West Cascade Peace Corps Association
Minutes of the board meeting, 1-17-08
Meeting held at Artis Spriggs' home.
Attending: Dustin Johnson, Felicia Kenney, Evangelina Sundgrenz,
Benj Epstien, Deb McLaughlin, Rolly Thompson, Wayne Thompson, James
Cloutier, Artis Spriggs, Brett Holt, Dorothy Soper
Dustin called the meeting to order at 7:15 pm. The minutes of
the previous meeting had already been circulated to the board
members and approved via email. They are posted on our website.
Under updates, Dustin explained that he plans to take a new job in
the Portland area and will be moving there probably in March. We
discussed how to handle the duties of president. Dustin will
continue as president through January and into early February at
which point his resignation will become effective. James Cloutier,
the Vice President, will become the president as of February 5th.
The board wishes Dustin well in his new job and new community and
thanks him for his year and a half service as the president of
WCPCA.
Evangelina gave us the treasurer's report which included an
update on our account balances and all income and disbursements over
the last month. The board accepted the report which is summarized
below.
Account balances:
Oregon Credit Union
Business Checking: $6,140
Business Savings: $5.00
Business Money Market Acct.: $508
Beryl's Memorial Fund: $22,561
In addition WCPCA has invested $2,000 through the NPCA in the
Calvert Foundation's Microenterprise Program.
Recent income has come from memberships and the sale of the
international calendars published by the Madison, WI RPCV group.
Rolly has been in charge of selling the calendars with help from
other board members. We earned $378 from the sale of calendars last
month. There are only a few remaining calendars and they'll be sold
for us at Swahili Imports.
With Brett's help we'll purchase a copy of the Microsoft Access
program for Felicia to use to create a database for our membership
data. Brett can obtain an educational discount. As a result the
software will cost $115. (Felicia has already started on the
database using a short term free download version of the software.)
Regarding investing the money in Beryl's memorial fund, we've
previously agreed to work with Rick Karr of Edward Jones
Investments. Karr also works with Jim Beyer who is a WCPCA member.
Jim will meet with Rick and then come to our next board meeting to
describe what Rick recommends for us. Board members will then meet
with Rick to make final arrangements.
Evangelina sent a check for $200 to Father Charles Mwipopo in
Tanzania for his philanthropic work. The money was raised by the
sale of some of Beryl's jewelry and then donated to WCPCA for this
purpose.
Rolly gave us an update on the telephone message service offered
by two companies. She looked into Qwest and MTM and compared prices
and services. We opted to use MTM because its price was
considerably lower, $14.95 per month with the first and last month
fees due at the time that the contract is signed. The number will
be listed on the website. There will be no directory listing.
Rolly will set this up and check the messages.
Rolly and Evangelina have completed the WCPCA's application for
501-C3 status for our organization. It will be submitted in late
January. The board thanked them for their thorough and careful work
which required meeting with an advisor and extensive research into
the organization's history.
Brett, the PC recruiter on the U of O campus, described some of
the PC activities coming up on the campus. He informs our
membership via email and asks for volunteers in many cases.
He has begun organizing the NOM party (to celebrate the selection of
new local PCVs) which is jointly sponsored by his office and WCPCA.
The event is a potluck dinner provided by WCPCA which will take
place in the Many Nations Longhouse on the U of O campus on Tuesday,
April 22nd from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. This is Earth Day and the
anticipated principal speaker will incorporate the theme of that
celebration into his talk.
Brett is working on a program which tentatively includes a
representative of the university, a principal speaker, entertainment
by a group of international students, possibly a speaker who is the
parent of a PCV, and a member of WCPCA. In addition to dinner
dishes provided by WCPCA membership, we'll need to purchase some
dishes in order to have enough food.
Attendance at the last two NOM parties which have been in the
longhouse has been very good. We look forward to a good turnout
this year. We'll need help from WCPCA members to bring food, help
with decorating and clean up. We'll be asking for volunteers next
month.
Felicia, the Communications Coordinator, reported that she's
working on the database for our membership, has updated the website
with current information, and has arranged our use of Paypal to
allow people to pay for memmberships online. The use of Paypal for
people to purchase shirts and calendars can be arranged in the
future.
When the database is completed Felicia will send an email to
everyone on the mailing list to ask them to update their contact
information and pay for memberships. If they want their names
removed from the mailing list, she'll do that.
Felicia puts announcements of our upcoming events on the website and
also in local newspapers. For the latter she needs the information
two weeks in advance for the Eugene Weekly and one week in advance
for the Register-Guard.
We decided that in addition to posting the minutes of our board
meetings, we would have a brief summary of news and upcoming events,
an "email newsletter". With this, members would not have to read
the minutes to learn news. Dorothy will send a summary to Felicia
once the minutes have been approved by the board.
Felicia will also email a request for information for the "email
newsletter" to those who volunteered earlier to work on a
newsletter.
Dustin reported that the western regional meeting of the National
Peace Corps Association will take place on January 26th in Olympia,
WA. He asked if anyone would like to attend. No one volunteered.
Dustin thought that he might be able to attend. He'll prepare a
report on the activities of WCPCA over the last year to present or
send to the meeting.
Dustin had to leave at t his time so James conducted the rest of the
meeting.
Brett proposed that WCPCA contribute funds to a current project
at a Peace Corps site in Mongolia where a Eugene volunteer, Hannah
Klausman, is in her second year of service. Ms. Klausman listed the
project with the Peace Corps Partnership program.
She's looking for $300 to complete the refurbishing and furnishing
of the Music and Dance Room at her high school. The project's goal
is to create an environment where students can actively learn
Mongolian traditional and modern dance and music. The community
has already contributed approximately $1,500.
The board discussed the project and voted to send $300 so that the
project may be completed. The decision is consistent with the
board's commitment to support the work of volunteers from the local
area.
Dorothy suggested that we consider reissuing the directory of
local RPCVs using the database information that Felicia is putting
together. The reasons are to allow local RPCVs to be able to
identify and contact each other. This may help boost our
membership.
We've published two directories in the past. We sold ads for the
first one to help pay for the cost. The group decided to discuss
this more at the next board meeting.
We selected dates and programs for some coming meetings:
- Next board meeting: Thursday, February 14th, 7:30 pm,
home of Benj and Joann Epstein
- Next potluck: Friday, March 14th, 6:00 pm at the home of
Deb McLaughlin
Tentative program: Presentation by the parents of Hannah
Klansman, the Eugene volunteer in Mongolia. Her parents,
Anita Tanner and David Klausman, visited her in Mongolia last
summer and have organized a lively power point presentation
about Hannah's work and the country.
- NOM party, Tuesday, April 22nd, Many Nations Longhouse,
U of O campus, 5:00 - 7:00 pm.
James adjourned the meeting about 9:00 pm.
Minutes by Dorothy. Approved by the board as of 1-23-08.
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