U.U. Rowe Camp and Conference Center Board Meeting
February 14, 2009
Present: Bob Scheier, Sue Baldauf, Guy Thompson, Felicity Pickett, Doug Wilson, Geoff Rinchon, Cathy Perkins (This meeting was cancelled for lack of a quorum, but then held by popular request.)
Minutes: Minutes of the previous meeting temporarily unavailable.
Treasurer’s Report: The full report was e-mailed to trustees prior to the meeting. Felicity summarized the financial situation. Development is up from the budget. Income from operations is down from the budget.
Executive Director’s Report: Doug is working on the catalogue. He’s worried about the long term viability of everything. Shaun Mc Niff was the only program that matched last year’s enrollment. The Chris Martenson program last weekend was full!
Director’s Report: Felicity is focusing on the financial picture. The staff are holding expenses down by instituting a “no spending” policy. When asked, Felicity said she doesn’t regard the situation as an emergency and is not asking to use the emergency fund established after 9/11. Employee health insurance is coming due soon, and if it increases at the rate it did last year, she will have to consider dropping dental coverage. Some personnel issues that erupted while she was on vacation are smoothing out. The winter vacation went really well. There was a very small winter work week; but a list of small projects was finished up.
Stewardship Committee: Guy reported that he would soon be sending out reminders to stewards to do their inspections. Because of the no spend policy; Felicity plans to use the unrestricted development income from the annual campaign for critical maintenance projects.
Development: Bob reported Board of trustee donations are over the annual target, but Board development is $7500 under budget. We need to pick up the pace if we are to meet our $100,000 goal. Memberships are above target, so we now need to focus on the Woodside Diversity Program. We did meet our goal for the dining room floor, and Bob reminded us to write thank you notes to our DR floor donors.
Recruitment: Doug raised the issue of recruitment of new board members. He and Felicity suggested we should each look at lists of people in our geographic areas, people in our portfolios for prospective board members. They suggested we run the names by them. He and Felicity will also begin to ask at conferences if people are interested.
This was the Board retreat weekend, and most of the Board attended Kim Klein’s fundraising workshop. Conclusions from that will be reflected in upcoming Development Committee reports and conversations with individual board members.
Cathy attended the Anti-racism workshop and learned of resources that might be available for further work at Rowe. However, by the end of the session three specific needs became apparent that are necessary to gain the most benefit from the Woodside Diversity Program in the youth camps:
- Provide anti racism training for camp staff
- Make clear that anti-racism is a key Rowe value when hiring camp directors and staff
- Actively recruit people of color for camp staff
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