Meet Policy revised

[John W Blehm]

The Board of Directors has revised our club's Meet Policy that covers all our sanctioned "Club Meets".  You can view the entire policy and other club documents on our Downloads page.

Receiving Meet Reports from show superintends is an ongoing problem for all breed clubs.  Our policy is they are supposed to send one within 30 days of the meet.  Often the reports are incomplete and sometimes they never show up.

The revision...   

Members requesting club meets are strongly encouraged to obtain an exhibitors list and either:
a.      Take photos of ALL judged Ameraucana coop cards even if a bird is “Out” or,
b.      Fill out a Meet Report on their own and have it signed by two other exhibitors.
If an official Meet Report isn’t received from the show superintendent within 60 days our member’s photos or report will be used, but only if it meets the stated requirements. 

The plan is to continue to place meets as usual, expecting show superintendents to turn in Meet Reports with 30 days.  I feel we have to be careful not to just let show management off the hook for something they agree to. 
Only if an official report isn’t received within 60 days will the member’s photos/report be used and only if it meets the stated requirements, above.  If not, then no ribbons or points…the meet would be essentially null & void, as if it didn’t take place. 
Photos of coop cards takes all the guess work out and either way would have to be accompanied by an exhibitors list.  I know some like to fill out reports and just have a show superintendent sign it, but I doubt they actually check them over…they just sign. 
This also should make Alliance members feel much more comfortable knowing there is a backup plan in place, as long as they are willing to do a little work.  Even when reports are received by show management, a members report or photos could be referred back to just in case there is a discrepancy with the official one.  Here is where a digital photo of each judged coop card would be even better. 
This revision is for “club” meets, not the annual national meet.  We’ve been doing our own reports at national meets for years and we let the superintendent know, at the show, that we’ll take care of it.  It gets the results sooner and probably more accurately.

[Tailfeathers]

FWIW, I agree John.  These Clubs that host the shows always invite Breed Clubs to participate by having a Breed Meet.  Those breed meets help promote their show.

That said, I was recently informed by our current club VP, and likely soon-to-be-President, who is also the Superintendent of the shows that I go to that said, "I'm not filling out breed club reports anymore because we found that most of them don't care anymore and were just tagged onto the catalog.  It is also very time consuming and it is hard to get all the templates."

Rather than try and address this via email I plan to address it in person with him on the 19th of March when I go to the show.  My plan at present is to 1) make it very clear to him that AA and myself DO care and very much so, 2) make it very clear that they care enough about having the club meets "tagged onto the catalog" to make sure they ask for club meets prior to the show and the catalog being put out, 3) that when clubs no longer get supported by the shows they can count on those shows not being supported either and thus the club putting the show on won't continue to receive support either, and 4) once the local clubs and local shows stop getting supported you can pretty much hang the Fancy up.

As far as I'm concerned if the club wants to put the word out and invite breed clubs to participate in club meets (which let's face it brings in more coop fees for them!! Another point, btw, that I'll be emphasizing.) then by golly they can put up with the "time consuming" all encumbersom task of filling out the doggone report and sending it off!

[John W Blehm]

Here is a link to another forum with the topic Sanctioned Show Reports that gives more background about the problem.
http://showbirdbid.proboards.com/thread/7811/sanctioned-show-reports

[Cesar Villegas]

I would add, also know who judged the Ameraucanas

[John W Blehm]

I would add, also know who judged the Ameraucanas

Good point and it is asked for on the report forms.