Online or Out of State Members

Andrew Butler on

Hi All,

I am curious if any of your clubs allow non-local members or
if any of your clubs are online clubs. How do you handle
the various transactions, voting, etc? Currently, our club
only allows members who can actually attend a meeting in
person. I'm thinking with technology today there has to be
an easy way to make online or an out-of-state member work.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Andy

Stuart Weissman on

One of my clubs is online and not a single member has met any other member in person. We send our monthly deposits directly to our broker. We meet online utilizing Skype and occasionally teleconference with what free software is available. We vote at our meetings just as you do. We probably have a bit more email correspondence between meetings as compared with a local club, but otherwise, everything else runs smoothly. From a security standpoint, make sure you find a trustworthy treasurer and audit the books and accounts more frequently (easy to do with Bivio). One other piece of advice, make sure your members are relatively educated to the ways of BI stock selection. It is significantly more difficult to teach online than in person. I look forward to the day when I get to meet my partners in person.

Stuart Weissman
NationwideIC

From: Andrew Butler <abutler911@bivio.com>
To: club_cafe@bivio.com
Sent: Wed, January 19, 2011 10:25:44 AM
Subject: club_cafe: Online or Out of State Members

Hi All,

I am curious if any of your clubs allow non-local members or
if any of your clubs are online clubs. How do you handle
the various transactions, voting, etc? Currently, our club
only allows members who can actually attend a meeting in
person. I'm thinking with technology today there has to be
an easy way to make online or an out-of-state member work.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Andy

John Rice on

Hi Andy,

I am the treasurer of an online club. We are based in Orange County, California. Of our 11 members, 2 of them do not live locally (Arizona & Wisconsin). For the first 2.5 years we did everything by email & snail mail. The biggest negative was when we had to get everyone to sign the same paperwork. I had to mail it to Winconsin then it was mailed to Arizona and then mailed back to me. Then I had to take the paper around to everyone else locally. So, it was very time consuming. Last year we changed our Partnership Agreement so that we can add members with an addendum with his/hers signature only, instead of everyone signing a new partnership agreement. Last October we also started meeting quarterly in one of our homes. One of the out of towners was on the cell phone and the other was on Skype. I want to check www.gotomeeting.com or something else to see if that is viable for us, just haven't taken the time to do it.

John Rice

ABODI Investment Club

From: Andrew Butler <abutler911@bivio.com>
To: club_cafe@bivio.com
Sent: Wed, January 19, 2011 7:25:44 AM
Subject: club_cafe: Online or Out of State Members

Hi All,

I am curious if any of your clubs allow non-local members or
if any of your clubs are online clubs. How do you handle
the various transactions, voting, etc? Currently, our club
only allows members who can actually attend a meeting in
person. I'm thinking with technology today there has to be
an easy way to make online or an out-of-state member work.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Andy

Myrelle on

I belonged to a club that had one out-of-state member. It was not
a problem but one in which you needed to pay attention to details and
report accurately to IRS and to the State in which the club was set up.

Part of the fun (if you will) of belonging to an investment club are the
meetings you attend and exchange information. So much can be learned
just by listening to each member as they talk about the stock they
are investigating that month. So much can be lost just because you are
not face-to-face and that 'little question' that might be on the tip of
your tongue will get lost if not allowed to come forward at the exact
moment it could bring forth other details. You might be talking about
one thing and then due to the mix of conversation, the topic might go
off on a tangent and a whole new world of ideas can spring forth.

While it is true, the investment club should NOT be a social club, it
does allow you to hear other points of input that can help expand your
own knowledge base. You learn how others think and you share
methods of investigating and by the end of a certain length of time,
chances are you have formed some friendships along the way.

At least that is what happened in the club in which I was privileged to
be a member. But that is just one point of view.

Myrelle

On 1/19/2011 8:25 AM, Andrew Butler wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am curious if any of your clubs allow non-local members or
> if any of your clubs are online clubs. How do you handle
> the various transactions, voting, etc? Currently, our club
> only allows members who can actually attend a meeting in
> person. I'm thinking with technology today there has to be
> an easy way to make online or an out-of-state member work.
>
> Thanks for your thoughts.
>
> Andy

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