Chip Lowther- Treasurer

[95SVTCobra]

Hello everyone! My name is Chip Lowther and this year I will be a sophomore Accounting major. I would like to run for Treasurer for MM. I am the one with the 1995 Mustang Cobra (that unfortunately decided to break before the show last weekend lol). I met many of you alumni last weekend at the car show and autox, and am really looking forward to meeting the rest in the near future!

MM has really influenced my first year here. I love the members, and the gatherings are always a great time! However, the communication breakdown and member interest has dwindled a lot this year, and we now have barely 8 people show up to meetings sometimes. This is a major issue that needs to be addressed next year.
As treasurer, there are obviously things that need to be done to increase MM profit and have more money to do fun events (such as karting, vans to VIR/Summit, etc). In years past we have always been scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to do events, and this has been a real issue.

To raise money, I suggest we do more apparel orders, and have more options. I know that in the car culture (and even people who aren’t into cars), many people have lanyards hanging from keys. Why couldn’t we throw the MM logo on some and sell them? It would be a great way to support MM and could get our name out there farther around campus than it already is.

I also liked the idea of Stadium/ Convo cleanups. If we could get 20-30 people to help, we could net $500 or $250 respectively for each event. We do one of each of those as a club, and there is a large chunk of karting for the year. We could even tailgate before the game and perhaps gather after the game to celebrate.
Another money making option would be a car wash. Personally I love to detail my car, and if we could help out the local community, we could be making an impact in the Harrisonburg area, not to mention getting our name out outside of campus.

This last year we very rarely had wrench days where we could come together as a club. I would love to see next year some MM wrench days like in the past, where we could all bond and help people out in working on cars. I plan on having a garage next year, and would be happy to let people use this garage if need be to work on their cars.

Those are just some starter ideas. I feel like the officers should communicate as a group to more efficiently manage the money this year, and a lot of the money should be put toward events where the students and alumni come together as MM. This year, the car show wasn’t organized until a couple weeks before, and if we were to get on that before winter break, we could effectively organize sponsors to bring in money and funds to make the show bigger and better than last years. The MM Facebook chat was good for the current students in the club, however the alumni were excluded and this needs to be addressed in the future to keep the alumni involved with the current students.

I have also thought about perhaps organizing an MM summer event. I know many of you aluMMni live in NOVA, which has a great event called Great Falls Cars and Coffee. If we could organize a weekend when many people could attend, would anyone be interested in having a small MM meetup in Great Falls one weekend to look at some cool cars? I have always wanted to go up there after seeing what Richmond Cars and Coffee has to offer. It would also be very cool if we were to do this on a Summit Point weekend, and thus make it a full weekend of cars and racing for MM, just like the show and autox was last weekend.

Overall, this next year needs to be focused on better planning, communication, and getting more people involved in track and autox. We need to be more proactive in getting and retaining members, and making them stay up on the forum to know when events are going on, not just relying on the Facebook chat/posts. I would love to see more gatherings, such as the Kline’s meets or Top Gear nights at someone’s place, or even a wrench day at the MM garage. This could keep us active as a club, and keep member interest as well at larger events, like VIR and autox.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Thanks!

[Riice Cooker]

Question about raising more money. If we can barely get 8 people to a weekly meeting for 30 minutes. How do you plan to get 20-30 to go clean trash after a basketball game? You might get some interest from the football game but someone in another post said its a pia to clean the stadium. I like the idea but I don't think you'll get the participation you're looking for. As far as more apparel orders, do you think people that already have apparel will order again? And we break even right now with apparel, if you bump the current prices up to make a profit do you believe that people will be turned off because of prices.

From what I can tell reading this on my phone, the rest looks good. Good luck and if you're elected I'll talk to you about taking over the account and all that fun stuff.


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[Senor_Taylor]

Anthony, I don't know if you have caught the vibes, but we have loved having you as treasurer. You may have been behind the scenes, but you got a ton of work done and were there for the club. Hopefully you can pass your knowledge to Chip if he makes it.


Also, unrelated to Money, we should look into more options for apparel orders. CCVT blows up out of the water with their shirts and jackets. Why can't we get on their level? I think we should bring back some older designs past MM crews have had. I've seen Maeng wearing a cool white long sleeved MM shirt.

I've heard a lot of interest in this shirt. Myself included. Or maybe it's just Dan rocks it too well.

[JPVA]

Anthony, I don't know if you have caught the vibes, but we have loved having you as treasurer. You may have been behind the scenes, but you got a ton of work done and were there for the club. Hopefully you can pass your knowledge to Chip if he makes it.


Also, unrelated to Money, we should look into more options for apparel orders. CCVT blows up out of the water with their shirts and jackets. Why can't we get on their level? I think we should bring back some older designs past MM crews have had. I've seen Maeng wearing a cool white long sleeved MM shirt.

I've heard a lot of interest in this shirt. Myself included. Or maybe it's just Dan rocks it too well.

Are there any shirts left? I want to buy one.

[Senor_Taylor]

Last time I heard, I think we had like one in small or something, but not this design. We got shirts very early in the year, so don't worry.

[Jake]

If we can barely get 8 people to a weekly meeting for 30 minutes. How do you plan to get 20-30 to go clean trash after a basketball game? You might get some interest from the football game but someone in another post said its a pia to clean the stadium. I like the idea but I don't think you'll get the participation you're looking for.

Stadium cleanup is something that MM has historically done at least once per semester. Basketball games are far quicker cleanup compared to football. I think you could get people out to do the cleanup, we always managed to.

[Riice Cooker]

I appreciate the comments Taylor.

As far as shirts go I have 2 large 2 medium of this years designs none of past years though.

[95SVTCobra]

Anthony, I don't know if you have caught the vibes, but we have loved having you as treasurer. You may have been behind the scenes, but you got a ton of work done and were there for the club. Hopefully you can pass your knowledge to Chip if he makes it.

I completely agree with this. Anthony you did a fantastic job this year, were at every meeting, and definitely worked very hard behind the scenes. As Taylor said, if I make it, I would love to sit down and discuss what it is you did this last year and how I could work to improve next year.

Question about raising more money. If we can barely get 8 people to a weekly meeting for 30 minutes. How do you plan to get 20-30 to go clean trash after a basketball game? You might get some interest from the football game but someone in another post said its a pia to clean the stadium. I like the idea but I don't think you'll get the participation you're looking for.

As far as more apparel orders, do you think people that already have apparel will order again? And we break even right now with apparel, if you bump the current prices up to make a profit do you believe that people will be turned off because of prices.

Excellent questions Anthony. I have noticed that we struggle with attendance to meetings. One way we could potentially get more people to participate in this clean up is to plan an event right after at someone's house and make it a fun filled MM night. I know cleaning a stadium would without a doubt be labor intensive, but if we could offer some kind of incentive to make people show up, it would go a long way to helping out with the more expensive MM events (such as karting) down the road.

As far as apparel orders go, if we were to switch up some designs, I think those people would order again. I agree with Taylor, the shirt that Dan was wearing at autox was a very cool shirt design, and if we could create others, we could potentially get more people to be interesting in ordering some more. Obviously, this might cost a little more and we might have to raise prices. However, if the shirt design was brand new, I think that we might be able to charge a little bit extra to offset this new cost. We could also throw in (depending on costs) a lanyard or a newly designed sticker (idea maybe? new colors) if they order more than one item.

Stadium cleanup is something that MM has historically done at least once per semester. Basketball games are far quicker cleanup compared to football. I think you could get people out to do the cleanup, we always managed to.

It would overall definitely benefit the club to have this money when we do karting or if we were to rent a van to go to VIR/Summit. It could entice many more students to go if it lowers the price even farther than it already is.

[Senor_Taylor]

However, if the shirt design was brand new

Tried this last year. The design on the shirt you have is the one that took me 6 months to get made. In the end, not everyone was happy with it. We're better to search through MM's history for ones already made. There are a TON of things from MM's history that have been lost. Cool events, shirt designs, sticker designs, etc. If we do some digging with the alumni, we can find them.

Did you know we have MM Zombie Response team stickers? Yeah, we do. We have like a million designs Scott Bradford has made over the years too. Plus all of the stuff Gerald made. Just look up the "New T-shirt design" thread and read through.

[Jake]

I think Scott did that t-shirt design, too.

Another round of MM ZRT stickers would be kickass.

[Sully]

The picture won't load so I can't see the cool shirt everyone's talking about. Some of my opinions. I feel like you have some good plans but one I'm not really a fan of is the car wash. I feel like car wash's barely break even or make much money especially in a college town. Just my opinion but I think that one would be a waste of time.

I think a new normal MM sticker could be a good move. The old one is a bit dated. If you do look into that aspect, please go with die cut as everyone prefers them and idk what it is and everyone argues with me and says it's the same but bigger, but the scale of the very current sticker makes it look bloated and hard to tell what the M's are. And I've seen it on contrasting colors (white on a black window on Paul's mustang) and it still seems hard to read. Fix that and you have my vote.

Now I'm so curious, what the hell is the shirt design everyone thinks is cool. Why won't you load?!?

Edit: it loaded. I already have a purple tee, a black tee, and a purple ls in that one lol.

Btw: if you want to make a little extra money and do like half the amount of work. We have a design that never got made cause people were offended by miata's or some shit. Idk where you'd have to go on the forum to find it but it was an awesome design that's just sitting there in the proper format ready to go.

[Senor_Taylor]

The one with the Miata on the apex of the turn? I have that design somewhere.

[Jake]

The one with the Miata on the apex of the turn? I have that design somewhere.

I'd rock it.

[Senor_Taylor]

As would I. The amount of child-like screaming and kicking I heard when I mentioned it at a meeting last year was enough to warrant a call to Nanny 911.

That said, I think we need to find a place that doesn't make us order 20 shirts before they'll run prints for us. It'd be great to be able to pick what shirts you want. I'd order every MM design we've ever had.









Gerald made these





Here's the shirt thread from last year. Things get real spicy around page 17. <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.mmsports.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11195">viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11195</a><!-- l -->

[*insertusernamehere*]

So the general consensus sounds like we want at least one new design or maybe a previous shirt. Sounds good to me. We will still need to push to clear out any stock we have, if we do. A plan can be put together over summer.


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[Jake]

I'm wondering if a lot of these designs could be uploaded to a Cafepress type of site, so people could order one-offs as they wanted them. Hell, I could get an MM dickbutt coffee mug if I wanted.

I'd just want the Cafepress site to be locked down so only MMers could see/order from it. Hmm.

[SlimKlim]

I would probably purchase an MM dickbutt coffee mug.

[*insertusernamehere*]

I was going for that idea as well. Setup an MM store and everyone just go there to get your orders. Some things we can maybe hand deliver like stickers or something but bigger things can be done through an online store. It just depends on how much the site keeps for themselves and how much comes back to us. If it makes prices too expensive. Then the olden way would be best i think.


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[95SVTCobra]

The picture won't load so I can't see the cool shirt everyone's talking about. Some of my opinions. I feel like you have some good plans but one I'm not really a fan of is the car wash. I feel like car wash's barely break even or make much money especially in a college town. Just my opinion but I think that one would be a waste of time.

I think a new normal MM sticker could be a good move. The old one is a bit dated. If you do look into that aspect, please go with die cut as everyone prefers them and idk what it is and everyone argues with me and says it's the same but bigger, but the scale of the very current sticker makes it look bloated and hard to tell what the M's are. And I've seen it on contrasting colors (white on a black window on Paul's mustang) and it still seems hard to read. Fix that and you have my vote.

Now I'm so curious, what the hell is the shirt design everyone thinks is cool. Why won't you load?!?

Edit: it loaded. I already have a purple tee, a black tee, and a purple ls in that one lol.

Btw: if you want to make a little extra money and do like half the amount of work. We have a design that never got made cause people were offended by miata's or some shit. Idk where you'd have to go on the forum to find it but it was an awesome design that's just sitting there in the proper format ready to go.

Thank you Matt! That helps out a lot. We will definitely have to look into the stickers, as I agree with you on those fronts. Taylor seems to have found the designs (people in MM offended by Miatas?!). If people are willing to buy these, they would make great shirts! I would absolutely rock them :thumbup:.

So the general consensus sounds like we want at least one new design or maybe a previous shirt. Sounds good to me. We will still need to push to clear out any stock we have, if we do. A plan can be put together over summer.

Sounds like we do need a new design, and the stickers need to be tweaked/modified to make them clearer to read from a distance. Maybe we could make some new colors? MM sticker with the tri-color bar colors from the BMW M cars after the MM///? Maybe American themed? I also like the idea of discussing this over the summer, as we could get everything all set up and planned for the upcoming year.

I'm wondering if a lot of these designs could be uploaded to a Cafepress type of site, so people could order one-offs as they wanted them. Hell, I could get an MM dickbutt coffee mug if I wanted.

I'd just want the Cafepress site to be locked down so only MMers could see/order from it. Hmm.

That would be awesome! If we could find a way to get the site locked down so that only MMers could see it, this would go a long way in making apparel orders and other items easier for the members and aluMMni both.

[JPolen01]

And we break even right now with apparel, if you bump the current prices up to make a profit do you believe that people will be turned off because of prices.




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I can't believe no one else has said WTF about this. If you are doing apparel orders and not making a profit you are doing it wrong. When Dan and I did the shirt (long and short sleeve)/pullover/hoodie order we pulled in about $250 profit for the club. Order larger volumes to drive down pricing if you have to, up prices, but for fuck's sake don't go through the hassle of doing an apparel order to not make any money.