Greetings to everyone in AFE Region 8.
This is the first newsletter of our new outreach program. The intent is to reach out to all AFE members and key industry supporters of our organization with news on what is going on with AFE at the Regional level, the National level and what the chapters in our region are doing. Our plan is to put this newsletter out every two months as a direct email and also post it to our Region 8 website at http://www.afe8.org/.
AFE Region 8 news
AFE Region 8 (R8) has five active chapters. They are Chapter 85 in Springfield MA, Chapter 74 in Worcester MA, Chapter 63 in Rhode Island, Chapter 33 in Boston, MA and Chapter 140 in New Hampshire. We are excited that there is interest to reactivate Chapter 119 in Maine. The R8 board will be working with Maine to set up a tour and meeting over the next month. We are also going to work on trying to get a chapter in Connecticut going again.
The executive committee for the R8 board met on October 21st and set a budget for 2020 and also set the dates for the regional board meetings thru the end of 2020. As far as the R8 budget is concerned, we have taken steps to control our spending to stay within our means. One step we took on October 21st was to open a bank account with Eastern Bank and begin the process of closing our bank account with Bank of America. Banking fees with BOA have reached $753 YTD at the end of September. Eastern Bank does not have any fees. We are also soliciting advertisers to post on our website at a bargain price of $300 per year. In addition, R8 will begin receiving a portion of member dues from the National office beginning in 2020. Our plan is with these revenue streams, R8 will be able to pay for the bulk of the maintenance of the R8 and chapter websites with each chapter only having to pay $500 a year for website support. The website fee to a chapter will be waived if the secure two advertisers to the Region 8 website for $300 each.
R8 is also going to begin soliciting nominations for the R8 Board of Directors (BOD). There are a variety of purposes for AFE to set up these regions. One is to provide a link between the AFE National office and the chapters. The second purpose is the region can provide continuity between the chapters and help with such things as chapter officer training, becoming and staying registered with the IRS, chapter startup financial support, assisting anyone who wishes to start a chapter and certification training. There are other secondary purposes for the region, but these are the big bullet points. Like the individual chapter BOD, the R8 BOD relies on members who are committed to helping AFE succeed and meet AFE’s mission. Within the next month, we will be putting out calls for nominations for the BOD. In addition to the R8 BOD members, each chapter is to have at least one, preferably two, chapter delegates who attend the R8 board meeting and report back the regional activities back to their chapter members. The region will not be doing a general solicitation for chapter delegates. We leave that task up to the individual chapters.