SOMA News

There has been a necessary change in the way our club is structured. We will no longer be a chapter of the Eastern Muskie Alliance; Muskies Inc. will be the only national club that SOMA is recognized with. This decision was after a determined attempt to be a part of each club but, due to some circumstances that could not be overcome, this decision had to be made. When the accounting system was being set up for our new club it became apparent that there were going to be issues with how we were structured. I had many talks with Pete Barber (MI Treasurer) on how we can do this, and he even consulted MI auditors for answers. The general consensus was this club scenario was not a good idea. Without going into a lot of accounting details here are a couple of the major issues; no one was clear on how the IRS was going to view our situation because we were trying to incorporate two nonprofit organizations into our club. The other reason was if we could get past the IRS issues, the amount of work that it would take to keep all of the accounting straight. There would need to be two bank accounts, two sets of books, and all our fundraising and raffles would have to be very carefully planned so there was a clear understanding which club it was for. This all proved to be more work and problems than anyone had thought, so I hope all members understand. Muskies Inc. was chosen as our club for a number of reasons. Their longevity allows them to have a strong support group for us as we grow our club out of its infant stage. This proved very valuable in rectifying our current problem and helping us from being in big trouble down the road. MI's insurance coverage is very good and has a minimal fee for all our events. We do get a nice magazine from them that always has something interesting in it, and we have a lot of longtime MI members that wanted to be a part of our club. So with all these positives it seemed to be the logical decision. We still believe that the EMA is a good club and will grow in the coming years, so I have had discussions with Joe, the EMA President, on how we can still be involved with his club. What we came up with is all our members that want to support EMA can pay there dues and join EMA as a member with no chapter, and your dues will go into the Ohio fund. Also our very own Chris Creech has been nominated for a position as one of the Ohio Representatives for the EMA. This will be a great thing for us if he is selected for this position. Being involved in EMA is something everyone should seriously consider doing. This club is growing in Ohio, and if we want any say in how this clubs money is spent in Ohio, we will need to be strong contributors. To give you an example of how the EMA decides on where money is issued they look at if it is an important issue first, then if all members are in agreement on the issue; if not, lets say the northern part of the state wants to stock fish and the southern part of the state wants to buy minnows, the decision will go to the group that has the stronger number of members that allocate there dues to Ohio. This is why it is important for us to still join this club. This was a very quick and simple example of how this works but hopefully it makes since, and if you have any questions feel free to contact Chris or me. In closing, you will need to be a member of MI to be a SOMA member. I understand there will be some that only joined EMA when we started the club and now you will have to join MI. I hope you will not be upset about this and you understand why this had to happen. Also as I mentioned in our last meeting I am still holding all the EMA applications that were given to me, so I will be contacting each one of them to see if they still want to join EMA; I hope so! I just want to apologize to everyone for this inconvenience but we are new at starting a club like this and it has been a learning experience that will prove to benefit our group in the future. If anyone has any issues or questions about any of this, please feel free to contact me so we can discuss it.

Thanks for your support,

Jarrod Shell

SOMA Treasurer

Shell_j@kitchensolvers.com

937-833-1833