Leaf Club Advice

[mhigley]

Could some one give me some advice on starting a Leaf Club here in Kansas City? There aren't many here yet. Is there a good way to find other Leaf owners in my area? Are there other things a Leaf club can do besides get togethers?

Yesterday I met with a rep from our local electric provider and he is very interested in getting involved with a Leaf club. He drives the fleet Leaf for his company and promotes charging station installation. Two Nissan dealers have also offered to help sponsor events.

Any advice would be apprecitated.

Thank you in advance.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Use social media to get the word out. I FB, AND twitter etc.,for your area I would not be surprised to find out there is already a group on facebook

 

[linkim]

Could some one give me some advice on starting a Leaf Club here in Kansas City? There aren't many here yet. Is there a good way to find other Leaf owners in my area? Are there other things a Leaf club can do besides get togethers?

Yesterday I met with a rep from our local electric provider and he is very interested in getting involved with a Leaf club. He drives the fleet Leaf for his company and promotes charging station installation. Two Nissan dealers have also offered to help sponsor events.

Any advice would be apprecitated.

Thank you in advance.

There at least two models that work here on the West Coast. The group in Southern Calif. led by garygid meets about every two weeks at a local buffet for breakfast. They are a small but dedicated gathering that meet for social and technical discussions. They welcomed me to the meeting when I had an opportunity to join them in May. The other model is the one in the Bay Area, SF BayLeafs (sfbayleafs.org) led by gascant. We hold meetings about once a month at various venues from SF in the north to Silicon Valley in the south, as well as the mid peninsula and East Bay. Our meetings are less social and more technical, with guest speakers from various organizations. Please check our website for more details.

The gatherings are very helpful to learn about the LEAF and to meet other local EV enthusiasts.

Good luck!

 

[TonyWilliams]

We meet in "real" southern California (San Diego) every other month. Meetings are typically arranged quite successfully right here on this forum. We've had fairly elaborate affairs to just breakfast and BS-ing. Certainly, Facebook can be used to get started with low cost advertising to get folks interested.

You might consider talking to Nissan dealers to see if they can help organize owners.

You can check out our thread for the past year of meetings here.

 

[linkim]

Sorry Tony, I didn't mean to overlook your efforts, but I only mentioned the two groups with LEAF meetings that I have attended. I stand corrected, your group is the true "southern" California. Garygid and his group are mainly Orange County so they are "somewhere in between" California.

I think we LEAF owners are fortunate to have three strong leaders (gascant, garygid, TonyWilliams) in California that arrange and handle many of the logistics/agenda for holding meetings. IMO that is the key to success.

 

[JeremyW]

I just posted in the Pacific local section here on the forum. Nailed down a date, time, and place.... then people showed up!

I've been to SF, OC, SD, and Sac meetings and I'd say food is an effective way to get them out of the woodwork.

 

[Ingineer]

Outside of Nissan, I probably have the largest list of Leaf owners in the US, if not the world. Approximately 18% of the Leafs sold in the US. I would be happy to forward an email inviting people to Leaf owners groups by region as long as it is noncommercial.

-Phil

 

[mwalsh]

Having spent two years as President of a car club I'd belonged to for some years prior to (the largest Mini club in the US at the time), I would say that you should stay away from the model that requires volunteer board members and organizational staff, receipt of dues, filing of 401C3 paperwork and tax returns, etc... I like Gary's informal model MUCH better.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Sorry Tony, I didn't mean to overlook your efforts, but I only mentioned the two groups with LEAF meetings that I have attended. I stand corrected, your group is the true "southern" California. Garygid and his group are mainly Orange County so they are "somewhere in between" California.

Hey, didn't mean it that way!!!! The "joke" is that folks in SF consider anything south is "SoCal", but in LA, they don't include San Diego.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Having spent two years as President of a car club I'd belonged to for some years prior to (the largest Mini club in the US at the time), I would say that you should stay away from the model that requires volunteer board members and organizational staff, receipt of dues, filing of 401C3 paperwork and tax returns, etc... I like Gary's informal model MUCH better.

I share Mike's view. I've been through the beaurcracies of motorcycle club(s) and labor unions, and I specifically did not follow that model. The whole thing could stop tomorrow with little issue on me, or anybody else.

Clearly, statewide or national model club would need the whole organization, but your local interest group doesn't.

 

[eclecticflower]

There are so few of us in the KC area that we've failed to have our fall meet-'n'-greet, even though we had the best of intentions (I met Tom/ksnogas2112 & his wife this summer at Pierpont's). Eric (ericvoll) was unable to make it. Tom's "LEAF Fest" thread http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=9274" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; could be resurrected or we can let it die... :?

Last month, I enlisted my dealer's LEAF specialist to share my information to his other LEAF owners, but thus far I've had no contacts. At the time, there had only been 5 LEAF sales there since March (me, cdherman and 3 mystery buyers). There are 5 of us on the forum (me, Tom, Eric (ericvoll), Dave (cdherman) and yourself (mhigley) from the KC metro area.

Phil, it would be great if you could pass mhigley the Missouri & Kansas (KC area) owners' contact information

I agree the KC area club should be an informal LEAF networking club for fun, info sharing and friendship, rather than one steeped in parliamentary procedure. We have the forum as a great resource for technical and scientific content.

 

[Ingineer]

Phil, it would be great if you could pass mhigley the Missouri & Kansas (KC area) owners' contact information

Sorry, that would be a breach of privacy for our customers. If you compose an email intended for those people in the KC area, I'll forward it on as long as it is non-commercial.

-Phil

 

[eclecticflower]

Yes, Phil, I thought there'd be some privacy issues and would want to avoid those, but I deleted that component from my response. Having you as the filter works for me. I'll leave it to Mark to identify the purpose & parameters of the club and develop the message, since it's his thread.

Mark, if you need any help, just PM me.

Thanks,
Kathy