Minutes Of The WCPCA Board Meeting, March 5, 2012
Location:
Home of Dorothy Soper
Attendees:
Miriam Aiken, Keith Beyer, James Cloutier, Josette Green, Dale
Morse, Dorothy Soper,
Guest: Easther Chigumira, U of O student, Department of
Geography, Zimbabwe
Welcome to Easther.
Updates:
Membership
directory; other membership information.
The membership directory was distributed to members in February.
There are more bios for members in this issue. There are 148 members
of WCPCA.
Planning
for the summer campout.
Felicia Kenny will add information to our web site to register for
the summer campout.
March
10th northwest RPCV groups’ regional meeting in Seattle.
Joe Hindman and James will attend. Darryl Johnson, a former US
ambassador to Thailand, now the Northwest Regional Representative to
the NPCA, will be there. He will be invited to attend a WCPCA event,
perhaps the NOM potluck. Dorothy sent the Seattle group some
suggested agenda items, which include the following:
A
schedule of events other Regional Meetings; she believes that WCPCA
will be the host next year;
Asked
about selling our tee shirt at the meeting;
Distribute
summer campout information;
Asked
about the role of technology for group newsletters, membership
database;
Inquired
about working relationship with NPCA;
What
cultural and social events do other groups have to both grow
membership and perhaps do fund-raising?
See attached paper copy.
Chefs’
Night Out. This is a WCPCA
volunteer activity on April 10th; Vince Ceccacci will coordinate.
Potluck
Program Schedule. Josette
distributed a schedule of potlucks. (Attached paper copy.) The next
one will be Friday, April 13th,
at the home of George and Diane Jeffcott. The speaker will be Amy
Small, RPCV, Jamaica. The NOM party will be in May and it will be
Hannah’s responsibility to get the guest speaker.
Peace
Corps’ 51st celebration on March 3 at Cozmic Pizza.
This event was a fund-raiser for the
Caranival Brasil at Cozmic Pizza for
Bob Crites’
program,
SHSKI.
Wayne Thompson reported that
seven RPCVs attended and they ssng Happy 51st
Birthday to the Peace Corps.
Response
to request for people to contribute ideas for a
social/cultural/fundraising
activity in February newsletter. Dorothy reported that there were no
responses to this request.
The
director of the Wesley Center
invited WCPCA to a dinner on Wednesday, March 6, at 6:30 pm. He is
inviting members of all groups who use the Center to come and meet
each other.
Treasurer’s report.
Dale’s report notes the sums that will be available in 2012 in
the restricted account for funding grants or contributing to the
endowed account. On hand now is $621; 2012 expected distributions
from Beryl’s account are $1,200. (One half of the funds will be
received in June and the other half at the end of the year.) This
will make a total of $1,800. We’ve budgeted $2,000 for grants
to humanitarian projects in 2012. See item #7 about awarding grants.
Checking
account balance is $2,623.50
Savings
account balance is $4,038.88
Total
unrestricted funds are $6,662,38
Total
Restricted funds are $620.99
The
cost of printing 70 Forever Shirts was $10.99 per shirt or $769. This
cost was added to the March 1 spreadsheet; it hasn’t yet been
billed to WCPCA.
U of O activities.
Hannah sent no report.
NPCA’s request to
appoint a Group Advocacy Coordinator.
Dorothy has requested information from the NPCA about what the
position entails.
Newsletter production.
Deb Jones will enter copy into the template. Felicia will send the
newsletter to our mailing list. Keith, Dorothy and Deb assembled the
copy for March.
Dorothy
proposed that, in the short term, board members accept responsibility
for articles for the newsletter that pertain to their work during the
month after a meeting. There was a request in the March newsletter
for volunteers to help with assembly and editing. Those on an
editorial committee could alternate months in which they are
responsible for this work. We need to agree on a newsletter length;
the March issue required about 3 to 4 hours to produce for a 4-page
newsletter, and that includes some travel time for Deb to come to
Dorothy’s house for the first set up. Copy deadlines would be
about 3 – 5 days before the end of each month.
Funding humanitarian
projects. Dorothy sent
descriptions of PCP Projects organized by Oregon PCVs and any
requests that we have received. The board reviewed the funding rubric
of 2009 as it began its discussion. The
board voted to grant $500 to a project for building a water supply
system in Vanuatu and indicated a strong interest in funding a music
project in Rwanda that is not yet posted on the Peace Corps website.
Both projects are being organized by PCVs from Oregon. The board will
consider the project in Rwanda next month if it is posted.
Funds
for the project in Vanuatu came from distributions of the Beryl
Brinkman Memorial Fund. The Peace Corps Volunteer project
director will be informed of this.
The new Peace Corps Forever
Tee Shirts. 70 shirts have
been printed and are ready to go on sale. They are beautiful. We may
want to add a tag that fully identifies WCPCA, gives the full
citations for the quotations, and indicates how the proceeds from the
sale of the shirts will be used. The board agreed:
To allocate the profits from the
sale of the shirts exclusively for humanitarian projects, such as
Peace Corps Partnership Programs;
To set prices based on production
and mailing costs.
Cost
of each shirt in the order of 70, $10.99
Cost
of mailing one shirt: $3.14 plus envelope
Cost
of mailing two shirts in one envelope, $5.20
Cost
of using a Priority Mail box (free from P.O.) $15.45 (flat fee no
matter the weight) will hold 15 shirts maximum.
The
initial printing of 70 shirts will be offered at $20 each plus
mailing costs for those that are mailed. A wholesale price of $16
each for quantities of a dozen or more will be available. Shipping
costs for the latter will be $16 per box in a box that will hold 15
shirts maximum.
To consider plans for national
marketing such as an ad in World
View magazine.
To recruit two people to handle
mailing shirts and pursuing marketing strategies.
Discussion on presence in
community, if time permits.
Limited discussion on this
topic. The question raised
was about ways for our organization to become better known. Can we
create a greater presence for WCPCA in our community? What volunteer
activities can we participate in in addition to the two for Food for
Lane County? Is there a fundraising/social/cultural activity that
will attract a good turnout within and beyond the PC community?
Other activities to consider: consider the “Statement of
Principles” created by Lane County Network for Immigrant
Integration.
Board meeting dates:
April
board meeting will be on Monday, April 9th;
May
board meeting; Monday, May 14th;
and,
June
board meeting: Monday June 11th.
No
date was set for the July meeting.
Addenda
for March 5th
meeting:
Background
about selecting humanitarian projects to fund:
To
prepare for this discussion, please read the introduction to the
“Projects” page of the website,
http://www.westcascadepca.org/projects.php,
Agreed upon priorities are explained.
A
few years ago the board adopted a “scoring rubric” to
evaluate projects for funding. We’ll continue to use the rubric
as a general guide but we’ve found recently that the categories
in the rubric sometimes are not a good fit with the projects
available for funding. Thus strict adherence may not be possible. In
the introduction you’ll find links to the scoring rubric and
also to the list of PCPP projects available for funding on the PC
website.
Several
boards in the past have reiterated an interest in funding PCPP
projects organized by PCVs from Oregon and so I’ll send you a
list of these projects. But board members are welcome to suggest
other PCP projects or other types of projects.
In
our goals for 2012 we allocated $2,000 to fund projects in 2012.
Since WCPCA has 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, we may fund only
projects that also have that status. The PCPP projects qualify.
Recent
fundraising outcomes:
2009
Calendar
sales: $702 profit from the sale of 200 calendars for the year 2010
Shirt
sales: profit similar to figures below
Dinner
at Mekala’s: $521 profit (This dinner was in February on the
evening of the day that WCPCA hosted the northwest regional RPCV
meeting.)
2010
Calendar
sales: $1,369 profit for sale of 200 calendars for the year 2011
Shirts:
$280 profit
Bluegrass
concert at Cozmic Pizza: $322 profit
2011
Calendar
sales: $747 profit for sale of 198 calendars for the year 2012. (A
little more $ has come in.)
50th
anniversary concert at Cozmic Pizza: great time but no profit .
50th
anniversary tee shirts: 60 shirts printed; 58 sold; approximate
profit $450-$500.
Note
that calendars are sold from the fall of one year through January of
the following year. For the calendar sales figures above I’ve
combined the calendar income from two years to show the profit for
the sale of calendars for a single year, i. e., for 2010 calendars,
etc.
Respectfully submitted, March 13, 2012
Miriam
Aiken, Secretary
