,400 for this year. All that being said we have commitments which will bring our renewal dues to $412,558.00, about $2500 short of our budgeted $415,000. Renewals have been slower than usual given the current economy and the good news is every company has been contacted multiple times about renewing. For the few that have said they would not be renewing this year, the reason by far has been the economy. On a final note, the full time membership director Bob Birdsell was let go in September of this year. There are plans to bring a part-time membership person on staff shortly after convention. The full-time position is being shifted to another department (Education).
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