(posted on behalf of golfman)

Alabama MINI Club

Are you interested in being a member of THE Birmingham Area MINI Association? We need to meet and put it all together - constitution and by-laws, official meetings, election of officers, establistment of dues, too many other details to list here and some I cannot even think of. Will BAMA represent all MINI-owners in Alabama, to include Rocket City, Capitol City, and BAMA. As you can see there is much to discuss.

The reason for asking is that as the result of some member attendance at recent races at Barber, there is money ($20.00) due BAMA being held by the BMW club of Alabama. Naturally the BMW folks want us to be members of their organization to pay dues to their bank account, rather than have control of our own destiny. Step up and tell me what you want to do and when. Please contact golfman if your have an idea about when and where to meet. Uncleharo@yahoo.com

 

Well, I feel that we have now reached the critical mass necessary to put together a top notch MINI club in Alabama. I see new MINI's so often now that I know that it is really time to move forward and make a serious effort to organize a formal club.

First, I would like to offer my time and energy to help make our club something really special. I believe I would do a good job of organizing some events and would also be willing to help keep our website updated so that it is always current and functional.

Second, I think we need to reconsider our name. Although Birmingham is the population center of Alabama, the name "Birmingham Area MINI Association" is not inclusive of the rest of the state. I do think that the BAMA acronym is fantastic and I have been considering ways to change the name to include all areas of our great state.

How about. . .

Bama Area MINI Association
Bama All Mini Association (to include both classic and new Mini/MINI's)
Beautiful Alabama MINI Association (from "Alabama the Beautiful")

Lastly, as a current member of BMWCCA, I am curious what sort of support we can expect from BMWCCA if we take their $20 bait to form our club under their umbrella? Autonomy is a nice thing, but if we could benefit from their club liability insurance and their bylaws were acceptable, it might be worthwhile.

Let's all put on our collective thinking caps and discuss our ideas for how we want our club to serve the MINI/Mini community in our great state!

 

"Alabama MINI Club" has the acronym AMC, which is associated with a rather unsuccessful marque here in the US!

I think that Bama All Mini Association is a great, all-inclusive club name!


Clover

 

Out of those three, I would have to say that "Bama Area Mini Association" sounds the best. I do agree that it is time to create our own formal MINI club, however, as a BMWCCA member myself, I think it is best that we make our own, independant club.

 

I like the "Bama Area Mini Association" name too. Also I think I could be a great help with the website. My magic mini website was just link to from http://www.huntsvillecarscene.com/ and the guy over that site was tell me that he had went to www.bamamini.com and said there was things not working on the site. That is a little sad.

I think that the www.bamamini.com should be setup that if I goto it on lets say a Friday to see what was goin on over the weekend ,it would be posted there. I do realize that is hard to keep updated because I tried the same on my own website and it does take some time.

$20.00 is a great fee price.

I'm trying to get another run together for the April 23rd in the cullman area and I think that would be a good time for everyone to meet about this. The run would be a repeat of the christmas run with a few more roads added. Let me know what you think.

 

I think the $20 offered by BMWCCA is for the purposes of helping us set up our club under their umbrella. However, it may be the case that they will later want a cut from our club dues, making the $20 a less than beneficial gift. I could be wrong, but that is what I think is the case right now.

$20 or so for a club membership does sound about right for an independent club.

 

Lets see. If we have 50 members and $20.00 fee that is $1,000 for the club to use for one year. That should pay for the website, stickers for cars,etc. I think a website runs about $20.00 a month (more or less) ,so that is $240.00 a year. There is a guy in the club now that can do stickers for about $10.00. So that is 50 stickers for $500.00.

So $240.00 + $500.00 =$740 $1000.00-$740.00=$260.00 left for etc.

sorry I was thinking to much.

 

We can probably do the stickers a lot cheaper than that, depending on the size and complexity. Also t-shirt sales and other stuff like that can help keep the club well funded.

Please continue to "think too much' because we need a lot of thinkin' right now! :D

 

The only problem I see with having one big statewide association is having frequent meetings in one area for all. It may be hard for the majority from south Alabama & Birmingham to travel to monthly meetings in Huntsville & likewise for people in North Alabama to travel south for meetings.

Maybe it would be wise to keep the smaller area mini clubs (B'ham Area Minis, Rocket City, etc..) for monthly meetings & then have the smaller clubs band together & form one all inclusive Alabama club for dues, a website, etc. Then maybe have quarterly meetings for the big Alabama club. So maybe it would be like the Alabama Club with subchapters of the area groups??

I think it is very very important that a website be established & updated frequently. I have my own website based business & will be glad to volunteer my time for keeping a website up to date. We should be able purchase web hosting for $7.50 a month or less (for example startlogic.com offers very inexpensive web hosting, I am about to move my website over to them).


MOB-Minis of Bama
MIA-Mini's in Alabama
ALMA-AL Mini Association
AMA-Alabama Mini Association (only for those owners who are Doctors lol)
MCA-Mini Coopers of Alabama
AMCA-Alabama Mini Cooper Association
MCAA-Mini Cooper Association of Alabama


Brain dead now
Teresa

p.s...I am a new owner. Haven't met anyone yet. Just got my Mini 12/31/04. Have been wishing the club would get more active.

 

the only thing I don't like about using Bama Area Mini Associtaion & for the acronym BAMA is that the acronym is "BAMA" & Bama is again used as the word for the first letter. I like "Beautiful Alabama Mini Assoc" or maybe "Big Alabama Mini Assoc". Hmmmm what words start with "B"?

OK I'll shut up now.

 

boy Yucca, you really got things stirred up. We/you should have thought of this sooner. It is really good to hear all the chatter about forming a club and I'm sure as we talk about it more there will be even more ideas about how/why/what/when, you name it, but thank goodness there is some discussion now. I'm sure it will be something to talk about on the Safara Trip around the dinner table. What about having a monthly sit-down dinner somewhere so some of the issues can be surfaced and give everyone attending something to think about. We have tryed it a couple of times with reasonably good success. but I digress.

I like the idea of having a state association and then city clubs. The city clubs could set their own annual dues, but $5.00 of the local dues would go to the state association. The officers of the state would consist of the local pres and V-P with and an at-large member from each local club. Any monies collected during the year and not spent on club-sponsored activities would go to charity agreed upon by the membership for a Christmas gift. I like TT's suggestion about the local clubs having their own activites, but inviting the other locals to participate if they choose to do so. Each quarter a local would be responsible for hosting something for the other locals, considered a state association event.

I could go on and on about all of this, but through the generosity of other MINI clubs I already have the constitution and bylaws edited for use by the local/state associations. obviously there is too much detail to try to enter all of it here, so we have got to meet and discuss where we are headed and what we want to accomplish. regards HC

 

MCGA - Mini Cooper Group of AL
Alabama Mini Cooper Enthusiasts (AMCE?)
Mini Cooper Enthusiasts of AL (MCEA)
AL Mini Cooper Club (A=MC squared... I see a logo in there somewhere)

The travel issue is is just that.. an issue. I think that a quarterly state-wide gathering, with local (Bham, Huntsville, Montgomery...), more frequent, gatherings would be more practical. Ironic that a car club doesn't want to travel too far.

Ok, I'll stop.

Steve

 

Harold you sound like you have a good plan. I look forward to sitting down with everyone & hammering it out.


ACE-Alabama Cooper Enthusiasts ???hmmm

hope somebody's writing all these acronyms down lol
TT

 

I think it is a good idea and a little past due. An updated website would be one of the best things for a club and since it is a little tough to keep updated, how about a somewhat of a users website. What I mean by that is there would be sections that users update photos of drives. Certain requirements for format to keep it clean. Also, like the moderators here, have certain individuals have access to post news.

One other thing I would like to see is people start using these forums more often. Here in Huntsville we have a Yahoo group called RocketCityMINI's and it is very helpfull. Maybe a site could have a forum section or maybe Yucca could speak with Mark and see about subsections of the BAMA forum. I don't see a reason why people in Montgomery would want to keep getting e-mails about Huntsville stuff but sometimes it would be nice to know what is going on just in case they may be planning a visit.

One thing that I would like to see a little more clarified is how many members are in each city. I know we have just over a dozen registered to the Yahoo group here in Huntsville and from these forums I see several in and around Birmingham. What about Montgomery. I remember Brain from Montgomery but besides him, who else in not in the Huntsville or Birmingham area?

 

I must say I am very impressed with the thoughtful and encouraging ideas I am seeing here.

For the sake of everyone reading so far, I will sum up what I think we are beginning to agree on

#1) Create a state-wide association composed of smaller regional/city clubs

#2) Create an inclusive name for the state association, with regional/cities choosing their own name.

Example state-wide name: Alabama Cooper Enthusiasts
City name: Rocket City MINI's

#3) We need an effective and up-to date website. One with user updatable forums and galleries would be most effective. Order could be kept by keeping Event, news, and gallery posting privledges limited to current members with any non-members being able to browse the site and join the discussion forums.

#4) With growth and organization, we are going to have to address the issue of forming the club in an official and legal manner with properly elected officials. Details need to be hammered out, but we do have some bylaws from other established clubs to work from.

 

YAY a proper Sticky!

 

I'm in.

All great ideas. I agreee with Harold that we need a sit down pow wow to hammer out details. We have got to start somewhere, even if it's very small.

Let me know how I can help.

 

I just made it here. My name is Samir and I'm the owner and operator of www.huntsvillecarscene.com. I'd really like to see this happen too.

I think I may be able to help in this area. I use the same forum software as this site (vbulletin) and I think I have a lot of what you are looking for.

• Event posting on my calendar is open to anyone, but it is moderated, so nothing gets on the calendar without approval.
• News/Annoucements can be regulated by giving certain usergroups those privilges.
• Gallery posting is something I'm going to be adding to the site shortly. There is an add-on to vbulletin called vbGarage that is in use by many sites such as www.dsmtuners.com. This add-on allows you to store pictures of your car(s) and details of the car(s) including modifications, time slips, etc.
• The discussion forums I keep open to anyone, including non-registered guests, but that can be changed on a per-forum basis.

I would love to host something like this for the State club as it would provide traffic for me and a free forum for the club. I already host the official forum for the Mazda Rotary Car Club of Alabama as well as the Rocket City Mustang Club.

It is also possible to have portions of the site appear only for MINI club members. There are many features of the site that are like that just for me because I'm the owner.

 

Put me in for the idea of a totally independant-state MINI club, with state/regional sub chapters. I also think a club fee of $25+ is appropriate to support cost.

I also like the idea of "MOB" (minis of bama, birmingham) "Oh, no! The MOB!"

 

great ideas.i also prefer an independent club with periodic meetings. in bham we have tomata pie pizza that has been supportive of holding meetings there.

one club raises money by having 50/50 drawings at each meet. 5.00 ticket and half goes to the winner and half to the club. so far no dues either.
the local BMWCCA doesnt seem to do much but one track day a year. i cant see a big benefit by affiliating with them. the one in atl. has monthly autocrosses during the summer at least.
id be willing to help plot out some area twisties, like up on cheaha(ive not been up there)so we could have a variety of drives to do. local motorcycle clubs know a lot of them.
my 2C's

 

I am in for what any of you all decide. I tried starting some excitement end of last year and no one really seemed like they wanted to do anything. So if you guys can get something started and more of a motivator than I seemed to be, count me in for any help I can give.
Look forward to seeing ya at the DRAGON.

 

i know its a little early but last year we had a nice caravan to the dragon. we followed yucca who has a great route and left thurs. am. im sure some of us will do it again this year as well. cant wait!

 

Follow me? Last year I tried to shake you guys the whole time!

This year I am leaving on Wednesday (maybe even Tuesday), but I would be happy to give directions for my famous route that takes you through some nice countryside and enters the area through the Dragon. . . .

 

Hmmm, "The Dragon" trip sounds interesting. How many can we expect to go from Bham/BAMA? Lostics: lodging? Enough to keep busy for 3-4 days?

 

Click HERE to learn more about the annual MINI's on the Dragon event coming up in May!