New PSA Direction & Dues for 2014 - "Membership has it's benefits"

First off, I would like to let everyone know that the Pro Sportsman Association is not dead. I will be taking back over as President of the PSA and will be working with board members Marty Thacker and Mark Billington to take the association in a new direction. We would like to thank Ray Drew for his service to the association for the past two years.

What we set out to do two years ago is pretty much unprecedented in our sport which was to form an association whose sole purpose is to market our type of racing. We certainly made some mistakes, dropped the ball a few times, and learned things that did and did not work. We are doing our best to learn from our mistakes and build on the good things we have done.

The biggest change we will make in 2014 is we will focus more of our media efforts to feature our members and the classes themselves. In years past we have paid Todd Veney to write recaps of events, getting quotes from winning drivers, whether they were a PSA member or not and distributing them to the media. These releases were in many cases supplied to the NHRA to be distributed with their post event press releases to the media. In 2013, the PSA focused entirely on these result releases. In 2014, our primary use of our media budget will be to feature our members and to promote the classes.

We feel moving forward, that featuring our members helps build fan awareness of the competitors of our classes. There are so many great stories and personalities out there of racers that may not frequent the winner’s circle to get a quote in the race recap. In listening to feedback from our members over the past two years, many felt like they were paying into a fund to write about other people. In 2014, every full member will get a feature story done on their team or business.

Our funds will not be spent exclusively on features written about our membership. It’s been long overdue, but this year we have budgeted a portion of every membership to go into a fund to help David Smith and Steve Furhman with their expenses. Our contribution may not cover their total expenses, but we will be able to help shoulder some of the load.

A portion of every membership will also go into a Special Projects media fund. As mentioned above, this budget will fund feature stories on the Top Alcohol Dragster and Alcohol Funny Car class. Some ideas for this would be season previews in both classes of the points contenders, mid to late season points battle updates, etc. We may also do some technical features on the cars themselves. In general, this part of the budget will cover media stories to build exposure for the classes. If we have enough membership to build this fund up enough, we may look into doing result stories again, but that option will be weighed against other potential uses. Another use of this fund is we hope to get a few stories in media outlets outside of the traditional drag racing media outlets. We also want to be able to help the tracks if they need media material to promote one of our events.

In the past we have provided PSA hero cards to some of our members, primarily in the East and North Central Region. We have had difficulty in the past getting current images of our members in the Central and West Regions, since David rarely has a chance to make it out there. Diana Harker has volunteered her services to produce and design these cards at a tremendous bargain, but without images we were not able to get the Central and West Regions done.

One problem with this is about half of our membership already has hero cards. So to a degree, some the funds allocated to do these cards are only benefitting the members who do not have their own cards. However, to those racers, the hero cards are a very valued part of their membership. Moving forward we are proposing to offer this as an add-on service to the members who want a PSA group hero card. Basically we will set a deadline for those who want to do a group hero card, then the cost will be divided by however many members we have interested. We have preliminary negotiations with some Central and West Coast photographers to supply us with the needed shots. We just don’t have the budget to go in and buy the rights to individual images.

Over the past two years, the PSA has made a great deal of progress in building a relationship with the NHRA, the tracks we race at and Lucas Oil, our series sponsor. We plan to continue to build that relationship and work as a partner to help them achieve their goals. “A rising tide lifts all boats.” One of our core goals as an association is to build our value to the NHRA, the tracks and to our series sponsor, Lucas Oil. However to do a better job of this, we need some help, in the form of volunteers. Ideally, we can get a racer/member assigned to be a liaison to work with certain tracks for the PSA. We don’t necessarily need the racers/members themselves to be the volunteer to help. Wives, children, crew – I know there are people out there willing to help out. If all help a little, nobody has a huge load to carry. We also hope to develop some relationships with some of the college motorsports programs out there to recruit some interns to help out.

We really need a few racers to step up and volunteer to be on the PSA board to help steer the organization. It was never the intention of myself nor the other founding members of the association to be appointed or be on the board by default. First off we don’t want to be seen as a Midwest/East club. We would really like some of our West and Central racers to step up and be a bigger part of our leadership. The primary function of board members are to help us vote on topics and to provide members and potential members feedback to what is going on with the association. Again, the more volunteers, the more load is spread. I also want to stress that myself, Mark and Marty are all doing this on a volunteer basis. We receive no compensation and pay our dues like everyone else. Our goal is to have a board and President elected by the association membership.

On a bigger scale, we really need to work with NHRA and the tracks to alleviate some of the same scheduling conflicts that make racers choose one or the other. Ideally, we would like to see some of the West Coast regionals scheduled in a way that it makes sense to promote them. We are seeing more of tracks with regional events promote them as front gate events, with success, but the way many of the Western Region races are scheduled on top of national events, they are not promoted.

Over the past two years the reasons of “why” to join have been discussed quite a bit. As racers/participants/crew, etc., we need to take an ACTIVE role in promoting our classes more. We need to build our value to fans, tracks, our series sponsor Lucas and NHRA. Some people can say that NHRA, the tracks, Lucas, etc., “should” be doing the work we’re trying to do. Over the past few years, we have witnessed the results of years of sitting back and letting someone else promote us. Many tracks did not value us enough to promote as a front gate headliner and over the years divisionals became a back-gate entry fee funded event. Several years ago many tracks dropped us because they did not see the value in having our classes at their events. We now have a significantly reduced amount of options to race. The PSA was formed to try to stop this trend. If you look around, NHRA legal pro mods are having to fund their own series out of their pocket. The same for IHRA Mountain Motor Pro Stocks – they are having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay to play. We are ACTIVELY trying to build our value to prevent this scenario from happening. If we ever have a chance to get an increase in payouts, it’s going to be because we are showing value to the tracks. If as an organization we can help more tracks bring big crowds to watch our regional events, we will be something the tracks want to invest in. This is an investment to build the stock value of the Top Alcohol class.

On the subject of dues, it’s always a tight rope of not charging too much yet having enough funds to do the job. If we set our dues too low, we don’t have enough money to really accomplish anything. Obviously if they are too high, we alienate racers that may want to take part but simply can’t afford it. In the past some of our members have been unclear on what exactly their dues cover. Here is a breakdown of membership levels, dues, and where that money will be allocated.

Full Member - $550
$300 for feature on member/business
$50 for photographer (David Smith) fund
$50 for Admin/Overhead expenses
$150 for Special Projects media fund. **
**- Any admin/overhead expenses not covered by the allocated budget will come from the Special Projects fund.

Associate Member - $250
$50 for photographer fund
$50 for Admin/Overhead expenses
$150 for Special Projects media fund

Gold Fan/Crew Member - $200
$50 for photographer fund
$150 for Special Projects media fund

Silver Fan/Crew Member - $100
$50 for photographer fund
$50 for Special Projects media fund

Bronze Fan/Crew Member - $50
$25 for photographer fund
$25 for Special Projects media fund

While we prefer checks since we don’t have to pay fees on them, we are going to work to get our credit card merchant service up and running in addition to accepting PayPal payments. We also plan to offer installment plans so members don’t have to bite off the whole chunk at once.

We feel this membership structure best allows us to accomplish our goals of promoting our class and our membership. We also feel this helps clearly show where your membership funds go. Our Fan and Crew memberships help give back to the fans and crewmembers by helping fund stories and the photo galleries. We also feel that fan and crew memberships should not fund our overhead expenses. That should be for the racer members.

I don’t want anyone to think that having a feature done on you is self-serving. We really need to get the stories and the personalities that make up TAD/TAFC out to the public. Sure we all know them from racing with them for years, hanging out in the pits, etc., but this is the kind of stuff that fans love and will help make the personal connection that will make a fan for a lifetime. Even if you are a successful racer and get your share of media coverage, a feature is quite a bit different than a press release or a quote in a recap. Let’s not forget the benefits this would give your sponsors and help make you more marketable to potential sponsors.

On a personal note, I would like to assure all PSA members and potential members I will make a concerted effort to make a personal connection with each of you. This is critical because the association needs to know the pulse of its members. Some of you may not be “Will Hanna” fans. Maybe my line of thinking is different than yours. Maybe I have said something that has upset people in the past. Maybe you personally don’t like me. Know this however, there are few people out there that love the Top Alcohol classes more than I do. I want to make sure this type of racing continues and thrives for a long, long time. Know that I go to bat for this class whenever and wherever. We need to all stick together to promote Top Alcohol racing, and the PSA really needs each of you to come on board if is financially possible. I really feel like we have the best game plan we have had yet to promote our class and promote our members. I look forward to working with many of you this year and beyond.

Respectfully,
Will Hanna
979.415.4959
Will.Hanna@InsideTopAlcohol.com

Mark Billington
Mark.Billington@pepsico.com

Marty Thacker
MLThacker@marathonpetroleum.com

 

Dues

Please send dues to:

Mark Billington
PSA Membership
831 Dentwood Tr.
Prosper, TX 75078

Please include name you want the membership under, phone number, address and email.

 

membership

You can also join by going to the PSA membership page -

http://www.prosportsmanassociation.com/pages/how-to-join/

You will need to log in to be able to complete the payment process. If you have forgot your password to log in, if you click the 'forgot password' button, it should email you a new password. If you have forgot your log in name, you can either put your email address in and it will email you a new password with your log in name, or it may be easier to just create a new account.

If you would like to just join with paypal or a credit card without logging in, I can send you a paypal invoice that you can pay by cc, whether you have paypal or not.