Two weeks into office and the new board has been hard at work finishing up the details on some of the tasks the previous board was working on as well as starting some new projects of their own.

On the eighth of March Rick ordered a refill of the Geocaching Maine Pathtags. When delivered, they will be available for a new lower price of $2 each.

A new commercial forum has been created for the purpose of allowing vendors to sell their geocaching related merchandise to our members. The new Commercial Vendors (http://www.geocachingmaine.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=95) forum is listed under the Buy & Sell (http://www.geocachingmaine.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=94) category. Only approved vendors will be allowed to post to the forum and they will only be allowed two posts per month. This forum will be closely moderated. If any member knows of a vendor who might like to take advantage of this opportunity, please suggest it to them.

Some revisions have been made to the Advisory Board Eligibility and Terms (http://www.geocachingmaine.org/index.php?page=board_eligibility) to help further clarify those guidelines. This discussion is ongoing and will probably be refined more in the near future.

Also ongoing is a revision of the forums and forum categories to make the site's interface more user-friendly, as well as compiling a list of members available for public instruction and media presence.

With input from the board, Rick has also decided to officially incorporate Geocaching Maine as a non-profit. This will add more legitimacy to the site and prepare us to move forward and be available for other opportunities. Dan (Dubord207) is providing the necessary legal assistance in this project.

This thread will be closely moderated. Any off-topic posts will be removed.

It's great to see a progress report and the initial offerings look really good, the results of your recent work. Hope to see these posted on a consistent basis. Good luck!

Could the board advise us as the advantages of becoming a non profit in this situation?

Excellent work.

Could the board advise us as the advantages of becoming a non profit in this situation?

Dan can answer this a lot better than anyone, I can't say much more than was posted without fudging it up. I'm sure he'll reply soon.

One other question. What is the advantage of the commercial vendors forum other than selling their goods? Will the website be able to garner any profit from this?

One other question. What is the advantage of the commercial vendors forum other than selling their goods? Will the website be able to garner any profit from this?

The website gets no profit, posting to this forum is free. The members will hopefully benefit by seeing available products, and hopefully the vendors may occasionally offer a special deal for site members. For vendors, it gives them some ability to promote their product(s) where they previously were not allowed. The idea originally came up when a coin vendor tried to post a new coin to the site and was not allowed to.

First, liability for Rick. A corp. is as different as you and I. It is a separate entity. If some fool decides he has a claim of some sort and wants to sue, he can sue the new corp, but the buck stops there. Rick's assests would not be touchable. Before, all the exposure for anything Joe Bornstein or others could concoct would be on Rick's shoulders.

Accounting. Now the finances in and out of the org. will be separate from Rick's. He'll be able to separate money received from this site from his personal finances.

Last, and this is the wildcard, being incorporated gives a "sense" of ligitimacy to most groups who collect dues, fees etc which funds are passed through to the sole benefit of the organization. Prospective members should justifiably be more inclined to donate to a non-profit. Your donations were not and will not become tax deductible, but that shouldn't matter for the miniscule amount that this org. receives each year.

But, we have plans to generate more money to both support this site and all other "things" geocaching.

That's the reader's digest version. I felt strongly about this so getting this set up didn't result in any attorney's fees incurred, always a good thing!