Southern Arizona Region Places 6th in National Membership Contest

From the August ZN last month, this is what we knew then: "As of the August ZN article due date, our exact standing in the PCA National Membership Competition had not yet been disclosed. However, this week, National did announce the top five regions in both competition categories. Unfortunately, we were not included ... but based on our recent membership growth, I know we were close — stay tuned!" What we know now is that we could not have been closer! Out of 141 PCA Regions, the Southern Arizona Region placed 6th overall in the Factored Growth category, while also taking top honors in Zone 8. Since the PCA website lists only the top five regions in each category, PCA National Membership Chair Carolyn Ewbank graciously provided the information confirming our final position. A little background ... at our January Board Meeting, based on our continued membership growth, it was suggested that I look into this competition. What I discovered was that as of 1/31/04, our region was 2nd in Zone 8, and 10th nationally in the Factored

Growth category — this without any knowledge of the contest's existence. Thus began a mini three-month campaign to improve our position. The March ZN introduced the contest to our membership with the following description: "Each year, PCA National ranks its regions by their membership growth. The campaign runs from June 1 through May 31 of the following year. To give both large and small regions an opportunity to compete, there are two contest categories. The Actual Growth category, for the larger regions, is simply the increase in PCA members (End Size minus Beginning Size). For the smaller regions (such as SAZ), there is the Factored Growth category. Factored Growth is defined as (stay awake, now): 100 times Actual Growth, divided by [(0.03411)(Beginning Size) + (2.0835)(Square Root of Beginning Size)] ... whew!" On June 1, 2003, the contest year began with 155 PCA members in our geographical region, and on May 31, 2004, there were 176 PCA members — an increase (Actual Growth) of 21 members. These numbers result in a

Factored Growth value of 67.25, which was 6th best of the 141 regions. Incidentally — against the "big guys" — our Actual Growth of 21 was 21st best nationally. (And ironically, on 5/31/04, there were four PCA members who missed their renewal date, and thus, were not included in the 176-member count.) Indeed, our membership growth this past year has been phenomenal. During the membership contest period, we added 41 new local members, most of whom were new to the PCA. And this success is the direct result of extraordinary local club member efforts. Engaged local SAR membership drove the increase in national PCA membership. Seventy percent of our region's 176 national members are local members — contrasted with only 56% of the Arizona region's 717 national members being local members. Please congratulate yourself on this outstanding effort! And do not worry about the absence of new member introduction in [the September] ZN (the last such occurrence was in the November 2002 edition). I believe we're just taking a month off to reload for next year's contest.

Newsletter Wins Another Award!

Mike Mansolino, our Zone 8 rep, sends us this message:

Southern Arizona Region won 3rd place in the Parade Newsletter Contest. Congratulations on your award. It is well-deserved, but it is a small tribute for all the time, energy, and effort that has gone into the Zuffenhausen News over the years. It was a pleasure to accept this award on your behalf. I will be sending the plaque to you in the next couple of days. Congratulations, and enjoy the recognition you rightfully deserve. Thank you for representing Zone 8 in such grand fashion.

Best regards,
Mike Mansolino

Congratulations to our newsletter editor!

JP Bruce Wins the Award for Most Pledges

Club members had many opportunities to donate to the Tucson Arthritis Support League (TASL) during our Cinco de Mayo concours, autocross, and banquet. Donations were received by pledges, through raffles, and by direct donations. At our June membership meeting, Rita Dennis, who belongs to both TASL and PCA, thanked the club for the more than $1000 raised for TASL this year. She also told us how our total of more than $5000 in donations over the last three years have helped support two TASL-sponsored students at the university. JP Bruce won the award for the most pledges and most pledge money collected for TASL. Congratulations JP! Rita honored his effort with a trophy and a bottle of wine.

Zone 8 at the Parade

The Parade in Fort Worth was a lot of fun and the weather cooperated for the most part. Zone 8’ers did very well at the Parade. We have a terrific and enthusiastic group of people and it showed from the results. Congratulations to all and to those who were recognized for their hard work and competitive talent. Here are some of the results:

Family of the Year	The Becks	Arizona Region
Enthusiast of the Year	Tom Brown	San Diego Region

Newsletter Contest winners in their respective classes (I am doing this from memory, hopefully I did not miss anyone)

1st place	Dave Witteried	Cal Inland Region
1st place and Heinmiller award for best Newsletter	Nicolas Liakas	Santa Barbara Region
2nd place	Larry Dennis	Southern Arizona Region
2nd place	Greg Philips	San Diego Region

Website Contest

1st place	Zone category	Bev Giffin-Frohm	Zone 8
1st place	Registry category	Keith Verlaque	RS America Registry
2nd place	Region Category	Chris Huck	San Diego Region

Art Show

1st place	Painting & Illustration Amateur	Bob Beck	Arizona Region
1st place	Jewelry Amateur	Connie Carter	Grand Prix Region
3rd place	Craft Professional	May Bierce	Orange Coast Region
Best in Show	Amateur	Bob Beck	Arizona Region

On Concours day it was overcast in the morning, which kept it cooler until the sun came out around noon. It was a beautiful setting on Main Street. If you have never been to Fort Worth, you should make the city a stop on your travels around the country.

Concours

3rd place	Preservation P2 Touring	Don Bierce	Orange Coast Region
1st place	Preparation Touring 911 993	Linda Cobarrubias	Grand Prix Region
10th place	Preparation Touring 996, 964	Larry Dennis	Southern Arizona Region
2nd place	Preparation Touring 928	The Ewbank’s	Santa Barbara Region
2nd place	Preparation Touring Modified	The Chamblin’s	Riverside Region
2nd place	Preparation Full 993,996,964	The Young’s	San Diego Region

The Rally was a little different for a Parade Rally. The instructions included tulip diagrams and legs that had many notes all active at the same time. Entrants from Zone 8 that ran the rally said the countryside was beautiful. The weather once again stayed cool until most of the ralliests came in to the ice cream social.

Rally

2nd place	Equipped	Joe Boucher	Santa Barbara	Tom Gould	Orange Coast
3rd place	Equipped	Bill Allen	San Diego	Paul Young	San Diego
9th place	Navigation	Jack Case	San Diego	Jenny Case	San Diego
19th place	Unequipped	Keith Verlaque	San Diego	Martha McGowan	San Diego

Golf

Longest Drive

Ann Tomlinson

Los Angeles Region

Charity

1st	San Diego Region

That is all I can remember at this point. Tom & I had to leave the Parade Friday morning, before the Auto Cross and Tech Quiz results were posted.

Congratulations again to all in Zone 8 who were recognized for their talent, enthusiasm and dedication.

PCA-SAR Raises Over $1300 For Needy Families

For more than 15 years the club has been donating food baskets to needy families in November and December. One of our members, Patsy Conklin, organizes purchasing of food and assembling it into baskets, then distributes the baskets at the holidays. Since Patsy works for the Division of Developmental Disabilities Child Family Services, she is able to determine who can most benefit from our donations. We donated $600 worth of food in 2001 and 2002. In 2003 we made an effort to collect more by publicizing the effort earlier in the year and by using an autocross as a fundraiser. These efforts more than doubled the amount raised!

Many thanks to all those who contributed, including the Corvette Club and SCCA members who participated in our fund-raising autocross. The families were very grateful for our donations.

Donated Laptop

Many thanks to Scott Marko for donating a laptop to the club! The laptop is used for timing at autocrosses. It has been tested with our timing software and works great.

We can also use a spare laptop, so if you have a Windows 95 or 98 laptop lying around and have discovered it is only worth a few dollars, please consider donating it to the club. Contact Wendy Walker.

PCA-SAR Raises Over $2000 for TASL

The donations have been tallied and we did it again! More than $2000 for the Tucson Arthritis Support League (TASL) was raised through pledges and raffle ticket sales at our Cinco de Mayo event in early May. Pledges were obtained from friends, family, and workmates, bringing a special element to our competitive events, the concours d'elegance and autocross. Learn more about our Cinco de Mayo event and TASL in this description (PDF formatted).

Congratulations to everyone who helped make our Cinco de Mayo event so helpful to TASL.