8906-R1_MSA_November2024_Newsletter

tion with club members and the public. We post events, such as trail work days and club meet ings, and we try to post regularly during the season about our trail conditions. We receive many messages via Facebook Messenger from club members and people with questions about riding in our area. We took down our Instagram page as we did not have enough content to manage it, and we didn’t receive any leads from it. Depending on who you can get to manage your web presence will determine the tools and content that can be used to get the word out about your club. Corporate Records I found it helpful to create a Corporate Record Book (on paper and on Google Drive) so that I could easily find information about our club when it was requested from the state or banks. I was able to get some of the documents from a local attorney the club had previously used and to download other information from the Maine Secretary of State website for a small fee. Here are some of the helpful documents: • Articles of Incorporation. This document is the record filed with the Maine Secretary of State to create the club, which should be a Maine nonprofit corporation. It will contain your official corporate number and date of incorporation. If the club made any amendments to its original filing, obtain copies of those amendments. • Bylaws. The club should have bylaws that were developed at the time of organization. They are not filed with any legal authority so may be harder to track down. The bylaws govern how the corporation will be run. If you can find them, read them carefully as they tell you what you can and cannot do. If you can’t find the original bylaws, it’s a good idea to have some drawn up, espe cially if you wish to file for an IRS determi nation letter as a federal nonprofit. • Employer Identification Number (EIN). You should have an EIN as part of your corpo rate set up. You will be asked for this num ber from the state to get your grant money. Banks also require this number. • IRS nonprofit designation letter, if applica ble, and any tax filings. • Forms W-9 for the state of Maine to pay out your grant money. • MSA Officer designation form updated annually. Meetings You are required to hold one meeting per year for the purpose of electing officers for the next year. You may find additional meetings useful. Our club holds meetings between September and April. All are welcome to attend our meet ings, but in reality, only the club officers usually attend. We have an agenda for each meeting, which is distributed to the officers in advance. Standing items include a Secretary’s report, Treasurer’s report, Trailmaster’s report of trail work and needs, Head Groomer report of equipment and grooming matters, and any new business or landowner issues that have come up since the prior meeting. We keep minutes of each meeting, which are saved on our Google drive. We also keep a running Action Items list to continually follow-up on open tasks.

ators. This is not a reimbursable expense, but it is necessary given the expense of purchasing grooming equipment. Our operators also feel more protected from liability by having this additional insurance. Landowners When we took over the club, there were no records of who owned the land that our thirty miles of trails crossed. The network had been set up with a handshake with the property owners. We started with pulling the tax maps for the towns in which are trails are located and drawing our trails out on those tax maps. Working with town employees, we identified the owners of all the tax parcels that our trails crossed. We created a spreadsheet, which includes the name and address of the land owner, their Tax Map / Lot, the location of our trail on their land, whether it’s a municipal trail or a club trail. Annually, we send a form letter to each prop erty owner thanking them for the use of their land and providing contact information for club members who can address any issues they may have. The state also suggests alternative methods for obtaining agreement from land owners by either entering into a written trail agreement or creating a list of verbal agree ments between club members and landown ers. Whichever method you choose, you need to provide an updated list of landowners to the state with your grant requests. Membership Our club has historically had very few mem bers, and we had no information on the past or existing members. The MSA will send out preprinted membership cards for people who joined the club the prior year. We started with the MSA information and created another spreadsheet for members. We have a tab for individuals and families and a tab for busi ness members. We also maintain a list of past members who did not rejoin so as to have their MSA membership number. Each member is assigned an MSA number. If the person does not join every year, you will not have a pre printed card. In order not to duplicate records at the MSA, you will need to provide their prior membership number from your records. Annually, we mail out a form letter to our prior year’s members enclosing the preprinted card from the MSA. We also post regularly on our Facebook page requesting new members and include a link to our website, which has a membership tab and the option to pay via PayPal. When a person or business joins the club, a portion of the club dues is provided to the MSA ($15 individuals, $23 business). The club membership chairperson (or in our case the Club Secretary because no one else wants the job) sends the contact information and money to the MSA per instructions provided in the MSA’s handbook. We process memberships once or twice a month depending on how many have come in. I like to get them to the MSA at the beginning of the month so that the mem bers get on the monthly newsletter mailing list. Managing memberships is a time consuming task for which clubs are not reimbursed. (Continued on Page 28)

P O Box

The state recommends that clubs have a PO Box so that there are not address changes every time an officer change is made. You will be reimbursed on your grant for this charge. The Post Office requires a completed applica tion with a list of authorized users. You will be issued a key and may request additional keys with a refundable deposit. Equipment

If your club has been in existence, you may be inheriting grooming equipment. It is help ful to have a log of this equipment; e.g., year, make/model, VIN #, mileage, and whether a state capital grant was used to acquire it. It’s even better if you can find the originals bills of sale for the equipment. You will need this infor mation to obtain insurance on the equipment and to complete your grant applications. When we get to grants, you’ll learn that the “grooming rate” includes all maintenance per formed on your grooming equipment. Other equipment that the club may have or purchase, such as ATVs, brush hogs, etc., the club is solely responsible for purchasing and main taining. This also includes hand tools, chain saws, and brush cutters. Tools and equipment is one of the most expensive areas for clubs. One thing we didn’t know until many years in was that groomers needed to be registered with the state. The state has the form on its website. There is a one-time fee to register the groomer. Any ATVs used to maintain the trail and owned by the club need to be registered annually with the Town. Insurance Initially, our club had to purchase liability insurance because we had one landowner who required $1 million, which is more than the state provided $400,000 policy. This was a large expense, but it is reimbursable under the grant program. The state has started a program of working directly with large landowners, and you should check with the state before pur chasing a liability policy to make sure they hav en’t already entered into an agreement with the landowner. You may also want to buy insurance to pro tect the club’s equipment and equipment oper

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