MCRA Newsletter Vol 1, Issue 2

First I want to thank those of you who provided feedback to the inaugural MCRA Newsletter. I also want to thank those of you who responded by helping us to get past the financial mess of the previous administration. One of the concerns some members expressed has to do with the status of life members since the funds from life membership were expended by the previous administration. The Board is in unanimous agreement that all life memberships will be honored in spite of our financial problems. We recognize that some life members have deeper pockets than others, and we will gladly accept financial help from those who can afford to assist. Another concern expressed by the feedback was, "What happened?" I wish I could provide a simple answer. We're still trying to track down the financial trail. It is particularly difficult since some of the documentation is missing. Some of the expenditures we have uncovered have us mystified. Of course, as all of you know, "The Word" has not been published for a long time. It's not just that our members are not receiving our traditional magazine. We lost the ad revenue generated by the magazine and our corporate sponsors dropped out. Thanks to the efforts of Joe Vowell, we are regaining some of our corporate sponsors. We are thankful to those of you who have already dug deeply into their pockets. As we work to untangle the mess, we hope to regain the confidence of our membership and get more membership renewals. Some of you may have noticed that our Web site and e-mail address were not available for several weeks. This is yet another small example of problems we have encountered. It appears that someone changed the password needed to renew our Domain Name license, but that information was not passed on to the current administration. That put us into a "Catch 22" situation. The request for the password resulted in having the password sent to our e-mail address, which was not available to us because the Domain Name license had expired. Frustrating, yes, but as you can see, that problem has been resolved. The big question for our members is, "How do we plan to recover from this mess?" the answer can be divided into two general areas: 1. Purely administrative matters which the Board discusses weekly in a conference call. Tom Green and Vern Leubecker have done a great deal of this work along with Bob Donahue. 2. Getting back to our traditional activities which support the Marine Corps Reserve in various ways. Earlier this year we once again sponsored an OLA brief. Joe Vowell took advantage of this occasion to talk to potential corporate sponsors. Next month we will be holding our annual golf tournament which is an opportunity for interaction between Marines and corporate representatives. For more information on these events, check out the EVENTS page on our Web site (www.USMCRA.org ). I try to keep this page up to date as details for events become available. We would also like to have all the membership provide us with e-mail addresses. A regular snail-mail letter sent to the membership costs us over $4,000.00. This MCRA Newsletter costs only my free time to send. Unfortunately only a fraction of our membership has a current e-mail address in our database. We would also like to publish "The Word" electronically as a cost saving measure. In closing, I want to let you know I am confident that we can survive as an organization, but I should let you know that when I first joined the Board in discussing the future, there were some who felt it was time to throw in the towel. We have made a great deal of progress since then, but we are not quite out of the boondocks yet. Your patience and confidence are greatly appreciated. Pass the word. Semper Fi, Thomas "LPM" Howlett -- Editor