I've read every post and every linked article over the past couple of days and it seems that my original premise was overly broad because of my ignorance. I knew of "the lawsuit" but didn't really know what it was about. I knew there were registrars but didn't really know what their relationship is with SAAC (still unclear on some of that). I assumed SAAC was a club fitting my understanding of what a car club was since they refer to "joining" and "membership" on the saac.com website. I did not know that it is either a for profit/non-profit corporation (depending on how it's listed on the CT corporate search site or on Facebook) with 5 directors (two of whom are officers) and a secretary and I really don't care if the directors or anyone else managing the day-to-day activities of SAAC is compensated or if they have a large bank account or Mason jars buried in the ground. I chose to send my $50 for an annual membership (or subscription or whatever...) and I'm happy to get the printed magazine a sticker and an ID card. If that's all I got I would still be happy.
I'm unable to attend the convention this year, but if some of my $50 went toward that event I hope everyone has a great time and I hope to participate in future conventions.
My primary concern is this forum. Like it or not this is how many people connect with SAAC and for some it may be the only connection they have with SAAC. It is "advertised" as the official SAAC forum where members and guests can connect with each other, ask questions and get impeccable advice on their 62-70 Shelby. It had become a valuable resource of all things related to these cars until it blew up last year. A tremendous amount of effort was expended to create forum 2.0 in an attempt to recreate version 1.0 but without a data backup of the original site it won't happen quickly, if it happens at all.
I'm trying to wrap my head around why SAAC doesn't seem to be putting any resources or effort into the forum (aside from the expense and time invested in moving to a new server and initially setting up the latest version of Simple Machines software). Maybe there is a plan that we don't know about. Maybe there aren't enough financial or human resources to do any more than what's been done. Maybe it's just not a priority or the corporation doesn't care what happens here. I don't know because to date none of them have addressed this issue.
It seems to me that this forum would be an ideal recruiting tool to move someone from merely interested to a dues-paying SAAC member IF it worked well. I don't see why that wouldn't make sense to the SAAC directors, but then again what do I know?
And for those who think this forum is working like a finely tuned machine - think again. Posting photos is doable but it is clunky and a pain in the arse. I personally believe this is an easily remedied problem since other Simple Machine forums work as designed (and this one did at first also). I stand by my offer to help if asked and I am NOT trying to throw Ron or anyone else under the bus.