MTM Annual Members Meeting

For over ten years, the MTM Annual Members Meeting has been held the third Thursday of October. That’s outlined in the MTM bylaws and it’s an item that staff looks forward to putting on for our members every year. For the last five years or so we’ve held it at The Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth, Michigan. We had great reviews on the location, meeting room, and food. It’s a hard place to complain about. In May, we held the second quarter MTM Board meeting. A topic that was discussed was how can we increase the number of members that attend our annual meeting. Over the last ten years, the number of attendees bounces between 100 and 150, not taking into account the two years of cancellation or scale backs caused by COVID. We were already underway for our October 2022 meeting when this discussion took us all to a new point of how could we make the meeting better, maybe try something different.

The end result of the May Board meeting discussion was that the next Annual Members Meeting will not be in October 2022 but will be in March of 2023. At the October meeting we always have a great speaker talking about a pertinent topic of that day, we have great conversations with our members, and a fine lunch. We also discuss our projected yearend numbers and how that might play out for our member dividend. Still, it is a projection with all the caveats of we don’t know how November and December will turn out. Even with these positive factors, our members are busy, and it is hard to get away for a lunch meeting. So, what if we held the annual meeting in March, the yearend numbers are known, the Board has declared the dividend AND we hand out dividend checks to the attendees? This would get the checks to our members quicker and more efficiently. A win, win. We did do a little bit of a test run on this with the Board of Directors. Remember, they are members too. Because of COVID, our December Board dinner holiday dinner was postponed until March 5th. The management team thought instead of delivering their dividend checks to the Board members, let’s take their dividend checks to the dinner and hand them out there. As good as the food and conversation was, the check handout was better. Management raised this topic at the May Board meeting and the Board agreed – let’s give it a try.

End result: this is the first notice that the Annual Members Meeting will now be held March, 2023. Instead of talking in October about what we think may happen with the year end results, in March we will know and have the proof with member checks. A fine lunch, a great speaker, and a dividend check – sounds like a winning combination.

Mark March, 2023 in your calendar and in a few months we will start the early notice and also deliver more meeting details.

Summer is finally here and let’s try to enjoy at least some of it.