Management

Topics:

Getting a Section Organized
Running a Successful Section
Related Documents

Getting a NAR Section Organized

Now that the organizational meeting is set, you should have a number of people coming. The question that is probably foremost in your mind at this point is what to do at the first meeting. First of all, if most of your prospective members are minors, make sure you have an adult present. An adult advisor helps to keep the meeting from getting out of hand. A parent, teacher, or local hobby shop owner can often be “drafted” as the adult advisor. If the majority of the people present are not familiar with the hobby, give a brief explanation of what it’s all about. A number of props can be useful here: slides, videos, actual rockets, catalogs, copies of Sport Rocketry magazine, NAR literature, etc.

First Meeting

The first meeting is a time to explain to everyone what you want to do and get them enthused about the idea. You need to build a solid base first. Top off the first meeting with snacks and an informal discussion session. Have everyone introduce themselves and tell the group a bit about their rocketry experiences, what they expect from the club, etc. Don’t burden this meeting with lots of bureaucracy about by-laws, etc. or people who just want to fly rockets with friends won’t come back! Wait until the second meeting before beginning to tackle these jobs.

Second Meeting (And More)

The second meeting should be held about two weeks later. This is the one where the real business of formally starting the Section should be worked out. Don’t let too much time elapse, or some people will lose interest. Remind everyone by phone, e-mail, or post card a few days before the meeting. By now, most of the “merely curious” will have lost interest and the group that attends the second meeting will be ready to start seriously writing by-laws (rules that govern the organization and operation of the club) and will have had a chance to think about the problems facing the club discussed at the first meeting. You should have a secretary writing down the discussions and resolutions of this meeting.

By-Laws

The following are the major divisions of the by-laws of most rocket clubs. Some people may think that by-laws aren’t needed, but they can save a lot of arguments and hurt feelings later on. After you’ve formulated the by-laws, have everyone vote on them before formal adoption. See the file below in Related Documents for a set of sample bylaws for your use. These are meant to serve as examples only, and not intended to be followed verbatim. Your bylaws should apply to your situation. After you have your bylaws written up and voted on by your membership, feel free to send a copy to the Section Activities Chairman to review (not required).

Set an agenda to cover the following topics:

Name of the Section
Purpose of the Section
Membership — i.e. who can join
Dues and payment schedule
Schedule of regular meetings
Officers needed
Schedule of elections
Regular committees
How to amend the bylaws

Name

You need a name for your Section. While important, don’t take too much time on this. Many Sections use acronyms, like the “Centreville Rocket Society” being referred to as “CRS.” Also Sections often include the name of their town or locality in their title. You are certain to have lots of fun coming up with a name you all like. Take suggestions from those present, conduct a straw vote, and put the top two or three names up for consideration at the next meeting. If you do come up with a name that leads to a catchy acronym, be sure to check the list of already-chartered NAR Sections to see if anyone else has already chartered under that name or acronym; the NAR prefers not to have two Sections with the same name or acronym (it’s not out of the question, though).

Purpose

The official purpose of the Section is important to you and to outsiders. Outsiders, like park districts and local authorities, want to know that you will provide community benefits. By mentioning safety, education, and community service in your bylaws, the community leader will see you as an asset. Besides, conducting classes or demos can be fun for your members.

You’ll probably want to keep the purpose as general as possible in keeping with the aims of your club. Don’t make your purpose so specific that it’s impossible to live up to it or that it excludes too many people’s interests.

Membership

Membership is critical. Will you accept only rocketeers from your town? Your county? Only NAR members? Will there be an age limit? All these questions need consideration. Most NAR Sections allow any NAR members in good standing to be members. Some larger Sections allow non-NAR members as well — but remember that you can’t count non-NAR members against the minimum required to charter nor are non-NAR members protected by your Section insurance.

Dues

Dues provide revenue for your Section and should be collected from all members. The amount must be set to satisfy two conflicting requirements. First, you may need funds to operate a range store, build range equipment, and/or print a newsletter. On the other hand, you need to keep dues low enough so that as many interested people as possible can afford to join. Some Sections put regular dues in their bylaws, and allow for special assessments for special projects. Some have innovative sources of revenue other than dues, such as range store sales, food sales at launches, income from commercial demonstrations, and so on. If your dues are high, try to spread the cost over a period of time, to lessen the burden on each member. For example, you could charge $1.00 per month instead of $12.00 on the 1st of January.

Meetings

Set a regular meeting period and a quorum limit. Most clubs meet monthly. Meetings can, of course, be held more frequently than the bylaws call for, but should not be held less frequently. The quorum limit is important and establishes the legality of any action taken by the club. You should also include provisions to ensure that all club members have had adequate notification of the meeting. These are standard provisions in non-profit organizations’ bylaws and good, common sense. Include such provisions in your bylaws, too.

Officers

Officers are the chief administrators of any club. Their duties should be spelled out in the bylaws. Most clubs have a President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer. Some clubs have a single person serve in the Secretary-Treasurer role. Typical officer responsibilities are:

President – runs the meetings and is the chief administrative officer of the club.
Vice-President – assists the President and serves in their stead when they cannot function for any reason.
Secretary – keeps membership lists, meeting minutes, and handles correspondence and official paperwork.
Treasurer – collects dues and other fees and pays bills.

By spreading the work out over several people, no one gets overloaded.

Elections

Regular elections should be established in the by-laws. Due to turnover and simplicity, one-year terms are virtually universal among rocket clubs. Making the first meeting of the year the election meeting keeps the interest up during the winter months.

Committees

Committees are a Sections means of getting work done. Different Sections choose to define and staff different types of committees. Small clubs or those first starting often do not have enough members to make up committees. Here are some common ones many Sections use:

A Launch Operations committee keeps track of the club launcher, PA system, and other flying range equipment, ensures that it is available at club launches, and ensures that launches are conducted safely.
An Activities committee is charged with organizing non-launch events such as meetings and social events and with promoting and publicizing the club.
A Newsletter or Website committee is in charge of the club’s communications and makes sure that information is put out on time with interesting and useful content and club event news.
A Competition committee establishes rocket contests, secures awards and prizes and makes sure all contestants are informed of the results.

The people most interested in a particular committee’s activity are the best choice to put in charge of that committee. When they’re interested, they do a better job. Their enthusiasm can be catching! When you see a committee person having fun doing work for the Section, your members can’t help but have fun along with him. When you set up your committees, make sure they meet your needs — you should choose committees that make sense for your Section.

By-Laws Amendment

You must provide some means to change or “amend” the by-laws. What seemed like a good idea at the start may not work out once you get started. Change the by-laws by a regular procedure to fix these minor mistakes and adjust to changing circumstances. To prevent hasty or foolish changes, the amendment procedure should be fairly difficult. For example, “the amendment must be approved by 3/4 of the members present at each of two meetings held at least five days apart with written notice to be given to all members of the meetings and the amendment.”

Use the sample by-laws posted in the Related Documents below as a source of ideas. Feel free to modify and adjust them as your needs require. Just remember to be fair and forthright in your Section’s bylaws.

Running a Successful NAR Section

It takes work to make an NAR Section succeed. Getting one started is one thing, and the material above gave you some guidelines on how to do this; keeping it going for a sustained period of time is another. The two most common reasons for Sections becoming inactive are (1) loss of their launch site; and (2) volunteer burnout. The business of finding and retaining a good launch site is described in the “Launch Site” section. The “NAR Section Management Guide” in the Related Documents below is an excellent tutorial on the many aspects of running a Section that can be successful over a sustained period of time.

Finances

Most Sections have at least some regular expenses that are the recurring cost of doing business, and new Sections in addition have the challenge of getting together the equipment to run launches. Recognizing the value of Sections to the organization’s health, the NAR does not charge its Sections any fees for chartering or for launch site insurance, and it offers cash grants to Sections (described below) for one-time costs such as purchase of launch or safety equipment. This still leaves a challenge for Sections to figure out how to finance their recurring costs. In doing this it is important to budget, manage, and account for income and expenses through a single point, the Section Treasurer.

It takes money to run a Section and all its associated services and activities. Money to do this usually comes from four places:

Membership Dues
Launch Fees
Sponsorships and/or Donations
Sales of something that the Section or its Members provide (concessions at a launch, etc.)

Dues are usually the primary source of a Section’s income. They need to make up the difference between all of the creative other ways the Section can find to raise money and the Section’s annual operating costs. Dues in the range of $10-25 per year are common, with a lower figure for younger members.

Launch fees are also common, often in the range of $3-5 per day or $1 per flight (for model rocket launches) to considerably more for Sections that run big high-power launches with large amounts of expensive range equipment; normally Section dues-paying members pay lower fees than others, or none at all.

Donations can range from merchandise provided by vendors, individuals, or community businesses that is then sold to members via an annual auction or regular raffle, to actual cash donations from local civic groups for Sections that do significant public youth outreach, or a donation jar at launches for the public and spectators to contribute.

Other sources of income can include sales of drinks or food at launches, or resale of popular rocket merchandise for Sections without onsite vendor support at launches.

Expenses for a Section are typically dominated by the cost of acquiring and maintaining launch range equipment. However, payment of a fee of some sort to the landowner for the launch site is also common, and these fees can range up to well over $1000 per year depending on how many people use the site and how often launches are held. Other expenses may include a meeting room (if no public facility or private residence is available or suitable); launch site support costs (e.g. porta-potty, grass cutting, etc.); printing a paper newsletter or paying for a domain name and host for the website; and supplies or publicity for public outreach.

Accounts

When the Section begins to accumulate any significant amount of money, then it is probably time to set up a checking account to hold it and permit accountable disbursement of funds. Normally banks will let non-profit groups set up accounts without too much hassle or expense. Sometimes a copy of the NAR’s tax-exempt status letter from the IRS may be required. The document providing this is in the Related Documents below. Sections are not authorized to use the NAR’s Employer ID Number (EIN), they must get their own from the IRS if one is needed for the account. Make sure that the account has two or more authorized users and check signers, so that if someone moves away or loses interest in the hobby, etc. the Section’s money isn’t trapped with no way to get it out.

As the Section grows, and particularly if you are going to have the capability to have people join online through your website, then you will want a system to be able to collect money (dues) online as well. Typically this is PayPal. To set up a PayPal account requires an e-mail address and an associated bank account. Create a convenient email address such as “treasurer@myrocketclubname.org” from the control panel of your Section’s website. Test it to make sure you can receive email at that address. Then go to https://www.paypal.com/ and create an account using that email address. Link your bank account to your new PayPal account. PayPal will deposit a small (i.e. less than a dollar) amount into your account. Log onto your bank’s website to view your account and discover how much was deposited by PayPal. Feed that amount back to PayPal as verification that you have access to the bank account. People can log onto the paypal.com site and send money to your treasurer@myrocketclubname.org email address and the money will show up in your PayPal account. Many rocketry vendors also use PayPal so the money can stay in your PayPal account. You can log onto PayPal to force the money back into your bank account if you need to write a check directly from your bank account.

Section Grants from the NAR

Recognizing the importance of having Sections be successful on a sustained basis, the NAR Board of Trustees established a program of Section grants that provides funding of up to $250 per Section per year for safety equipment, launch equipment, and marketing activities, in that priority order.

Please note that only Public Sections are eligible for the grant. Since membership to NAR members is limited, Organizational and Private Sections are ineligible.

For safety equipment, Sections may apply for all or part of the cost of firefighting equipment, rope line, windsocks, first aid kits, PA systems, launch rails, and other equipment deemed by the Section to be useful for improving safety.

For launch equipment, Sections may apply for all or part of the cost of buying or building launch pads, launch controllers, and other ground support equipment.

For marketing activities, Sections may apply for all or part of the cost of brochure design and printing, banners, signs, advertisements, website fees, and other costs of publicizing the Section.

To apply, simply fill out and submit the Section Grant Online Application.

There is no deadline and the grants are awarded yearly on a continuing basis.

IRS 501(c)(3) Letter for NAR (1963)	PDF	May 27, 2014, 10:05 pm	60 KB
NAR Section Management 101 (Bundick)	PDF	May 27, 2014, 10:05 pm	80 KB
Recruiting & Retaining Club Members (VanMilligan)	PDF	May 27, 2014, 10:05 pm	43 KB
Sample Bylaws for an NAR Section	Other	May 27, 2014, 10:05 pm	49 KB