1 Year Anniversary

Our first year of FVAAF came to a close on March 5th this month and I just wanted to talk about all of the progress we have made.

• Our Meetup Group now has over 70 members.
• We established a political action sub group dedicated to try to make and impact change.
• We have made new connections for other local skeptic groups
  • CUTHULU at Lawrence University
  • FACT at UW Fox Valley
• We held over 30 Meetups
• Built our very own .org site

There’s a lot more that we have accomplished but those are the highlights.

As we push forward into a new year we are working on 2 new projects.

Organizing a Local Convention

I have been talking a lot with Ty over at FACT about the idea of hosting our own convention for skeptics here in the Fox Valley.  If you are interested in helping we will be positing planning meeting in the future on the Meetup group page, so keep your eye’s peeled.

At our next meeting we really need to establish the basics:

• Date
• Location
• Speakers (Wish List)
• Funding
• Name of Convention (personal a fan of SkepCon)

If you have any ideas that you would like to contribute please feel to leave comments below.

National Organization Affiliation

At one of the upcoming Political Action meetings I want to discuss and fill out the paper work to obtain affiliations with some National Organizations.  There are a few reasons I want to do this:

• Free Marketing – the more ways people can find us the more members we will have
• Access to Resources – from speakers to grants national organizations have some things that our members can benefit from

If you would like to help our group get more established please attend the Political Action group meetings.  I know this isn’t technically a political topic, however, many of these national organizations are sponsoring legislations that some of our members would support.

Lastly, being that it’s our 1 year anniversary it also means that our Meetup subscription is due.  I will be asking for donations at the next few meetings (now you know which ones to avoid) and I will also be adding a donation button to our website.  Donated money goes to pay for things like:

• Meetup subscription ($75 every six months)
• Marketing material  (creating/printing posters and signs)
• Funding events (like our upcoming convention or our annual picnic & potluck)