Marines, Thank you for your vote of confidence, I will continue to move our league forward. Richard Gore and Wendell Webb have done an outstanding job the past four years developing good business practices and fixing our IRS problems. We will continue to work forward for the good of League. There’s a few things I want to work on as we go forward. Our Mid- Winter conference and Convention business meetings are too long. At times there seems to be more members in the halls than in the meeting. Officer and committee reports, all reports will be written and submitted to National Hdq’s to be placed in the library. The top four officers will also give a verbal report. Only certain committee’s will also give a verbal report with a time limit (TBD). My goal is to cut a business session in half and to institute a leadership/training session. Awards are another time consuming session,I’m going to work with the MODD and Aux. and see if we can put together a combined awards night, maybe some music and fun. We need to trim sessions down so members aren’t rushing to make events and trips. By-Laws, another time consuming, out of control session. How do we shorten it? We start at the Detachment and Department level. When the proposed by-laws go out it’s the Detachment’s responsibility at a meeting to go over each proposed change and decide how they want to vote on each one. Then, at the Department convention the Commandant reviews them again with all the Detachments and decides how they will vote at the National convention. Now, at the National Convention, the by-laws will be on the big screen for your reading pleasure, the National Judge Advocate in the interest of time will not read the entire by-law and the change. He will read,”proposed change #1,” the committee recommends accept or reject, motion, second then during the discussion we will deal with any amendments. Again Marines it is the Detachment and Departments responsibility to review with their members and know how they want to vote on each proposed change before they get to the National convention. These are few ways I want to change up our conference and convention to give us a little more free time.
Now some serious issues that need to be dealt with. Let’s start with IRS non-profit status. All Detachments and Departments must be a 501c4, under the National Parent Group 0955, with a deductible of 1, this allows corporations, companies and individuals to donate to you the same as a 501c3. If there is a problem we also have a letter of exemption from the IRS to verify they can donate. If your detachment or Department is not a 501c4, Parent Group0955 deductible of 1 you risk having you non-profit status revoked and your charter suspended. If you are having trouble getting your status corrected please contact the COO for assistance. Also if you are not operating correctly the entire local board is subject to fines by the IRS. Another serious problem is the ROI’s. There are Detachments operating that have not sent in their ROI in years. No ROI, you are not a Detachment in good standing and your charter will be suspended. I will be comprising a list of every Detachment and Department not with the proper IRS status and without ROI’s and will be reaching out to each to try and correct the situations. These issues can be corrected. Uniforms,Marines please before you put on one of our uniforms, if you’re not sure what it consists of check the uniform code. Our cover is our main uniform, worn with civilian attire and you are in uniform. If you are going to wear any of our other uniforms please wear them correctly. If you are not wearing a uniform correctly you will be stopped by the Sgt/Arms and told to correct it or take it off.
In closing Marines, overall you are all doing an outstanding job. The work you do with T4T’s, Marine 4 Life, community, and funerals “is exemplary” You are putting the Marine Corps League name out there. The Marine Corps knows what you are doing and they thank you and I thank you. Keep doing what you do. Semper Fidelis Dennis Tobin Dennis Tobin National Commandant Marine Corps League