Minutes of the Mar. 8, 2010 Staying Put Board Meeting
A meeting of the Staying Put Board took place on Monday, March 8, 2010 at 4:30PM at the New Canaan Library.
Jane Nyce presented her Operations Report. She stressed the need for more volunteers to help with driving, especially to take members to doctor appointments, where sometimes the volunteer is asked to attend the meeting with the doctor and take notes.
The membership renewal rate - 81% - is high, but there is a strong need to do even better. SP still needs to identify more special members in order to maintain the 10% necessary to keep the 501C3 status from the IRS. Social services and Home Care send names to SP. We must do better to reach out to the ministers in town for more potential special members. Jane will ask special members for other potential special members. Although the Foodbank is very anonymous, special, non-flashy brochures could be left there. Perhaps SP should offer a special trial membership for free to these people. SP could also have a ticket program, where a special ticket is handed out to target audiences - one design for special membership (for free), and another design for regular membership. The tickets could be passed out on The Getabout and at Meals on Wheels.
Jane and Tom Ferguson met with Karen Brown and Michele Hubbard of the Fairfield County Community Foundation and the Barbara Benton Davis Fund. They were impressed with SP's progress and agreed to match last year's donation. A challenge grant may be in the future from FCCF & BBDF. The special memberships of SP will keep SP in the category of serving the needy. SP does receive grants specifically for special memberships from other organizations in town.
The Annual Meeting will be held May 16th, and David Moran offered to recruit the Gridiron entertainers to provide 20 minutes of entertainment. Please refer to Jane's report for other events that are lined up for March. Sunday April 18th SP and St Francis Fellowship will co-sponsor a "Show and Tell" event for artists, photographers, and people of "creative endeavors" in Morrill Hall at St Mark's. Other ideas, which hopefully will have special appeal to men, include a baseball game in Bridgeport - the Bridgeport Bluefish, a Pilot Pen Tennis event in New Haven, Harlan Anderson to present his autobiographical book, and the Pepsi Sculpture Garden. The Events Committee welcomes any suggestions for local restaurants for the monthly dinners.
The Development Committee is ready to mail three different versions of a second appeal letter: one to potential new donors, one to members who have never donated, and a third to LYBUNTS - donors who gave Last Year But Not This Year. The number of new donors has increased. The current campaign has raised about $120K to date. The goal for this campaign is $250K.
Last week's NC Advertiser had three articles mentioning SP, which is great publicity. Tanis Erdmann is hoping to get a piece about the upcoming series on Healthy Aging into a March issue. She sends the same articles to NC News and Review. The website is updated through April and has had lots of hits on the page on safety assessments. A picture is worth a thousand words, so please everyone who has a camera, take pictures and send them to Tanis. The new brochure will take time to design and write and is underway. The Spring Newsletter is in the mail. Thank you and kudos to Lois Sandberg for her terrific editorial work on all these Newsletters.
SP expects to gain more new members because of the exposure we'll get in sponsoring the series on American History with the New Canaan Historical Society. On March 30th the Membership Committee will hold a "jam session" for anyone with ideas on how to increase membership. Tom Ferguson thanked Jim Hollyday and the Nominating Committee for their impressive list of nominees. It would be good to get these people on the various committees so they can become familiar with SP (and vice versa). SP expects to have two Board openings in July this year.
We learned from the January Board retreat just how significant the development of a strong volunteer corps is to SP. Accordingly Annie Cohen has taken on the new position of Chieftain of Production. She and her merry band will do mail merges and produce the appeal letters. They will also print up the monthly events mailing, and keep a supply of stationary available in the office. NB: any volunteer effort should be reported to the office because these hours are important to the SP "scorecard" to keep track of these relationships. Among other key issues to be developed are programs that offer financial, legal, insurance, and tax information; and programs to educate and draw in the 50-64 age group - The Farm Team.
The meeting adjourned at 5:55PM.
Respectfully submitted, Lyn Chivvis, Secretary to the Board.
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