Thanks for your response Rick. When you say fresh blood is needed, do you have some particular roles or tasks in mind? Your analogy suggests that everything from President on down could be open for renewal - I'm not certain if that's what you meant.

Are the office holders and committee members indicated on the NAMSA website actually current? Were officers for '08 elected at the '07 annual meeting (I believe that's what the constitution indicates) and who are they? Are there other roles that you think need filling apart from the officers and committee members?

My feeling is that NAMSA has yet to prove its value, though I take your point about the structure being there - that's certainly a positive. I think for it to be successful it needs broad membership, initially just a few clear objectives and some observable activity/progress towards achieving them over some modest period of time, in order to build some credibility and confidence in the value of the organization within our community.

Given that the organization has been dormant for quite a while, I would suggest setting a completely nominal membership fee for one year - I mean like a dollar. The point of membership for just that one year would be simply to allow people to say "yes I'm a multihull sailor and I think there may be value in having a national or NA organization that is working to build and represent our sport. I'm willing to offer my moral support for a year to see whether they can do anything useful." This is really aimed more at polling the community than anything to do with gaining operating funds, but it gives the organization some kind of legitimacy as a representative of the sport, which I think is an important step. For essential expenses I think you could hit the builders for a little sponsorship, especially if you can show that you really do have the support of the community.

Then get some energetic and passionate leadership in there and give them a mandate to be creative and do something to advance the state of the sport. At the end of a year, or maybe two, if they've done something useful to earn the trust of the multihull community, they have justification for going to the membership and asking for a larger fee to provide resources that would allow you to grow the effectiveness of the organization further. Otherwise you conclude there is no reason to go on and just fold.