As Chairman of the MCAA Membership Committee, I’d like to submit the following report to the Board. Since our 2009 Mid-year Meeting, we have continued our commitment to grow the association’s member base and at the same time retain the highest possible renewal rate of our existing members.RenewalsThe MCAA has just completed its renewal cycle. With just about $567,000 brought in from this past year’s renewals, we fell short of the $606,000 target that was budgeted. We’ve kept memberships active for 12-13 companies that have told us they will be paying their dues; however, they simply needed more time. They will account for an additional $17,000 (bringing the renewal total up to $584,000). We are confident that we will get most if not all of these funds collected. Several key factors that affected what was budgeted for & what was actually collected had to do with a couple of key Chapters dropping and/or adjusting their payments, various other members moving down from one dues level to another, and just the numbers of contractors who are no longer in business.New MembersFor the budget year 7/1/09 — 6/30/10, MCAA has had 36 new members (YTD) join the association accounting for approx. $26,230. As of December 31st, 2009 our numbers showed that we’re up $5,000 in new member dues (above where we were during this same time last year). Our members have been instrumental in allowing us to achieve this and it’s a very encouraging sign. As we continue to take a more active role in approaching the suppliers and other mason contractors to join the MCAA, it’s expected that these numbers will continue to climb.Group Challenge UpdateBack in October 2009, we set up a committee challenge with the emphasis on signing up as many new members as possible before the 2010 Convention. We set a lofty goal for the group to bring in 18 new members and for that, the MCAA would treat the membership committee to a Las Vegas experience (an outing to the Las Vegas Gun Range). We also built into this challenge a goal for individual reward. Any member who was able to sign up one new contractor member and one new supplier member would be treated to his/her choice of either a $100 casino credit or $100 spa credit to be enjoyed at the hotel in Las Vegas. As of this report date (January 15, 2010), we did fall short of our group goal but we were able to sign up 10 new members for a total of $7,110 in additional revenue. Also, we want to acknowledge that two of our committee members did earn individual rewards; Alan Johnson (IMS Masonry) & Don McCauley (Falls Church Construction).Convention GoalWe’ve gotten commitments to have sufficient MCAA member coverage in our booth throughout the duration of the show. Our members will be assisted by our greeter again this year. It’s her job to help us slow down the show traffic and get them into our booth so we can talk to them about the benefits of joining the MCAA. We will also be taking raffle entries in the booth to win a free round-trip airline ticket aboard Southwest airlines. That should also help draw some traffic to our booth. The Membership PowerPoint is complete and we will be running it in our booth during the 3 main days of the show. Stop by to take a look at it. A copy of it will be available to everyone at a later date (We will use this to schedule town hall meetings & supplier get-togethers in the future). Our goal this year will be to get at least 10 new members to sign up for an MCAA membership. Last year we were able to get 9 new members to join and we believe we should be able to surpass that.Old BusinessWe are in the process of developing a Mission Statement for the Membership Committee. It will be forwarded to the board for approval shortly.We have discussed the follow up procedure to be taken when new members join the association. The MCAA office will schedule the call to be made 6 months from the date the new member joined. The call will be made by the current MCAA member that referred the new member and the Executive Director (2 calls). If there was no referring member, then the call will be made by the E.D. alone.