Thanks for the feedback guys.
Regarding your 'rant' Cameron - members are encouraged to give us feedback and providing it's constructive and not abusive it's welcomed. Your post doesn't really read like a rant but hear you loud and clear that you think monthly subscription 'stinks'
No decisions will be made on future funding until the democratic review later in the year.
The money is spent on maintenance and development costs. Web hosting used to be free. Now its several hundred pounds a year although I'm sure you'll agree it's very reliable. We'd like to invest in more robust back up facilities for the servers in case we have a catastrophic issue with the database. ( sorry I'm no tech so don't understand the details of this). We would like to (but as yet haven't been able to) develop the merchandising section. As the club is run by volunteers this is always going to be difficult as this element takes a lot of work.
One example - we ran a poll to see if members wanted a second manufacturing run of the A2OC 's line' badges. These are expensive to produce with a minimum order value. We invested in these following the poll - unfortunately not everyone who pledged to buy one (or two) did so.
There are projected costs for legal fees relating to formal registration of the club to keep us right with HMRC and we have had suggestion to register the club as a charitable trust which will further assure its future protection.
These are just a few examples, and you'll perhaps note in the recent club announcement that we have placed a hold on donations and seek suggestions for ways to invest the money in the club for the benefit of the members.
With regard to advertising, we did consider this option and it was debated in a 'membership consultation' available on the announcement forum. The consensus view were in favour of the current set up which avoids advertising and pop ups/ embedded links.
In reality, even though we have over 10,000 registered users since 2002, we only have some 500 or so 'active' users. A clean up of the user database is planned as a significant number of profiles are inactive and some users haven't logged on for several years.
We suggest a starting point of no posting history and inactivity for 2 years as a 'cut off' point.
The subject of money is always going to be an emotive one when people are used to getting anything they want in terms of information free from the Internet. The reality is that the club does cost money to run, and assure that it's protected. As the car ages gracefully and heads for classic status we hope to protect this friendly forum that promotes the enjoyment and preservation of this fantastic wee car.
All feedback and suggestions in support of that aim are gratefully received.