Under the leadership of Mark Kramer, the SGS Directorate has again become active. Concern has been expressed about the lack of a systematic budget for spending club dues. The request for money for the Gamers’ Choice Awards was defeated on a tie vote over the question of money. John Kula said: We Need a Budget. Joe Minton and Game Table On-Line have offered to take over the cost of future Gamers’ Choice Awards.

The Directorate has voted to create a new class of membership: “Electronic”. Electronic members would receive their Strategist issues via email. There is no guarantee that members would receive paper tip-ins, or that the SGS will always be able to produce electronic issues. The discussion uncovered an interesting issue, namely that the Society By-Laws (written 1973) do not treat voting by email. The Directorate had a significant discussion of electronic communications, in that some members use them, and some members do not.

A set of By-Laws dealing with electronic memberships is now being Discussed. Issues of the Directorate Newsletter are available from Vice President Mark Kramer, 896 West San Fernando Street, San Jose CA 95126 for 5 cents plus nine cents per printed page plus the cost of mailing.

Greg Schloesser advises us: Since the Boardgame Geek is moving to a new operating system and server, it has become impossible to upload the SGS (or Westbank Gamers website, for that matter) website to the Boardgame Geek site. Jim Byrne has offered the SGS space on the Web-Grognard for the website.

Treasury

The progressive increase in the cost of foreign airmail means that we now pay over $1.20 an issue in postage, not to mention the cost of an envelope, to mail Strategist to Europe, above the cost of mailing an issue in the USA. This is $15 over the cost of mailing within the USA. Accordingly, as Treasurer I have moved to increase the cost of a Foreign Outside-of-North-America membership to $30 per year. The cost differential with the North American membership reflects entirely the cost of hauling the paper around the globe. For at least some European members, the new electronic membership (proposed at $6/year) may become a positive alternative, if the Directorate approves the By-Laws.

In the last month, we had membership renewals from Poulter, Benjamin, Young, Cannon, Meyer, Emde, Roberts, and Shorr, with three members taking advantage of the three year renewal bonus. We now have 127 members. The Coalition Web, which handles some of our back issues, sent us a check for $68.67. The most recent issue cost $110 to print and $62 to mail.

The Treasury contains $3334.65. By count, we owe very nearly 1600 member-months of memberships. The Treasury is therefore at approximately $2 per member-month, which should be adequate to cover all future member-months owed.