Club progress

Are we interested in following the path that most other clubs have followed? Most, but far from all, clubs have taken the path of registering with larger organizations such as FAAS, the Federation of American Aquarium Societies. Although a legitimate club may exist without FAAS registration, the simple act of registering with them brings the advice they can give a startup club about how a club can go about establishing itself as a legitimate club and then reporting what it does to the FAAS. The FAAS site also contains articles that would help any new club get its feet off the ground and get rolling. As is the case with almost anything, financial considerations come into play fairly early on and some of the practices followed by other clubs might make us more successful. If nothing else, this web site, CITAC.forumotion.com, has a finite cost to allow itself to be maintained. Speakers, outside of our own expertise, meeting places and other items also cost money to obtain and some of their fund raising suggestions might also be valuable to us. Some examples of costs would be speakers like Mike Helwig speaking on almost any subject. A significant cost can be involved in getting someone like that to a club meeting.

I have spoken with Phil Nixon, president of CAFE, and he is willing to support our club with advice or simply answering our questions, but someone who represents the CITAC club would need to contact him. I am also a member of CAFE and have found that the Sailfin store is willing to support that club in a mutually beneficial fashion.

I suspect that a local shop would also find it in their best interests to support CITAC in a similar fashion to Sailfin by admitting that an active hobby club that supports fish keeping also ends up supporting their business. Let's face it, any club that adds to the local interest in any hobby contributes to the ultimate earnings of a shop that caters to that hobby. At CAFE we enjoy a minor, 10%, discount for members as a part of Sailfin's support, but the club members spend enough at Sailfin to offset that and also encourage other people to join the club with the inducement of that same discount. The end result, for Sailfin, is that they see increased purchases at their shop. The club and Sailfin both end up winning.

We are already registered with FAAS. We will also be listed in all the major aquarium magazines.

I have paid for the website and a friend of mine hosts it for free. The forum site is also free.

I would assume at some point we will begin to have membership requirements including dues, but I think we need to get a few more people interested.

Sam at Marine Aquatics has said he will give us whatever support we would like. Not really interested in aligining with Premium but that decision will be up to Mark.

I'm trying to get the Pantagraph do a story on the group but they are too busy simply pasting AP stories into the paper instead of doing any real reporting.