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baronn

USPA continues to fund ISMHOF

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On 2/9/2020 at 7:04 PM, baronn said:

Clearly Billvon is not paying attention. Nobody "told" the BOD to fund this. Nobody knew about it until it was done. The BOD did this with 0 input from the members it is supposed to be representing.

So McCormick and others who champion this project aren't USPA members?

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9 hours ago, baronn said:

Did someone indicate that? I know I haven't. I'll assume he is as he was jumping at SDA before and after the meeting. 

You wrote:

Quote

Clearly Billvon is not paying attention. Nobody "told" the BOD to fund this. Nobody knew about it until it was done. The BOD did this with 0 input from the members

Clearly, the request for funding did come from members--probably very active members (in terms of petitioning the USPA and communicating with it--and in Jim's case in many, many other ways). So they DID listen to members. Members DID know about this. I assume the USPA thought that a majority--or at least a significant portion of members--would be on board with this. 

These members just don't happen to agree with you. I'm not saying you don't have any valid points, but you seem to assume all members agree with you, and clearly they don't. The suggestions about collecting signatures and bringing up a motion at a BOD meeting really seem to be the best way to find out how many agree with you and to get something moving on an issue you care so much about.

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2 hours ago, mbohu said:

The suggestions about collecting signatures and bringing up a motion at a BOD meeting really seem to be the best way to find out how many agree with you and to get something moving on an issue you care so much about.

Actually... It would be really easy to create a google forms (or some other) miscrosurvey about whether or not the members want the USPA to contribute or not, and the data gathered would be reasonable easy to work with.

No, I am not volunteering to do this, lol. I'm ambivalent about the whole thing (as I suspect most of the membership is).

Edited by betzilla

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1 hour ago, mbohu said:

You wrote:

Clearly, the request for funding did come from members--probably very active members (in terms of petitioning the USPA and communicating with it--and in Jim's case in many, many other ways). So they DID listen to members. Members DID know about this. I assume the USPA thought that a majority--or at least a significant portion of members--would be on board with this. 

These members just don't happen to agree with you. I'm not saying you don't have any valid points, but you seem to assume all members agree with you, and clearly they don't. The suggestions about collecting signatures and bringing up a motion at a BOD meeting really seem to be the best way to find out how many agree with you and to get something moving on an issue you care so much about.

I've yet to meet anyone that knew about this before the vote in 2018. I've also spoken with BOD members that didn't know about this before the vote. McCormick pitched this to the BOD, apparently not 1 of them knew that Ottley never wanted members funds used for this or if they did, they ignored that. They had a vote, it was close and it passed. Forked over the funds, no oversight, no plan, no timeline. Nothing. I keep hearing "But, we need the Museum!" No Shit Sherlock. We have for 48 yrs and it's still not done.  A few events to induct folks into it and that's it. As I dig into the financials, I discovered a large chunk of the donations are being paid to 1 person. The same person thats begging for more money and every "plan" he has presented, has fallen apart. The latest "plan" presented, has little if any chance of happening. We are all free to make whatever decisions we choose. This isn't about agreeing me or anyone. Its about looking at the facts, making rational, adult decisions and getting this project done. 

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3 hours ago, mbohu said:

You wrote:

Clearly, the request for funding did come from members--probably very active members (in terms of petitioning the USPA and communicating with it--and in Jim's case in many, many other ways). So they DID listen to members. Members DID know about this. I assume the USPA thought that a majority--or at least a significant portion of members--would be on board with this. 

These members just don't happen to agree with you. I'm not saying you don't have any valid points, but you seem to assume all members agree with you, and clearly they don't. The suggestions about collecting signatures and bringing up a motion at a BOD meeting really seem to be the best way to find out how many agree with you and to get something moving on an issue you care so much about.

That makes no sense. The ISMHOF is a 501c3 and anybody that wanted to donate cude do so on their own. Many have. Why have the USPA step in and use members dues for that? A completely unnecessary step....

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1 hour ago, baronn said:

As far as members petitioning the USPA to donate members dues is news to me. Please share whatever evidence you have to support that statement. Or the many, many other ways you speak of. 

i assume that he is referring to my comment saying that you could get petitions gathered and take them to a meeting.  i think the google forms route would be the easiest.  it almost seems to me like it would be easy enough for the bod to come up with a google form, circulate it to all the membership, and take the results to the next meeting.  that way, the members will have stated their intentions, at least the ones who care.  i would not recommend doing that with every piece of business that happens, but there is enough controversy on this one that it would resolve things. 

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It would all be in the phrasing.  

I bet, “Are you in favor of using a small percentage of member’s dues to fund the International Skydiving Museum and Hall of Fam?” would get a positive reaction.  “Are you for or against USPA giving the the International Skydiving Museum and Hall of Fame $25,000 per year for 5 years from your membership dues, without any guarantees it will ever be built?” would not get a positive reaction.

I emailed Jim McCormick on Monday asking about the museum’s plans and more details about the wind tunnels.  No response.

Derek V

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3 hours ago, baronn said:

As far as members petitioning the USPA to donate members dues is news to me. Please share whatever evidence you have to support that statement.

This is coming from your own statements: Jim petitioned the USPA. Jim is a member. Ergo: A Member petitioned the USPA. I also assume that he is not the only one behind that effort.

In terms of the "many, many other ways"; Jim is extremely active in the sport. I personally benefit from his organizing and coaching; he seems to be involved in many bigger events and jump organizing (example: https://uspa.org/p/Article/the-warm-embrace-of-thailand ), and as far as I know he is an S&TA.

Again, I'm just saying: Obviously some members are into the funding of the museum (even in the way it's currently done), including the ones that asked the USPA to donate. To say NO ONE is, is just not matching up with reality. It seems to me that some are strongly supporting it, some (like you) are strongly opposed, and most are probably ambivalent (like betzilla).

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2 hours ago, sfzombie13 said:

i assume that he is referring to my comment saying that you could get petitions gathered and take them to a meeting.  i think the google forms route would be the easiest.  it almost seems to me like it would be easy enough for the bod to come up with a google form, circulate it to all the membership, and take the results to the next meeting.  that way, the members will have stated their intentions, at least the ones who care.  i would not recommend doing that with every piece of business that happens, but there is enough controversy on this one that it would resolve things. 

I am not. MBOHU stated that the members Knew about this coming up for a vote. I have not found any evidence to support this. Lets try and stay with factual, historically accurate events. If you don't have a way to prove a statement, please don't make it till you can. I have encouraged anyone that reads my statements to check them on your own for accuracy

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54 minutes ago, mbohu said:

This is coming from your own statements: Jim petitioned the USPA. Jim is a member. Ergo: A Member petitioned the USPA. I also assume that he is not the only one behind that effort.

In terms of the "many, many other ways"; Jim is extremely active in the sport. I personally benefit from his organizing and coaching; he seems to be involved in many bigger events and jump organizing (example: https://uspa.org/p/Article/the-warm-embrace-of-thailand ), and as far as I know he is an S&TA.

Again, I'm just saying: Obviously some members are into the funding of the museum (even in the way it's currently done), including the ones that asked the USPA to donate. To say NO ONE is, is just not matching up with reality. It seems to me that some are strongly supporting it, some (like you) are strongly opposed, and most are probably ambivalent (like betzilla).

Again, lets be accurate. I said I haven't met anyone that has said they knew about the vote ahead of time. That shouldn't be taken as they don't exist. Stating that 1 member did (McCormick) also should not be stated as many, many that did know either. "I also assume that he is not the only 1 behind that effort" is just that. An assumption. 

To also say that some members are for funding the museum and some are not, is also inaccurate. What they have been led to beleive,  is by contributing to the Museum, the project will get finished. So far, that has not happened. I also doubt that anyone has been told that a portion of their contribution (up to 37% so far) will not be used to actually construct this but, is used to gather more funding. We also don't have an actual site picked out, an actual building plan, any kind of business plan to keep this operating or any engineering company to help get this built. We only have a group of 14 Trustees that have little to no experience in these projects, have other full time jobs and have been put in charge of this project and in 48 yrs have produced exactly nothing. Those are all historical, verifiable facts. 

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2 hours ago, baronn said:

I am not. MBOHU stated that the members Knew about this coming up for a vote. I have not found any evidence to support this. Lets try and stay with factual, historically accurate events. If you don't have a way to prove a statement, please don't make it till you can. I have encouraged anyone that reads my statements to check them on your own for accuracy

ok, factual.  after reading the comment, i can tell you that he was referring to my comment about the best way to deal with it by taking a petition to a meeting.  well, i have had a chance to look into some of this, and i am glad skypilota1 told me where to find the meeting minutes and agenda.  i hadn't thought about it much until this thread, and i think i see a solution to this, and i will volunteer to help out with it, if it is agreeable to those involved.  i will set up the google sheet for a member petition if someone will email it to all the members.  then by the next meeting in july, there should be ample time for me to gather the info and present it.  but there needs to be some way to disseminate the other information at the same time since i saw a comment on here about who was or wasn't qualified to do something and not having a location yet.  again, i volunteer to gather this info and make it into a presentable format for distribution.  it seems to me that this is kind of a big deal.  if it has a good plan then i see no issues with a member requesting we let the membership at large decide. 

 

and reading the minutes, there are two mistakes.  two votes that passed with a no vote were listed as passing with full board and not the number of votes as in other sections.

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Any help is appreciated. I cannot do this alone. I want to make sure what the final goal of all my actions are. I want to get the Museum done. The fact that so many pioneers and members are now gone before they ever saw it, is sad. The fact that the Honorary Chairman GHWB was the ONLY skydiving President we ever had and he wasn't used to secure a location at the Smithsonian or at his Presidential Library is mind blowing to me. I have contacted both of these (and a few more) and got to both directors. Sadly I was told they weren't interested. Pretty sure an ex President wude have gotten a different answer. Since it was never tried, we won't ever know. To me, that indicates the ISMHOF is not really interested in getting this done. 48 yrs and still waiting. Sad. 

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you get me the go ahead and i will help.  i may even be able to help get some progress done, as i am a licensed contractor with a degree in leadership.  i don't have experience with a project of this magnitude, but i did run a special forces batallion s1 section for a year from ft campbell while they were deployed.  i wouldn't know who to begin talking to so handle that part and let me know what you need. 

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2 hours ago, sfzombie13 said:

you get me the go ahead and i will help.  i may even be able to help get some progress done, as i am a licensed contractor with a degree in leadership.  i don't have experience with a project of this magnitude, but i did run a special forces batallion s1 section for a year from ft campbell while they were deployed.  i wouldn't know who to begin talking to so handle that part and let me know what you need. 

Any help is appreciated. I cannot do this alone. I want to make sure what the final goal of all my actions are. I want to get the Museum done. The fact that so many pioneers and members are now gone before they ever saw it, is sad. The fact that the Honorary Chairman GHWB was the ONLY skydiving President we ever had and he wasn't used to secure a location at the Smithsonian or at his Presidential Library is mind blowing to me. I have contacted both of these (and a few more) and got to both directors. Sadly I was told they weren't interested. Pretty sure an ex President wude have gotten a different answer. Since it was never tried, we won't ever know. To me, that indicates the ISMHOF is not really interested in getting this done. 48 yrs and still waiting. Sad. 

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At this stage, I think exposing how the ISMHOF has managed to botch this up and how the USPA BOD continue to support this failed project is paramount. The ISMHOF can make whatever decisions they wish. We CAN expose how the funding being given to them is used. I have spoken with quite a few that have contributed significant money to them. To say the are unhappy is an understatement. Once this happens, then we can get some experienced individuals involved and rite this ship. 

Continue spreading this message. Let folks know how 37% of their contributions are NOT being used to build anything. 48 yrs and still not done. An excellent opportunity with an ex President completely blown and finally how 1 individual is benefitting financially from contributions. 

If you wanna go thru the survey thing that's fine. I think just exposing the facts mite be enuff to get members to take action, contact their Reps and say end the funding. That will stop the ridiculous "plan" revealed by McCormick. 

My suspicion is that "plan" is just another decoy for an excuse to get more funding. The start date will come and go with little to no action by the ISMHOF. They will blame it all on the fact they didn't get enuff funding. Some will buy that, ra ra for more funding, and this process continues. Time to end this insanity

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3 hours ago, sfzombie13 said:

you get me the go ahead and i will help.  i may even be able to help get some progress done, as i am a licensed contractor with a degree in leadership.  i don't have experience with a project of this magnitude, but i did run a special forces batallion s1 section for a year from ft campbell while they were deployed.  i wouldn't know who to begin talking to so handle that part and let me know what you need. 

As far as getting involved to get this project done, thats gonna ride on the ISMHOF. Again, they MITE be influenced but, since I can't even get most of them to return a phone call, I don't think that's gonna be easy. Stop the funding will get their attention. Letting them know we're sick of all the delays and if they can't get this done, let's find someone who can. A real possibility is they may get completely butt hurt over all this and refuse to cooperate at all. They control the purse strings at this point. I do have an alternate plan if that happens. Hope it doesn't. My focus has, is and always will be to get this project finished. A few steps in the rite direction and it shude be possible.

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Has anyone done a break down of actual cost per member? I'll bet it is much lower than you think!  History is important  to save. Without history skydiving would not be where it is today. Having been around since the early days I know a lot of the history of the sport. Very few of today's jumpers have any clue of how their equipment or discipline has evolved! There are so many wrong "facts" floating out there that some people take for gospel and it is important that history is correct so you don't repeat the mistakes over and over! A very few number of people for what ever reason or personal agenda are trying to influence the majority by trying to make the loudest noise. I say look into why they are fighting so hard. Did they get snubbed or is it they aren't making money from it? It must be something to put a burr under their saddle (without history you wouldn't know that was a thing)!

Just my 2ç 

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Sounds like yer new to this discussion. May want to read a few pages back and get up to speed. This isn't really a discussion about why we need the museum (we do), it's more about the lack of progress and why it isn't done. A few valid points in your 2c, I'm just not sure what the point is. The cost per member over the 5 yrs is approx $5.83

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On 2/14/2020 at 2:48 PM, sfzombie13 said:

i assume that he is referring to my comment saying that you could get petitions gathered and take them to a meeting.  i think the google forms route would be the easiest.  it almost seems to me like it would be easy enough for the bod to come up with a google form, circulate it to all the membership, and take the results to the next meeting.  that way, the members will have stated their intentions, at least the ones who care.  i would not recommend doing that with every piece of business that happens, but there is enough controversy on this one that it would resolve things. 

Lets cover a couple things. 1st saying that McCormick is a USPA member and therefore represents many, many more is a stretch. Yes he's a member. He's also a Trustee on the ISMHOF. Who was paid over 169k in 2016 and 2017. No conflict there. Please let us know who all these others you mention are. 2nd request.

2nd, No, my comment was not directed at the petition you mentioned. I'm not opposed to doing that. What I find most disturbing about this whole process, was how quickly enuff all the BOD members bought into whatever McCormick said at the summer 2018 meeting and thought giving 25K a yr of members dues was a good idea. No plan presented and a history of failure. Nobody from the ISMHOF showed at the summer of 2019 BOD meeting to even give an update. This last meeting they gave McCormick a whopping 10 min. to make a presentation. He showed a few concepts and some possible sites. Basically nothing. If this was a company and he was getting paid (he is), this performance review wude have ended in termination. We desperately need an adult in the room. Review the financials of the ISMHOF and found out where all the donations being given to them are going. If they are unwilling to do that, then immediately stop funding and ask for a clawback. If they have nothing to hide, this shude not be a problem.

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i didn't say anything about anyone being a member of anything and don't know what you are talking about there.  do you still have access to the plans you saw and financials you are talking about?  if so, let me know how i can look at them also please.  as you say, if there's nothing going on there shouldn't be a reason to hide anything and it seems like nobody is.  and 39% fundraising costs isn't that much to pay, depending on what the rest of the deal is.  i know some campaigns pay 90% to the fundraising fees and only keep 10%.  highway robbery done legally.  real similar to politics and this pac shit.  i thought i read a comment in this thread that said there was more discussion prior to the 10 minutes in the meeting, so there should be some more information out there to look at. 

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Guidestar.org lists non profits 990 IRS forms. I've mentioned this before. As far as plans go, I have not seen or heard of any firm plans in place. Lots of talk, no real action.

i assume that he is referring to my comment saying that you could get petitions gathered and take them to a meeting. 

That is what I responded to. Since I didn't refer to that and you don't know what I'm talking about, its safe to say its a mute point. Let's move on. Anyone that wants to look those forms up can go there and see them. They only have 2015-2017 listed last I looked. If you go to page 28 on 2016 & 2017, you'll see what McCormick was paid. Doesn't break down what he was paid for, just a total amount. 169k over 2 yrs ain't too bad for a part time gig. Willing to bet 2018 and 2019 were more. Lets get the breakdown and see. My understanding and I cude be wrong but, everyone was a volunteer except for the usual small admin costs. I haven't found the 990 form for 2018 or 2019 yet, so we don't know what that is. I did find another non profit watchdog that listed costs for 2018 and thats where I got the 37% number from. I'll get that and post. Sure, there are plenty of "non-profits" that keep ridiculous portions of donations. I don't contribute to them and encourage other's not to also. I'd also be willing to bet that if members knew 37% of all the funding the USPA was giving to them (over 52k out of 150k), they mite not be so happy about it. Especially when most is going to 1 person....

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4 hours ago, accumack said:

Baronn all I see is you bitching and complaining. Why don't you run for USPA? All you have are problems with no solutions. This  thread is becoming as bad as DB Cooper!

Thanks for revealing your narrow minded view. Now do yourself a favor and read my posts. I have offered a possible solution to every one of the issues I have revealed. Will they work? Not sure. Got a better idea? Share it. What we do know is the current path is a failure. Anybody can see that. IF they choose to. Some are simply going to accuse someone who reveals it as just "Bitching and Complaining". As far as the USPA goes, are you endorsing me for a seat?

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