CHAMPAIGN COUNTY THRIVENT CHAPTER MINUTES
Tuesday, February 9, 2004 6:30 p.m.
The February 2004 meeting of the Champaign Chapter of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans was called to order at 6:51PM at Grace Lutheran Church in Champaign. Bobbie, Judy, Norm, Paul, Rick and Darrell were in attendance, along with 4 Congregational Coordinator. The audit committee attended briefly, then went off to another room to take care of the audit during this meeting. They came back to the meeting with questions as needed, and completed their task before the meeting finished.
It was M/S/C to add new members to our chapter. 46 Members, 3 Associate, 11 Youth for a total of 60 members were added.
Minutes for the previous meetings were not yet available for review.
A welcome was made to the visitors at the meeting, and thanks for the hospitality provided by them.
Chapter Funds – There has been no change in operational funds since last month, other than the $50 paid to Good Shepherd for hosting our January meeting. A check to Grace Lutheran church was distributed at this meeting. There is $5277.57 operating funds in our account at this point.
Hours Worked This Month – A new feature starting this month will be a report from Chapter Leaders stating how many hours were spent on Chapter activities during the month. This will help us report these hours. It includes hours preparing for activities, doing duties as Chapter Leaders, or attending Thrivent Functions (the Chapter Leader Training Session that was held in Rantoul). It is very important to get hours worked reported, as Chapter bonuses are tied to hours put in by the chapter and on projects don’t by the chapter.
Reported hours this month: Judy – 10, Bob – 5, Norm – 9, Paul – 7, Erwin – 5, Bobbie – 2
Another item we need to deal with is staffing of the leader positions. It is important that we make an attempt to fill all 10 leader positions; we currently have Youth and Communications slots open. Two people have expressed interest in the Youth position; we are continuing talks with them to explain the tasks involved and try to recruit them.
The national election for 2004 will be done by mail; the Chapter will be expected to hold an event in the fall to handle Chapter elections, but won’t have the complication of validating people for the national election. This can be a Chapter Recognition event. We discussed the Spring event which was held by LB (AAL?) and all felt it was important that we continue this .. there are many people who looked forward to this event each year, and it gives us an opportunity to get the Thrivent name out to the public as well as recognize perhaps a different group of people in Champaign County.
It was researched by Judy and Norm and advertising is NOT required for events sponsored by the Chapter, but it is good to get as much advertising as possible, so it’s strongly recommended.
Another item that is being pushed by the home office is Locally Sponsored activities -- things that are done with perhaps minor sponsoring of us through our operating funds or just volunteer hours of local people.
For 2004 we will have much stricter requirements for project reporting. Funding will not be released for events unless a post-completion report is submitted.
New Projects
Community Youth Ministry. This was brought up at the January meeting, but the person running the project wasn’t available to answer questions, so it was tabled until tonight. Pastor Martin, the associate pastor from Grace Lutheran, was at our meeting tonight to answer our questions. After discussion it was determined that the best way this project could be done is by making it a fundraiser; while it is a service project to them it doesn’t fit the Thrivent concept of a service project. They intend to have the youth in the area raise $10,000 for funding World Vision, and have famine for the youth during the 30 hours of the event (held Feb 27th/28th) as well as have a service project at empty tomb for the ending day. Broken Yoke will have a concert during the event. They have $4,000 raised already towards the event. It was M/S/C to approve $1,600 in supplemental funding for this project.
Eastern Illinois Food Bank – Rick and Ronda Craig brought this up as a service project. We reviewed the documentation regarding this and couldn’t determine how it would fit into a service project according to Thrivent’s definitions.
St John library – this is a project that’s been supported by LB for several years, and we provided funding to it last year. One concern was expressed that we not just do the same things each year. $1600 was requested to buy books, it would be a service project in that Thrivent members (and other volunteers) would prepare the books to be stored in the St John School Library. There was also concern that while the limit has been raised to $1600 for a project, the idea is that we continue to have the same number of projects (or more!) that we had last year, increasing the visibility of Thrivent in the local area. It was M/S/C to approve $500 at this point for this project. It was stated that this project could be repeated in the fall if funding is still available.
Chapter Mailing – we need to make use of chapter mailings to bring knowledge of the funding available through us to Thrivent members in our area. It’s felt that there isn’t enough information available to members to know even how to apply for funding.
The Chicken dinner at the TIA hall in Thomasboro was discussed. They have a kitchen facility with a fryer. This event sponsored by LB in the past has had 180 to 200 people attend. It’s a chance for Thrivent members to get together and get information on Thrivent out to people. It’s primarily a social event with food donation and volunteer recognition. It should be held before planting season. Chicken, Baked beans, corn, etc. Desserts are brought by attendees. The funding required is about 300 to 500. It was decided that Judy would find out availability of the hall and attempt to hold it around May 15th.
Place mats produced by another chapter were shown at the leader training event in Rantoul; this was thought to be a very good idea, and Norm will see if he can come up with a design for this. All churches in the chapter would be printed on them, and they would be available for events like the Chicken dinner as well as available to churches for their events.
It was mentioned that attending these meetings needs to be a priority for members of the board.
To make it easier to deal with these minutes, it was asked if a second recorder should be purchased, so we are sure to have one of them at each of the meetings. It was approved by acclimation to purchase a recorder prior to the March meeting.
Another item we may want to purchase is a large check that you can write on for presenting to an organization. This would advertise the Thrivent sponsorship of an event to the people attending the event. This should be done when we have projects that we can fit this into .. no immediate decision was made to purchase this, but we should consider it as we see the projects to be done this year.
Respectfully submitted,
Norm Fisher for
Lynette Renfrow