If you can't recover the old domain name, you are fairly hosed. You need to basically rebuild your brand around a new domain name.

Despite the short term pain, I also vote for getting a new domain name and not looking back. Perhaps change the name of the group.

The person who owns the domain is clearly a control freak, and I doubt your group wants to sink the $ into going after her in court. She would likely love the attention.

To avoid a protracted legal battle... Suck it up. Send an email blast. Several even. The old one will fade away. She'll lose interest. Then snap up the old domain in a few years.

I registered and ran the local pca web site for many years. Even moved to the pca's web server for hosting, then moved it back to a private host because they had major issues.

Anyway I left the club and offered to let them take the domain. Told them I would point it where every they wanted, and would provide them the code to move ownership of the domain name when they were ready to take ownership. It don't cost that much so no big deal.

Well, instead they registered and use a new different domain. Don't understand. Probably hired a hosting service and they said they would register a domain. Hosting services love to be the registrar. They probably didn' t understand they could give the service their old domain and the transfer code.

Anyway, I put a redirect to the new domain and let the old domain expire.

You need to collect contact information from all the members of the group.
Tell each group leader to set up a way to collect everyone's email address.
Then you email blast all members the new website.

This seems to be resolved.

The previous chair/administrator "Agnes" put up a prominent link to our new site on her old site - so at least the people looking for current information (or banquet registration) have a direct link to the current site.

Stomach monkeys analysis was helpful - it seems that one of her friends had a chat with her after I shared that.

Thanks guys!