Last month we explored how to get a user group off the ground. This month let's talk about what you can do once you have your group started.
As we discussed before, a user group can be a fairly informal thing. All you really need is a regular place and time to meet, and people willing to show up. Once you've done that, you have a group, and nothing more is really needed.
But what about things like officers, newsletters, membership dues, and other things like that? Do you need those things? The answer is no, not really, though any of them might be a good idea. You can have a user group without any membership dues, without any officers, without anything at all except folks who want to get together to have fun and learn about computers on a regular basis.
Most groups will find that after a while (especially if it grows to a size much bigger than a dozen or so folks) officers such as President, Vice President, and Secretary are helpful.
Membership dues? Well that's up to you. When the club is a small affair, they're really not necessary. When it grows you may soon find that membership dues are needed to pay for things like refreshments, a place for the group to meet and eventually, for things like blank disks for the club library (if you decide to have one), advertising (if you decide to do any) and so on.
How much to charge in membership dues is again up to you; I've seen clubs which charge as little as four or five bucks a year to as much as forty or fifty a year. Given that a club is a volunteer affair, you should carefully look at what your expenses should be over a year period and charge something that will be sufficient to pay for that and no more.
However, once you do start charging money, you're almost certainly going to have to formalize your club officers, if you haven't done so already. Once you start taking in money, someone has to be in charge of keeping track of the money, and that person will have to be responsible for what happens with it. So if you've reached the point where you're charging membership dues, you really should have the members of your group get together and vote for at least two officer positions: President and Treasurer.
It's important to note that you don't need anything more formal than that; all that has to happen for all this to be legitimate is for everyone in the group to generally recognize the officers as legitimate. You don't have to run out and register with any government agency or anything like that. So long as everyone recognizes who the leaders, the people of responsibility, are, you've got all you need.
One other thing you might want to consider is legal incorporation of your group. Incorporation gets your group a legal status you can't get otherwise. With articles of incorporation, you can do things like open a bank accounts and transact other forms of business in the and club's name that you can't do with an unincorporated group (without incorporation, one individual would have to be responsible for club debts and whatnot).
Incorporation also provides a certain amount of legal protection for the officers if something bizarre happens. For example, if the disk eject mechanism on a computer you're using to demonstrate software at a meeting suddenly gets out of control and starts ejecting disks at hundreds of miles per hour, injuring spectators, the club could be held responsible. If it's incorporated, then the and club corporation will be in trouble, but if not, then the and individuals who hosted the club meeting are more likely to be to blame.
That sort of thing is, of course, extremely unlikely. There's not that much that can happen that would really require incorporation. Nevertheless it is a form of protection, and can be convenient once the and club starts handling money on a regular basis.
If you want to incorporate your group, all that's required is to find a lawyer and pay whatever legal fees are necessary. This will vary from state to state, and a big part of whether you decide to incorporate will probably depend on how much it costs in your state. It can be as little as a hundred bucks or so to a couple of thousand, depending on where you live, so investigate this carefully.
Okay, whether you're incorporated or not, or have officers or not, once you've got a regular meeting time and place and people showing up, you've got your club. The next thing to do would be to start planning activities. I'll start with some suggestions on that score next month.
One last thing for those of you who have user groups or are planning to start one: Another thing you'll want to do is register your user group with SNUG. And here's that info again, for those of you who missed it last month:
What is SNUG?
In recognition of how important user groups are for many people, Softdisk has started a new program called SNUG -- the and Softdisk Network of User Groups. SNUG is not a user group, but rather, a program for user groups to take advantage of. User groups can "register" with SNUG to receive special discounts and other offers to their members from Softdisk -- starting with a special 20% discount (on top of any other discounts we might be offering at any given time) on one-year subscriptions to any of Softdisk's publications. This is for any member of a SNUG-registered user group. There will be other special offers too; free subscriptions for user groups to give away as door prizes, contests, user group event calendars, and more. We'll use this column each month to talk about the SNUG program, and also to talk about various issues and ideas that affect user groups and their members.
To help promote user groups, Softdisk will also regularly publish the names and addresses of SNUG-registered groups in order to promote them to its subscribers. So the user group helps promote Softdisk, and Softdisk helps promote user groups. Hey, pretty good deal, eh?
Registering your user group with SNUG costs nothing. All a group has to do to register is call Softdisk Customer Support at 1-318-221-8718 and request a user group signup kit. There's no cost and no obligation.
We encourage those of you who already subscribe to Softdisk who also happen to be user group members to encourage your group to join SNUG. It really doesn't cost anything, and it's a great way both to promote your group and to get some great stuff from Softdisk for the group. So talk to the officers of your user group, tell them about this program, and have them call Softdisk at 1-318-221-8718 to request a free user group signup kit ASAP!
This column is still in its infancy, like the SNUG program itself. We'd very much like input and suggestions for this column from you user groups out there. We'd love to reprint articles and other information from your own newsletters, so if you're interested in having us do that, please let us know!
(.txt)