October 14, 2012

Wy’east Board meeting: 10/14/2012

Board Members Present:
Robyn
Tode
Dan
Kate
Nancy

Minister:
Marcia

Minutes: Approve online, everyone read them a month ago and would like to re-read them.

Board retreat: To be held at either Backspace or the cafe in Whole Foods
Confirmed: Backspace cafe 12-2pm Fri Oct. 26th

Budget:

• Right about where we said we would be in the budget so long as we bring money into it as planned by the end of the year either with income or withdrawing from savings
• Even at the current budget deficit we could use savings to cover the deficit for 3 years.

HSA: We will be moving some money from Marcia’s insurance column into salary and housing allowance in January as her cost for insurance has gone down.  (This is budget neutral).

Pledges: we have a population that has pledged but has not started giving the pledges. We may choose to nag people to start getting their pledges in.

Insurance: we need to measure the Senior Center to see if we can lower the square footage that is contained in the insurance.
Nothing else we can lower at this time.  The insurance agent is double checking if there’s anything else we can lower.  We might be able to save about $100

R.E. Salaries:
Alex requested that we give them a raise and keep it budget neutral by taking it out of teacher training.
Areas to cut:
Easier areas to cut:

• Guest speaker fees may be another area we can cut.  We’ve only used a fraction of our $2,000 budget

Difficult areas to cut:

• Change RE and lose a teacher
• Not take Marcia to half time
• Move location or time to a cheaper venue.

Topics for budget forum:

• We need to do a better job of canvassing next year
  • Put more effort into canvass and get someone to help Hank ask people for money.  
  • We will also look at ways to ‘ask’ better.  
• If you can raise your pledge to close the amount please do so, even 10% would get us close 15% would get us there across the board.
• We are about $7,000 short of where we need to be, we have savings to cover it but it’s not sustainable.
• There is not ‘fat’ in the budget left to cut so we’ll need to take this out of savings this year
• We need to look at ways to increase income:
  • More fundraising
  • More pledges

Pledge reminder: you pledged X, you’ve paid Y, 10% more is __ 15% more is __
Dan will ask Hank and Betty about creating these pledge reminders

Fundraising:

• We had a very successful garage sale.  We will do another garage sale in the spring.  Better organized and with more stuff.  We also need a fresh team at the end of the day.
• Consider a virtual garage sale: send an email out to sell things to other members for the benefit of Wy’east.
• Skills exchange: not particularly effective
• Another Auction: still raising in house but makes people feel good.
• Bring a buddy day: possibly lead to more pledges

Marcia’s Covenant Ceremony:
Tode will prepare something to say.

Question about R.E.:
Kate would like to know: Why there was a $20 ask per child for RE. We would like these kinds of requests to go through the board.
Marcia will speak to RE about making sure the board approves these kinds of requests in future.