[uploaded july 2022]
Summer Regional Meeting Guide
Rev.Date 11/17/2017
The host club is expected to provide the auctioneer. A good auctioneer, who can hold the crowd’s attention and knows many cultivars, is a must. Soliciting plants for the auction will need to be coordinated between the meeting chair and the RP. It is customary that a local club representative will solicit plants from local donors, regional hybridizers, and sometimes from outside the region. The club auction coordinator can engage the Regional officers regarding plant solicitation from Regional and national level donors. They have a list of potential donors and contact information. The Host club should be sure that notices are put in the Hemalina soliciting plants, but nothing takes the place of personal contact, either by note, phone call, or e-mail. The number of plants to target for the auction is usually in the 95 to 120 range. The host club also needs to provide local support the weekend of the meeting to receive and stage auction plants as they come in from donors, prior to the auction. When auction plants are being requested, in addition to new registrations that are of interest to some regional members, the host club and Regional requestors should also consider obtaining a good % of plants in the $35 to $75 range, as those will often auction nearer their retail price than new intros. The club auction coordinator should provide copies of the auction list of known donations (more donations always will arrive the day of the auction) to the attendees. These copies should be placed on the registration table to pique interest and to give credit to the donors. We always try to recognize and thank those who faithfully support our region!
The region 15 Treasurer, along with two regional members selected by the Treasurer, will handle the auction process—tracking plants auctioned, winning bid price, winning person, and the collection of payments. Once the Auction net is established, the Regional Treasurer will then disburse the proceeds to the host Club and the Regional treasury using the formula previously noted.
Two or three additional people the host club provides, will be needed to serve as runners so that the auctioneer can keep the auction moving. Runners take plants from the table, to the auctioneer, and on to the winning bidders. They need to be sure that badge numbers of recipients as well as the final bid price are given to the auction table for tallying.
11. Buses. Bus company needs to be chosen as early as possible and price negotiated by Bus Chair. Deposit may be required. Date to confirm number of buses needed should be determined. For recent Region 15 summer meetings, the number of buses may be 2 or 1. We recommend planning for 2 and confirm what the cut-off date is for canceling 1 of those buses if attendance is not sufficient to support 2. Bus captains (can be an individual or a couple) should be determined and routes planned by the Bus Chair. Bus captains should run their designated route beforehand to know exactly where gardens are, where buses will turn around, park, and where the lunch destination is, etc. A cell phone on board each bus is required in case of emergency, with numbers exchanged between the bus captains and the Bus Chair. Also very helpful now is GPS for each bus in case of blocked routes or other emergency situations. These are very important jobs and should be staffed by members good with logistics and familiar with the area. Bus captains should be familiar with gardens or provided a narrative that can be given en route to each garden. The narratives are usually provided by the Bus Chair. A typed description from the garden owner works well to provide information that the bus captain may not know. The length of time in each garden is limited so the bus captain should be sure to announce which garden is next on tour and what time the bus will leave the garden when arriving at each garden. Some type of whistle is needed to get people back on the bus in a timely manner. It is very important that buses stay on their allotted timetables.
Ballots should be provided by the Regional Awards Manager to the Bus Chairman, who will distribute to each bus captain. The ballots are to be explained and given out en route to first garden so members can begin thinking about voting on daylilies in the gardens (best seedling, best clump by regional hybridizer, etc.) Ballots should be given to the attendees as they load from the last garden, then collected by the bus captains as the attendees depart the bus as they return to the hotel. The Bus Captains then pass on the ballots to the Awards Chair, who should be near the unloading area, for counting. In recent years, the tip for the bus driver has been built in to the meeting costs. The Bus captain(s) should be supplied a check in an envelope from the club Treasurer for the tip for bus driver. This is customary practice.
If plants are given to attendees, more recently this has been done at registration. Providing registration and/or bus plants is optional. If bus plants are given, it is suggested that they be handed to attendees as they depart the bus. Suggest that they exchange with each other if they have the daylily they are given.
12. Bus Plants. We recommend the host club ask each member to line out a few extra newer daylilies to be used for registration/ bus plants. This is an area where all members can contribute something to help the club. Newer cultivars left over from club sales can be lined out one summer for use the next summer.
13. Food Service. Let’s face it, daylily people love to eat! Assuming the meal Friday night is “on your own”, light refreshments are customary for Friday night if a program is planned. A Saturday lunch and Saturday night banquet are imperative. Refreshments in each garden is another consideration. Clubs usually give each garden owner a supplemental allowance as part of the meeting cost for this expense, usually about $1 per attendee. The garden host may choose to provide additional refreshments. Refreshments can be as simple as ice cream, or breakfast type foods for the early stops, but plenty of liquids are essential for the Summer bus tours.
14. Table Arrangements for Saturday night Banquet are customary. These can be simple and made by club members. They can be given as door prizes when meeting ends.
15. Equipment Rentals. Some facilities will allow projectors and screens, etc., to be brought in, while others will prefer to rent the visual and audio equipment to be used for the meetings. Some clubs may not own adequate equipment or simply prefer to rent it. A member familiar with this type of equipment should be in charge of checking out the rental equipment before the meetings and should be on hand in case problems arise with the equipment. Speakers often only bring their program on a memory device, usually in a PowerPoint program. Be sure to confirm what they will have BEFORE they arrive. Know where the light switches are when it is show-time!
16. Regional Awards. All tour gardens should be provided a list of awards to be voted on and an explanation of who receives the awards. All Region 15 cultivars blooming the day of the tour should be flagged to make voting easier. (The list of plants that have previously won the Region 15 Hybridizer’s award and thus are not eligible for the award should be given to garden owners and should be in the handbook given to participants. The Regional Awards Chair should have the list of previous winners not eligible, and it should also be found on the Regional web site.) These awards are regional awards and prizes are regional treasury expenses. The hosting club is not responsible for obtaining or paying for these prizes. They will be purchased by the Regional Awards Chair and brought to the meeting by the Regional Awards Chair or designated Regional Officer. Ensure that the method of marking Regional award eligible cultivars in the tour gardens is communicated to the Bus Captains so they can announce this to the riders, on the way to the first tour garden.
17. Clinics. Coordinate with the Regional Garden Judges Liaison and the Regional Exhibition Judges Liaison as to which clinics will be needed. These Liaisons will recruit instructors and confirm how many rooms will be needed. It is the host club’s responsibility to report back to the Garden Judges Liaison and the Exhibition Judges Liaison in a timely manner if it appears that a scheduled class is not going to be needed.
18. Normally, the RP will hold a Regional Board/Officers meeting, or a Regional Officers & Club Officers meeting, so to plan for those rooms if needed. Usually only one room is needed for this as these meetings are usually back-to-back Friday afternoon before most activities.
19. Budget. Determine estimated costs and set registration fee based on estimated number of paid attendees with the goal to have a break-even meeting cost vs registration income at a reasonably conservative attendance projection. Attendance projections will vary between Summer and Fall meetings, and can vary slightly dependent on the meeting location. Based on recent summer and fall meetings, a conservative planning estimate of paid attendees for a summer meeting is 75, and for a fall meeting, 55. Commonly, these paid attendance numbers are exceeded by 15 to 20 people. Some costs will be set, or “fixed”, and others will vary with number of attendees, or other variables.
Take into consideration:
21. Budgets, projection information, meeting schedules, extra meetings needed during the event, and information relative to expenses from previous meetings, are being requested from previous Host Clubs. These can be provided to future Host Clubs on request, from the Regional Meetings Liaison, or RP, to provide realistic guidelines for future Host Clubs.
22. In addition to the above guidelines, the region will work with recent Host clubs to maintain a set of meeting planning information, including budgets, actual costs such as hotels & buses, previous auction lists, etc., to additionally use as planning tools, although these costs will vary some, dependent on meeting location.
Rev.Date 11/17/2017
- Have club vote on hosting the regional meeting. Clubs sometimes host both Fall and Summer meetings, but hosting only a single meeting, like a fall meeting is also an option. Elect a Chairperson and other core committee members. If possible, recruit a Chairperson and committee members who have assisted previously with meeting planning as they can provide valuable experience and guidance. The region will maintain a Regional Meetings Liaison, who has past meeting planning experience, who can provide guidance as needed as the club plans its fall or summer meetings.
- Choose a date. The primary consideration is peak bloom time in your area. A Regional meeting can’t be held the same weekend as a national convention. When a National is held within Region 15, there will be no regional meeting that year. (A Regional Business meeting will need to be scheduled as one of the meetings during the National.) The Host club may also want to consider when other major events are planned in their area and the region. Note that regional clubs will plan their events and shows around the summer meeting date you choose.
- Choose a location. Research area hotels for space and price. Negotiate price for rooms and meeting rooms. Rooms will be needed for Workshops and Clinics, either in the hotel or meeting location if different from the hotel. Have the hotel set aside a reasonable block of rooms at reduced rate that they will honor until near the date of meeting. (Some hotels offer 1 free room with x-number booked, usually used for guest speaker or hospitality room.) Be sure hotel is convenient to bus routes and has room to load/unload the buses. Use recent past meetings as a guide for how many rooms to hold. Most hotels will hold rooms then release them in the last couple weeks without penalty.
- Make agenda and schedule for meeting. NOTE: The Regional President will need 1 hour for the Summer Regional Business meeting. This meeting will include presentation of garden tour awards, so needs to be scheduled Saturday evening, usually immediately after dinner. Everything depends on this schedule, so the earlier it is prepared, the sooner committees can get started. Coordinate with RP and Editor for inclusion in the Hemalina and the Regional web site. Make copies of the agenda and place on registration table for hand-outs.
- Set up committees. Remember that the Chair cannot do it all! Meet monthly for progress reports. Consider the following committees:
- Speaker – Secure speaker and confirm dates and times for meeting ASAP. Consider having him/her do 2 programs if needed (ex. – one Friday night, one Saturday night). Make hotel reservation and plane reservations if necessary. Pickup and delivery to airport if necessary, or provide rental car in the budget, if other hosting arrangements can’t be made. Discuss charges and explain what expenses the club is willing to pay for, and understand if auction plants are part of the package. NOTE: If the speaker provides auction plants, often the speaker will get a % of the auction proceeds of those plants. (In recent years, usually 50/50) In this case, it is customary that the remaining auction proceeds not paid to the speaker would be applied to the speaker/meeting costs to help decrease registration costs for all attendees. If the Speaker specifies the plants are for the meeting and doesn’t ask for a % of their auction proceeds, it is then customary that they be auctioned as part of the normal auction. (Many speakers do not charge a speaking fee, as this is an opportunity for them to show their hybridizing program or other skills.) There can be a significant variation in speaker costs, so you should make sure you have details in writing and consider carefully when considering a speaker on the high end of the cost range. Arrange for A/V equipment, computer, projector & screen, tables, chairs, and podium as needed. Speakers customarily now bring only their PowerPoint presentation on a memory device.
- Region 15 Seedling Bed – Determine which garden will have room for this bed and is willing to host the plants. Also, consider if the garden has good light and a good water source. This bed should be established at least a year before the meeting (two or three years is more preferable) to allow regional members to send their seedlings and have them at clump strength by the time of the summer meeting. Each member can send up to 5 seedlings with as many as 3 fans per plant. Solicit plants from regional hybridizers through a notice in the Hemalina and/or mailings, e-mails, phone calls. Please note that unless instructed otherwise by the hybridizer, these plants are not to be used for propagation purposes and are the property of the hybridizer when the meeting is over. Plants should be labeled by hybridizer when received. This information should be recorded and used to tag plants for return to the hybridizer after the meeting. Arrangements to receive/return plants to hybridizers should be worked out between club and individual hybridizers. A Committee member should be responsible for receiving/returning plants because the garden owner has many other responsibilities before the garden tours. (Please review the guidelines for the Carolina Seedling Award on the website for more information about hosting the seedling bed.)
- Registration - (Note – The Regional officers, the Director, RP, Treasurer, Secretary, RPD, & Editor, will pay meeting registration to the club the same as other meeting attendees. Speakers and garden owners on tour are customarily exempt, with these costs built into the overall meeting cost, which is normally covered by the meeting registrations. Individual clubs, including host clubs, can consider special incentives to encourage meeting attendance at the local level. The meeting Registrar should mail confirmation letters as registrations come in (or send email confirmations). A list of open gardens can be mailed with this letter. On the day of the meeting, the registrar, or someone with registrar’s list, should have a table to greet attendees and assist people as they sign in and get their badges. A list of attendees with badge numbers, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses should be available at this table or included in gift bags. Sheets with other pertinent information such as open gardens after the meeting (which may have already been mailed), and the auction list, should be available at or near this table for pickup by late registrants.
- Publicity. Coordinate with RPD/Editor to get the meeting, hotel, and registration information in the Hemalina as soon as possible. (Usually the Spring Hemalina will feature the upcoming summer meeting, and Summer Hemalina will feature the fall meeting) The Club Chair for Regional Meeting Publicity needs to engage with the Regional Webmaster to post the meeting information on the regional Web Site, (and the host club web site). The meeting information includes location, information about tour gardens for summer meetings, registration form, agenda, hotel information, and secondary information such as open gardens, etc. Once meeting information content is complete on the Regional web site, the club Publicity Chair, or the Regional Webmaster is to contact the AHS Webmaster to have the meeting information listed in the AHS site. The AHS web master can then pick up the AHS information from the Regional site. (Target information for summer meetings to be posted on the Regional web site by 1/15 of the meeting year.)
- Hospitality. Several club members can greet attendees in the lobby area and direct them to the registration table or greet them in that area and help them bring in plants for sale table, auction, etc. A nice gesture that is always appreciated.
- Badges. These need to be numbered for several purposes – registration, sales table purchases, auction purchases, door prizes. They should include meeting information (example – “Region 15 Summer Meeting 2017, Raleigh, NC”), registrants name (big print for the name please), and town of attendee. Color and artwork are not necessary, but make the badge more attractive. Your Club logo, or Region 15 logo, works nicely.
- Gift bags & door prizes. Both of these are optional, but appreciated by most attendees. Gift bags can be simple and include a notepad and pen, bottle of water, etc. Door prizes, usually solicited from local garden and nursery type businesses as well as club members, should be acknowledged with a thank you to the donors. (This can be a sheet listing all donated items and their donors that can be mailed as a thank you after the meeting. A handout of this list can also be placed on the registration table or the table where items are displayed so that winning members can send their own thank you notes.)
- Plant Sales. Usually plants with retail value under $20 are placed on a sales table rather than the auction table to save time, if there is a sale table. At the sales table, plants can include companion plants as well as daylilies. Companion plants usually sell very well. Several Host Club people will be needed to staff the sales table or other projects, and will need a cash box as sales at the sales table will be separate from the plant auction. Proceeds from the sale table customarily go to the host club, although sometimes, depending on attendance, the host club may donate a % of these proceeds to the region.
- Special Sale or Raffle Items. Optional certainly, but these can add to the club’s funds to help pay for the meeting. The more interesting the items, the more tickets that will be sold. Hand-made items such as birdhouses, quilts, etc., sell well.
- Auction. Taken from the 2010 Regional Business Meeting Vote and Minutes
- The same allocation is applied to both the summer and fall meetings. See Article IV, Section 3 in Region 15 Policy and Procedure Manual.
- The host club usually retains 100 percent of the revenue produced by local efforts including but not limited to: plant sale tables, boutique sales, silent auctions and commissions on vendor supplied merchandise. At times, depending on attendance, the host club may elect to donate a % of these proceeds to the Region.
- It is important to note that the Host Club should not lose money hosting the meeting when expenses vs registration costs vs planned paid registrations are well planned. The host club should not expect, or plan, to gain a significant sum from the meeting expenses.
- (If an external event such as an act of God, or other emergency situation impacts the
The host club is expected to provide the auctioneer. A good auctioneer, who can hold the crowd’s attention and knows many cultivars, is a must. Soliciting plants for the auction will need to be coordinated between the meeting chair and the RP. It is customary that a local club representative will solicit plants from local donors, regional hybridizers, and sometimes from outside the region. The club auction coordinator can engage the Regional officers regarding plant solicitation from Regional and national level donors. They have a list of potential donors and contact information. The Host club should be sure that notices are put in the Hemalina soliciting plants, but nothing takes the place of personal contact, either by note, phone call, or e-mail. The number of plants to target for the auction is usually in the 95 to 120 range. The host club also needs to provide local support the weekend of the meeting to receive and stage auction plants as they come in from donors, prior to the auction. When auction plants are being requested, in addition to new registrations that are of interest to some regional members, the host club and Regional requestors should also consider obtaining a good % of plants in the $35 to $75 range, as those will often auction nearer their retail price than new intros. The club auction coordinator should provide copies of the auction list of known donations (more donations always will arrive the day of the auction) to the attendees. These copies should be placed on the registration table to pique interest and to give credit to the donors. We always try to recognize and thank those who faithfully support our region!
The region 15 Treasurer, along with two regional members selected by the Treasurer, will handle the auction process—tracking plants auctioned, winning bid price, winning person, and the collection of payments. Once the Auction net is established, the Regional Treasurer will then disburse the proceeds to the host Club and the Regional treasury using the formula previously noted.
Two or three additional people the host club provides, will be needed to serve as runners so that the auctioneer can keep the auction moving. Runners take plants from the table, to the auctioneer, and on to the winning bidders. They need to be sure that badge numbers of recipients as well as the final bid price are given to the auction table for tallying.
11. Buses. Bus company needs to be chosen as early as possible and price negotiated by Bus Chair. Deposit may be required. Date to confirm number of buses needed should be determined. For recent Region 15 summer meetings, the number of buses may be 2 or 1. We recommend planning for 2 and confirm what the cut-off date is for canceling 1 of those buses if attendance is not sufficient to support 2. Bus captains (can be an individual or a couple) should be determined and routes planned by the Bus Chair. Bus captains should run their designated route beforehand to know exactly where gardens are, where buses will turn around, park, and where the lunch destination is, etc. A cell phone on board each bus is required in case of emergency, with numbers exchanged between the bus captains and the Bus Chair. Also very helpful now is GPS for each bus in case of blocked routes or other emergency situations. These are very important jobs and should be staffed by members good with logistics and familiar with the area. Bus captains should be familiar with gardens or provided a narrative that can be given en route to each garden. The narratives are usually provided by the Bus Chair. A typed description from the garden owner works well to provide information that the bus captain may not know. The length of time in each garden is limited so the bus captain should be sure to announce which garden is next on tour and what time the bus will leave the garden when arriving at each garden. Some type of whistle is needed to get people back on the bus in a timely manner. It is very important that buses stay on their allotted timetables.
Ballots should be provided by the Regional Awards Manager to the Bus Chairman, who will distribute to each bus captain. The ballots are to be explained and given out en route to first garden so members can begin thinking about voting on daylilies in the gardens (best seedling, best clump by regional hybridizer, etc.) Ballots should be given to the attendees as they load from the last garden, then collected by the bus captains as the attendees depart the bus as they return to the hotel. The Bus Captains then pass on the ballots to the Awards Chair, who should be near the unloading area, for counting. In recent years, the tip for the bus driver has been built in to the meeting costs. The Bus captain(s) should be supplied a check in an envelope from the club Treasurer for the tip for bus driver. This is customary practice.
If plants are given to attendees, more recently this has been done at registration. Providing registration and/or bus plants is optional. If bus plants are given, it is suggested that they be handed to attendees as they depart the bus. Suggest that they exchange with each other if they have the daylily they are given.
12. Bus Plants. We recommend the host club ask each member to line out a few extra newer daylilies to be used for registration/ bus plants. This is an area where all members can contribute something to help the club. Newer cultivars left over from club sales can be lined out one summer for use the next summer.
13. Food Service. Let’s face it, daylily people love to eat! Assuming the meal Friday night is “on your own”, light refreshments are customary for Friday night if a program is planned. A Saturday lunch and Saturday night banquet are imperative. Refreshments in each garden is another consideration. Clubs usually give each garden owner a supplemental allowance as part of the meeting cost for this expense, usually about $1 per attendee. The garden host may choose to provide additional refreshments. Refreshments can be as simple as ice cream, or breakfast type foods for the early stops, but plenty of liquids are essential for the Summer bus tours.
14. Table Arrangements for Saturday night Banquet are customary. These can be simple and made by club members. They can be given as door prizes when meeting ends.
15. Equipment Rentals. Some facilities will allow projectors and screens, etc., to be brought in, while others will prefer to rent the visual and audio equipment to be used for the meetings. Some clubs may not own adequate equipment or simply prefer to rent it. A member familiar with this type of equipment should be in charge of checking out the rental equipment before the meetings and should be on hand in case problems arise with the equipment. Speakers often only bring their program on a memory device, usually in a PowerPoint program. Be sure to confirm what they will have BEFORE they arrive. Know where the light switches are when it is show-time!
16. Regional Awards. All tour gardens should be provided a list of awards to be voted on and an explanation of who receives the awards. All Region 15 cultivars blooming the day of the tour should be flagged to make voting easier. (The list of plants that have previously won the Region 15 Hybridizer’s award and thus are not eligible for the award should be given to garden owners and should be in the handbook given to participants. The Regional Awards Chair should have the list of previous winners not eligible, and it should also be found on the Regional web site.) These awards are regional awards and prizes are regional treasury expenses. The hosting club is not responsible for obtaining or paying for these prizes. They will be purchased by the Regional Awards Chair and brought to the meeting by the Regional Awards Chair or designated Regional Officer. Ensure that the method of marking Regional award eligible cultivars in the tour gardens is communicated to the Bus Captains so they can announce this to the riders, on the way to the first tour garden.
17. Clinics. Coordinate with the Regional Garden Judges Liaison and the Regional Exhibition Judges Liaison as to which clinics will be needed. These Liaisons will recruit instructors and confirm how many rooms will be needed. It is the host club’s responsibility to report back to the Garden Judges Liaison and the Exhibition Judges Liaison in a timely manner if it appears that a scheduled class is not going to be needed.
18. Normally, the RP will hold a Regional Board/Officers meeting, or a Regional Officers & Club Officers meeting, so to plan for those rooms if needed. Usually only one room is needed for this as these meetings are usually back-to-back Friday afternoon before most activities.
19. Budget. Determine estimated costs and set registration fee based on estimated number of paid attendees with the goal to have a break-even meeting cost vs registration income at a reasonably conservative attendance projection. Attendance projections will vary between Summer and Fall meetings, and can vary slightly dependent on the meeting location. Based on recent summer and fall meetings, a conservative planning estimate of paid attendees for a summer meeting is 75, and for a fall meeting, 55. Commonly, these paid attendance numbers are exceeded by 15 to 20 people. Some costs will be set, or “fixed”, and others will vary with number of attendees, or other variables.
Take into consideration:
- Cost of all food – gardens, banquet, social hour, etc. (Be sure to include tax and tips as this is a large portion of the expense.)
- Bus rental fees
- Speaker’s expenses (including flight, meals when traveling, car parking, lodging at event, etc.)
- Equipment rentals (including AV for auction & speaker, and podium)
- Meeting room fees if applicable
- Publicity – printing fees, etc.
- Table arrangements
- Badges
- Goody bags
- Postage for mailings
- Postage to return Region 15 seedling bed plants, if necessary
- Miscellaneous costs – auction supplies, registrar’s supplies, phone bills, flags to mark Region 15 plants in each garden, etc.
- Income for the meeting is primarily from registrations, sales table, and a portion of the speaker auction if there is one, and if the speaker agreement is for some of the auction plants to be part of speaker compensation.
21. Budgets, projection information, meeting schedules, extra meetings needed during the event, and information relative to expenses from previous meetings, are being requested from previous Host Clubs. These can be provided to future Host Clubs on request, from the Regional Meetings Liaison, or RP, to provide realistic guidelines for future Host Clubs.
22. In addition to the above guidelines, the region will work with recent Host clubs to maintain a set of meeting planning information, including budgets, actual costs such as hotels & buses, previous auction lists, etc., to additionally use as planning tools, although these costs will vary some, dependent on meeting location.