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Meeting Recaps + Information>
3Q Board Meeting Minutes
February 26, 2009
To: SWM Board Members
From: Dave & Wendy
Date: October 25, 2008
Re: Fall Board Meeting Minutes
In attendance were Jade Fiskaa, Doug Herdt (in attendance for Robin Rose Bennett), Norma and Karl Stehle, Renne Alessio, Amy Jolin, Dave and Wendy Watson-Hallowell.
Absent were Robin Rose Bennett, Joe Natale and Anne Thornton
Board Changes and Pay to Program Directors
1) A unanimous vote was taken to confirm Amy Jolin, Norma Stehle and Karl Stehle as new board members.
2) The board formally accepted the resignation of Katie Hayes-Natale.
3) The board agreed that we need to provide a stipend/pay/honorarium to the directors of our Garden and Medicinal Garden. Dave & Wendy will get advice from our tax accountant on what to call this type of ‘pay’. The minimum is $1,000 for the year that comes from our fundraising, but we look to increase this through educational grants in 2009. Board members feel that this makes sense as long as the responsibilities are clearly outlined and distinguished between this and other volunteer efforts. Amy re-framed the situation based on the time and contribution and coordination effort of these roles, and it may make more sense to make them staff positions where we provide monthly pay to do the job (i.e. $300 per month for 7 months of coordination work). We can specify what the duties are and create a compact with them. We also need a clear pay schedule that makes sense (i.e., 1/2 now, all up front…or what). Would be really nice if they could ‘clear $1,000 take home and perhaps share in additional $$ at the end of the year based on how well the organization does.
Organizational Structure:
1) The board felt that the Organizational structure makes sense, but the program stuff won’t really work effectively, until the admin. ‘gap’ is handled. Specifically on our PR/Events and Finances.
2) We may want to hire Terri to do PR/Communication for us at $35 per hour. Eat Local pays Terri about $300 a month to do it all. Web site, signs, press, etc. Best to get a proposal for each event and then approve the details on a contract basis.
3) It was also suggested that we hire/pay for bookkeeping. Dave and Wendy will work on creating a clear job descriptions with expectations and available pay so we can start recruiting. Doug said he may be interested in the bookkeeping position since he has run two businesses and has a degree in accounting.
Programs:
1) CSA: Instead of working to create our own CSA at Walisch, we now have Black Bear Farms (Pedro) who is running a small CSA (50 members) on Alison & Roger’s farm. Dave & Doug will connect and see how we can support and promote his efforts. We all agreed that SWM will not sponsor a coordinated CSA pick up program in 2009.
2) WM Farmer’s Market: Susan Gould said she would be willing to talk to us about our Farmer’s market from Warwick we just need to contact Cheryl. Dave will work with Amy to lock in a site (church or perhaps Browns’ Point), survey members about specific needs and lock in vendors and market manager(s) for 2009.
3) Farm to School: Mikey Azzaro from Nofa– is pulling together a farm to school conference for February. The vision is how to re-prioritize and get nutrition done at the policy level and implement that in the schools. Hamilton NJ school is doing it now. November 12th is the meeting in the middle of the state (day). Amy will be attending the Nov 12th session and see how SWM can work to make this happen in WM schools.
4) Bill Schug retires this year and the new person coming in is someone Karl knows (Dave). Karl will talk with Dave who will be taking over Bill Shug’s job for recycling to see how open he is to help us start to get businesses and others to recycle in town. We are hoping that Renee will also stay on the recycling committee to help further our efforts in town.
Outreach Thoughts:
In February Dave wants us to sponsor a 2 day town hall community workshop/session to educate folks on what sustainability is and then have breakout groups where they can participate on task forces to define and take action in common interest.
Earth Day – Wednesday April 22nd - perhaps that can be an outreach day – churches, schools, business, get involved. Mark Centro (science teacher) can get involved as well.
Perhaps we can have a forum/survey/information booth at the recycling & beautification day – Saturday April 25
Need to coordinate it all together so it builds momentum and doesn’t take away from the Highlands Greenfest.
General - Include Sustainable West Milford green options brochure/package to those who move in. Also put in bed & breakfasts. Create a brochure so it can be used at Green fest and provided to Real Estate offices and other tourists.
Amy’s idea is to come up with a non-profit publishing entity that does printing for local education pamphlets. Norma will look into the ‘Able Table magazine publisher (Norma S and Renee read) to see if that is a good starting point.
DECCA – could we connect with Joanne Blum through Karl to look into Local Directory. PTA’s are another resource to community education.
Monthly meetings - It would be useful to ask the membership if another night would be better than Monday during the week. We need to tell Hillcrest our preferred dates by October 31st.
Finances:
1) We agreed that we will hire a bookkeeper to manage our finances.
2) Instead of setting budget targets for 2009 for fundraising and grants, the board decided it would make more sense to create a budget for each program in 2009 where we have strong leadership and a basic blueprint for success. From that we can then set our total goals for fundraising and grants.
2009 Fundraising Sources:
Wine Tasting - March
Greenfest - May
Pizza Contest - July
Product Sales - March - October
Harvest Dinner – September
Autumn Lights - October
2009 Grant Prospects:
• Dodge Foundation Sustainability Education: Letter of Intent for $25,000 submitted week of 10/17
• Brotherton Family Foundation has invited Robin to submit a letter of inquiry for the Medicinal Garden. Dave and Robin will work on getting one in for about $20,000 by the first week in November.
• NJ SARE has $10,000 grants for farm to school/farmers market efforts that we will submit for December 2008.
• Corporate sponsorship and event $$ are available to support our Highlands Greenfest and Wendy will start looking for these grants in November. They are usually between $3,000-$5,000 each from Energy Companies, and other corporations who are focused on environmental and community issues. We may also be able to find $$ to work on Power Habitat. We will puruse this kind of stuff once we know who are elected officials in congress will go so we can gain their support as well.
Administrative/Overhead
Our approach will be to tie our admin and overhead to programs when we go for grants. Our best approach is to get unrestricted funds (don’t have to specific what we will spend it on). Some grant makers simply call these ‘operating funds.’
Purchases –
We agreed that it is best to have items donated or purchased re-used whenever possible (i.e. LCD projector). We can also ask for small donations from participants where it makes sense (i.e. Movies Nights).
Write to Dell and others like Texas Instruments to see if they are willing to donate, or re-furbished projector (get their name out or tax write off for donation). If we can’t find it through donation or re-used then we could ask folks to make a donation on movie night.
We could also sell books at the wine tasting on bio-dynamics. or recycled bottle stoppers or takes vacu-vent (Suzie can check if there is a good one).
Upcoming:
Shoprite Green Building Standards - Renee will go represent us at the planning board meeting on 11/6. Dave will give her a list of items to bring up to make the building and it’s practices sustainable (inside and out). Suzie suggests she puts it out there as a money saving approach and be a ‘model’ competitively.
Meetings
• Monthly Meeting – Monday, Oct 27 7p @ Hillcrest (last meeting for 2008) – “Sierra Club”
• Farmer’s Market Planning Volunteer’s Meeting – Monday, November 3rd
• Garden Meeting – Wednesday November 12th 7p @ Hillcrest – “Planning for Next Year”
• Shoprite Green Building Standards, Wednesday, December 3rd Town Hall – ‘Public Comments’
Our next board meeting will be after the new year on an evening that works for the group.
Dave & Wendy
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