Mark your calendars: Next LT meeting: Tuesday, January 10, 2017. 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Check email for location.
Impact 100 Redwood Circle Leadership Team
Minutes
Tuesday, December 13, 2016; 11:30-1:30
Location: 3510 Unocal Place, Conference Room
Present:
Melissa Kelley, President
Suzy Marzalek, Treasurer
Susan Milstein, Secretary
Carol Newman, Internal Communications
Cindy Schmidt, Membership
Jan Houts, Marketing
Gayle Holste, Marketing and Education & Events
Judy Farrell, 2016 Community Grants Working Group
Liz Bortolotto, Education & Events
Carolyn Lynn Wood, 2016-17 Impact Grant
Jan Gilman, Liaison 2015-16 Impact Grant
Barbara Ramsey, Liaison 2015-16 Impact Grant
Sharon Keating, Impact 100 RC member and guest facilitator
In place of our regular monthly meeting, the Leadership Team engaged in a special 2.5-hour-long session, facilitated by organizational consultant and Impact 100 RC member Sharon Keating. The purpose of the special session wasto allowthe Leadership Teamto explore what our organization needs at this point in its evolution to continue to be effective, meet its mission, and ensure membership engagement, commitment, ownership and enjoyment.
Sharon already has been working with the E&E Committee and the 2016 Community Grants Working Group on committee organization and development, and she has generously offered to work with our other committees and our Leadership Team to assess the work we've done to date and set goals for the future.
Sharon started off the session by noting that our accomplishments in the 18 months since Impact 100 RC was created have been remarkable. We have put in place an infrastructure that has been effective for the "start-up phase." We now need to explore possible organizational work for 2017.
Sharon identified three focus areas for the Leadership Team to consider addressing:
- Document our organization's culture, which includes our vision, mission, values and operating agreements (how we engage with each other). This document guides decision-making, communication and interactions.
- Identify and make decisions aboutkey issues that need resolution.Some of these issues have already been identified by committees and the leadership team. However, we need to create a complete list and then decide how to involve the right people to resolve each issue (i.e. Leadership Team, specific committee, entire membership)
- Articulate our governance policies and practices. This document will explain the specifics of how the organization functions, its relationship with the Community Foundation, roles and responsibilities (i.e. leadership team, officers, committees), etc.
All of the above focus areas provide anopportunityto enhance membership engagement, commitment, ownership and enjoyment/satisfaction.
A wide-ranging discussion about thesethree topics ensued;a summary of the discussion and action items are recorded below.
Documenting Our Organization's Culture
By culture, Sharon explained she was talking aboutan agreed-upon vision and strategy. She pointed out that defining our vision and strategy would help prospective members understand our organization better and would illuminate the path for new members to integrate into the group and take on leadership roles. Some LT members questioned the value of documenting our culture. Liz, in particular, said she thought the language of defining culture was too fuzzy to be useful.
Action Item: No agreement was reached,but we decided to continue discussing this topic at our January Leadership Team meeting.
Devising a List of Issues that Need to Be Addressed on an Organizational Level
We discussed various issues that our organization and our committees need to address as we move forward. The list includes whether to follow a schedule based on the calendar year or fiscal year, how to nominate members to leadership committees, and what governing structure should be adopted.
The calendar issue arose because Impact 100 RC started off following the fiscal calendar, as Impact 100 Sonoma has done. But that led to confusion once we aligned with the Community Foundation because the Foundation follows the calendar year. Suzy suggests we consider shifting all our operations and budgets to a calendar year basis.
Action Item: Suzy will meet with Cindy to discuss the calendar options and their workability.
Action Item: The individual committees and the Leadership Team will work with Sharon to conduct end-of-the-year assessments of their work and to develop a list of issues to be addressed in the future.The assessments will give the committees and the Leadership Team a chance to review and celebrate what they have accomplished and to identify issues that need to be addressed in the future. When completed, those assessments would be distributed to the membership for review and suggestions.
There is a second part to the assessment process: Whoever participates in the committeesnext year will be able to use the assessment and membership comments to set new goals, identify what needs to be done differently, and decide how the committee's future work will be evaluated and its success assessed.
Coming up with a set of governing practices and policies and addressing leadership succession.
Since we are not an independent 501C3 organization, we are not required to adopt governing practices and policies or by-laws, but,as Sharon pointed out and as everyone agreed, doing so would be helpful, especially in integrating new members into the organization and into leadership roles. Suzy has already started drafting proposed governing practices and policies for later consideration.
The consensus was that our top priority is establishing a nominating committee to help establish a process for nominating and electing members to leadership positions. To date, individual members have stepped up to assume leadership roles without a formal nominating process or an election. Sharon noted thatstart-ups typically are run by people who step forward on their own initiative to get work done. The consensus of the LT was that moving forward the process of nominating and electing leaders should be formalized. The consensus was that severalmembers-at-large positions should be added to the Leadership Teamas a way of engaging more members and developing new leaders.
Along with attending and participating in LT meetings, the at-large members would participate in the work of various committees
Action Item: The Leadership Team decided to establish a nominating committee whose first task would be to propose a leadership structure for our organization before moving ahead with the process of nominating individuals to leadership positions. To allow time to create the Nominating Committee and give it a chance to begin its work, the Leadership Team decided that the terms of the three officers—the president, the treasurer, and the secretary—would be extended until January 2018. Committee chairs and other LT members may decide whether they would like to remain in their positions until January 2018.
Our final discussion topic centered on how to involve the membership in the discussion of our on-going organization development process.
Action Item: Noting that many members have said they enjoyed the small group discussions at previous meetings, the LT decided that at the February membership meeting the E&E committee, working with Sharon, will come up with an table top discussion activity in which members break into several separate groups to discuss "juicy, meaningful, relevant, and timely" issues that will help move us along in our ongoing efforts to improve our organization, attract and retain members, provide opportunities for members to develop connections with one another and find engaging ways to become involved, while pursing of our philanthropic mission.
Submitted by Susan Milstein
707-322-1068
Because time was not allotted for committee reports, several committee chairs submitted their reports in writing. Their reports follow below.
Marketing Committee Update – 12/13/16
- Publicizing Impact 100 RWC:
We had a discussion on the different “audiences” we are targeting, the fact that the PD will likely NOT cover our grant announcements (community or Impact) and brainstormed on different ways to get publicity:
- Publish an ad in the PD highlighting our Impact & Community grant recipients,
with a list of our members (the “women who are Impacting Sonoma County”) at the bottom. This will assure coverage, highlight our “grantees”, acknowledge current members and help to get new prospects engaged (when they see neighbors, co-workers, etc. who are members)
* GH - get PD ad rates; determine a good day to place an ad.
* SS – talk to client about how/who to contact at the PD
- Continue to reach out to the smaller, regional papers (Judy Farrell is helping us with contacts)*owner TBD
- Work with the PD and VOICES to come up with a human interest story on the impact of our $100K grant (i.e. results we are achieving). *owner TBD
- Contact local radio station(s) to see if they are interested in our story/interviewing Melissa. *owner TBD
2.Announcements:
- Press release on Community Grant awardees was sent to several publications on Dec. 5th and posted on Impact100 website.
* JH – write announcment
* JF – make sure someone gets photos of the 5 nonprofits receiving checks
- Newsletter (and Constant Contact):
- Next issue will be released the week of Dec. 12th (in conjunction with Community Grants check deliveries at the 5 nonprofits.)
* JH – edit and distribute NL
- To help educate our members on local nonprofits, suggest publishing a monthly
“Spotlight” (starting in 2017) that highlights 5 local non-profits (i.e. “learn
more about these 5 non-profits in the Environmental space”). This would be
easy to set up in Constant Contact and could include the nonprofit’s mission
statement and link to website.*Timeline TBD
* GH - get a list of 501c3 nonprofits from Volunteer Center
* JH - set up template in CC & create a schedule
* SS - implement and send out
* VG – add to website
4. Website:
- Vicki has added several new items to the site: homepage banner, photo gallery
grants section (updated), news items. The Grants section has also undergone a major
update to add the Community Grant information.
5. Social Media:
- MK has been putting out content weekly simply to grow our following. We have
109 followers, which is good for a group with 140+ members.
- She just got access to our event photos and will start using those.
- MK requests that committee chairs send her updates (she has been mainly
coming up with content via Impact100 emails and personal conversations), and
that we appoint other admin’s who can contribute to FB posting.
* JH- copy MK on input for newsletter
* GH – volunteered to be another admin for Facebook (work with MK)
5. Video & Collateral:
- Gayle has been diligent in keeping in touch with SRJC; they will likely not have
the Impact Grant material added to our video until spring semester. We’d like
to have it to show at the May 6, 2017 Impact Grant presentation.
* GH- check prices on local videographers; may need to pay to have video completed.
- New version of our brochure was published; Gayle noted it has the old email address.
6. Other:
- MK shared a marketing idea that she’s used with other organizations. We will ask the membership committee if they’d find it useful.
Committee Members: VickiGroninga, ShannanLuft, MK Hicks, Sudha Schlesinger, Gayle Holste (co-chair), Jan Houts (co-chair)
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Community Grants
1) Thanks to Kristin Nelson and CFSC colleagues, five $5,000 checks will be available on schedule 12/9/16.
2) Work Group volunteers + successful grant nominators will fan out the week of 12/12 delivering grant awards and acknowledgement letters to each of the five nonprofits.
3) Debrief facilitated by Sharon Keating will be held 1/9/17 for work group members. Evaluation survey developed by Sharon K and Sharon Robison has gone to all work group volunteers.
4) Representatives of 5 awardees have been invited to Feb 8 mtg and will be recognized on agenda.
5) Diana Sanson, Impact 100SV Grants Chair, expressed interest in attending our next awards mtg, so I've invited her to Feb mtg as an honored and most helpful guest.