05/13/2024

National Check-Off Board Update

The National Check-Off Board met the last of April and here is a summary of items that affect our Region 3: North Dakota (ND), South Dakota (SD), Nebraska (NE), Minnesota (MN), Iowa (IA), Wisconsin (WI), Illinois (IL), Michigan (MI), Indiana (IN), Ohio (OH), Kentucky (KY)

These are the programs that the Region 3 Board sent-up for approval and the result from National review:

• Program 24-013 Masonry Structural Coalition - Tabled until formation of National Design Center and National Director is hired.
• Program 24-015 TMS Travel Funding - Approved funding mason contractors to attend and participate at the TMS 2024 Annual Meeting.
• Program 24-018 Region 3 Design Center - Tabled until formation of Nation Design Center and National Director is hired. More explanation below in the Design Center Update.
• Program 24-025 SC SU Mobile Masonry Demo - Tabled pending clarification regarding impact and ROI specifically for CMU.
• Program 24-028 TMS Masonry Educators Workshop - Approved funding five educators to attend a TMS MEW yet to be scheduled.

From Region 3 Board perspective this was a good result.... The items that got tabled were anticipated at this point until the National Design Center is established.  The work from our Region already puts us in a good spot to hit the road running once things are aligned and some of these items will be funded more from the National side of the funds rather than the Regional Side.

Major National Activity Updates

• Phil Ledent (Michigan Masonry Institute) provided a report on his active programs that were approved in November 2023.
• The finance committee recommended to the board, and the board approved, allocating an additional quarter of assessments. This decision provides approximately $93,700 in additional funds to the Region 3 budget for the next submission period.  This had not been done since in 2023 funds were only collected for 3 quarters.  Now we are at the point that all 4 quarters will be collected.  So for Region 3 we will have $457,050 in our budget for approvals this fall going into next year.
• Several National Design Center Updates are probably the biggest developments from the meeting.
• The board is allocating $1.2 million in national funds to the National Design Center.
• These national dollars will fund a National Design Director and five Regional Technical Directors. One for each Region. This decision releases the Region 3 funds we were recommending be allocated to fund a regional design center.
• While this decision may delay the start of design center activity proposed by Phil for Region 3, the availability of Region 3 assessments to fund other programs is a significant benefit.
• CEO, Kim Spahn, has targeted July 1 as the deadline to recruit and hire a National Design Center Director. The process for recruiting and hiring the five Regional Technical Directors will begin after July 1.
• The Board also reviewed and approved a marketing message presented by Clutch with a May/June launch. More to come about this on our next call.
• The board is developing clear working relationships with industry partners such as CMHA, TMS and MCAA and creating an understanding of how each can properly and effectively collaborate to promote concrete masonry.

Program Proposals for the next round are due August 18.  If you have an idea for a program please contact OMA/ TMI and we will start the process.  You can go to  https://concretemasonrycheckoff.org/  to learn more about the process.