We are delighted to announce our newest SFWDA Business Member to join our family in 2015. Let's all give a warm welcome and show our patronage to T&A Off Road of Hendersonville, NC, a new off road retail supplier.
Welcome Jeeps and Wrenches as our newest club member for 2014. Thanks to Kevin Woods, Troy Slaughter and Thomas Green for all the hard work and becoming part of our journey. Check out their Facebook community
Are you all out of gift ideas for your favorite four-wheeler? We have just the thing: a gift membership to SFWDA.
I just had to share this. Here is a great very touching video from Del Albright of Blue Ribbon Coalition speaking about Land Use and the many challenges we all face to preserve trail access with Matson of MetalCloak
We're excited to announce that after tremendous effort we have now finally compiled a database aggregate of all members and clubs of recorded history within our Southern Four Wheel Drive Association.
Now that we have this data compiled we need your help to update your newly migrated SFWDA Membership profile including your email, address, and any other status changes. This will all be stored securely in an encrypted database through a long established and very large membership management corporation.
You should be receiving an email shortly from 'membership@sfwda.org' with a subject line of 'New Online Access to the Southern Four Wheel Drive Association'. We've been through an exhaustive process to make sure everyone gets this message, but expect there might still be some troubles... We might have invalid or missing email addresses for some of you. So if you do NOT see this message in your inbox today, check your spam and junk folders and then shoot a message to membership@sfwda.org and we will look into your specific issue A.S.A.P.!
Otherwise, please follow the link in the message to activate your profile in our new Membership and Events system, as this will be necessary to register for events.
Speaking of Events, we will have a special Christmas Offer for Trailfest 2015 registration so be on the lookout for that soon as well!
As we tally up the results from an exciting year in 2014, it's clear that SFWDA is continuing on the momentum of renewed enthusiasm! After just recently adding several more new business members we are connecting to the Off Road business industry in exciting new ways. We have a renewed sense of energy among our clubs and members, and we are beginning to all become better focused on how to strive together.
Just this week alone we have added two new Business Memberships in Tennessee, and a first time club from Georgia. Our members are loyal and dedicated just like our business's who offer our individual members opportunities an and savings you wont want to pass up. Let's all please warmly welcome the following new members of the SFWDA family;
We're also making strides in our Membership Database through the support of Lucas Weidner our newly elected Co-Director of Membership as he aggregates data on daily basis in-between breaks at his real job and with his little spare time as a father he has single handed managed to wrangle up all of our historical membership data and compiled it into one clean database of approximately 4,300 unique identities. We plan to be reaching out to the most recent part of that group in the near future to invite them back once again into SFWDA and our free Newsletter Subscription as blaze forward into 2015.
2014 Membership Status; As discussed in our Annul Meeting last weekend our current membership numbers are rising quickly. To date we have the following active Business, Individual, and Club / Group Members;
- 21 active businesses
- 786 total active people
- 409 active people who are club members
- 377 active people who are individuals
- 27 of which are premium individual members
- 34 total clubs / groups
- 18 active clubs / groups
We already have commitments from several additional large Clubs and Groups within the next month. Who will be the next Business to join forces in our mission for 2015?
ET4WD just assisted us with hosting our productive and efficient Annual Meeting last weekend in Oak Ridge, TN. If you were not able to attend in person or on the webinar we also have the complete presentation posted as a PDF file on our website message board.
As we wrap up a successful year lets all take a moment to reflect on the success of 2014 and remember those who helped make this happen. We have an amazing and diverse Board of Directors, Delegates, and Leadership Council deeply involved in a variety of aspects within SFWDA day to day operations. However, it is only with the support of each individual like yourself that we will continue to make it happen. So Thank You to all the individuals reading this all the way to the last detail to stay in tune. Thank You to the many clubs who collectively volunteer thousands of hours to numerous and elaborate volunteer efforts and Thank You to those business's who continue to support us among our common goal.
* Conservation * Education * Recreation
We would like to welcome aboard the newest SFWDA club for 2015 - Georgia Trail Riders. Check out their own web page at http://gatrailriders.com/. Watch for an upcoming charity event on March 14, 2015 at AOP sponsored by these guys. Thanks to Danny Kinder, Bobby Underwood, Doug Reynolds and Tony Chaaple for your support. Lets rock in 2015. - Ray Stanley
Check out their new SFWDA web page presence now and show them all a warm welcome on our FB page....
http://www.sfwda.org/gtr/
We're excited to have you guys on board for 2015 and beyond!
Thank you to all who attended this important meting. This past Saturday at the DoubleTree hotel in Oak Ridge, TN we had a great 2014 Annual Meeting. We not only had a great turnout in person (near occupancy limit) but we also had a larger than expected attendance for our online webinar. By the time the meeting began we had exceeded our 100 person allotment for this webinar. This turned out to be a very productive and efficient meeting, and we received tons of great feedback from the attendees.
Here are a few pictures from the meeting. I have also attached a PDF version of the complete PowerPoint slideshow presented to the audience during our meeting.
For those traveling to the hotel for the meeting there are still rooms available at the DoubleTree and if you book direct there as low as $79 right now. I have also attached contact info directions as well;
After the recent visit to Las Vegas to attend SEMA 2014 by SFWDA representatives Ray Stanley and Greg Griffith brought back some useful information and resources for our association to grow with.
While there among all the action and exposure Ray took a moment to catch up with Del Albright, Director of Operations, BlueRibbon Coalition. Del mentioned he is hosting a seminar in February about the EPA and water issues and so we wanted to bring some of his insight on the topic to Southern and our members. Ray asked Del afterwards in follow up of the event.
"What are your perspectives, inputs and potential impacts of the EPA water management requests for comments; and what positions do you see coming from BRC? "
"Undoubtedly the biggest issue we face right now across many recreation areas – from the Rubicon Trail to your country. We fixed the problem on the Rubicon by ‘taking charge’ of it and not letting “it” ruin our access. We had to manage it. And we had to cooperate with the multitude of agencies who think they have some authority over the Rubicon. In fact our very first work party on the Rubicon was in 2001 to build 31 rolling water bar/dip, erosion control goodies to keep water off the trail and where it belonged. 14 years later we’re still managing water on that trail."
Del continued to say " With water and erosion, educated involvement is the key to success; and making sure your clubs are part of the process, adopting trails, and being part of the solution. Good signage; educational brochures handed out to trail users; web sites and forums; and volunteers on the trail fixing the problems, are the BEST actions we can take. Learning about Best Management Practices (or whatever your controlling agency likes to use for terminology) is very important to keeping this controlled and managed. If they like water bars, offer to build them. If they sediment traps, offer to build and install them.
The point is, it’s way too hard to fight it when water is involved or at stake. Just fix it and manage it.
I talk a bit about it in my landuse book, which by the way, if Southern would like a bulk deal on my online training course (RLTC), just say the word and we can do a swinging deal for a group of folks who sign up at once. I’ve done it for a few Associations around the country and it seems to work out pretty well. More info here: http://www.rltc.biz.
And if anyone from Southern can make a workshop in CA Feb. 28th weekend, I’ll be doing another Volunteer Leader & Land Stewardship (VLLS) workshop then near Sacramento, CA. It’s free once you get there. " Del
And if you want some Landuse & Volunteerism Books, here’s the link: http://www.delalbright.com/book_order.html
You can also contact Del Albright directly at:
Del Albright
Director of Operations, BlueRibbon Coalition www.BlueRibbonCoalition.org
2014 Inductee, Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame (www.ormhof.org)
Founding Trail Boss, Friends of the Rubicon www.rubiconfriends.com
Find Del on Facebook here
Find BRC on Facebook here.