CHAMPAIGN COUNTY THRIVENT CHAPTER MINUTES
The January 6th, 2005 meeting of the Champaign Chapter of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans was called to order at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in St Joseph. Present: (with hours put in this past month) Bev Lehmann 4, Traci 5, Brian Ames 4, Erwin 17, Lynette 5, Judy 12, Dick 8, Norm 17, Paul 6, FA’s Darrell and Nancy Brandt 5, Rick and Ronda Craig, Sue Moore 5, CongCoords Dan Seastrand and Jim Taeger 4.
Being the first meeting of the year we need to appoint the FA’s for the chapter. Are we limited to 2 members? Yes. Darrell has asked to be on; other options are Rick Craig, Sue Moore, Steve Senger. Since Rick and Darrell are the senior advisors in the area it was M by Erwin, Second and Carried to appoint Rick and Darrell as FA Advisors for the Chapter for the 2005 year.
It was M/S/C to add new members to our chapter.
Minutes for the previous meeting: M/S/C to approve the minutes from September, November, and December 2004.
Financial Report was distributed. 626.72 operating funds in the bank. We still have to spend $20 on the VHS copy of Luther .. it is difficult to locate them. It might be easier for the recipient to purchase a DVD. Have final payment for St John’s library project ready, but no paperwork for it as of yet. $25,710 project dollars available at this point for 2005. Per discussion at Dec meeting we purchased a camera ($504) in December. St John’s in Royal sent a check for the hurricane fund -- $3213 was forwarded to Lutheran Services in Florida. Thank you card from Kevin McAndrew; available on the BB website. Bev is in the process of taking over from Erwin.
Cong Service Team Director: Need to keep an eye on the number of coordinators that each church has; two are having trouble recruiting replacements and are down to 1 coordinator. St Paul’s in Gifford and Trinity in Urbana in such a case.
New Business: Expecting to have $25,710 in project money; it could go up if we get the bonus money.
Project # 1: Aaron Farmer was in a car accident Oct 30th; he has been in a coma since then. His mother is a single-parent and they have another son. They have had a benefit at the school already (they made $16,000 there), this is a benefit at their church. It won’t be nearly as big, but if they can get some matching funds it will help. He is now semi-responsive. He is 17 and his brother is 15; Jody (the mother) is with him every day. The project is a 2-for-1 match up to $5,000. Notices will be sent to Lutheran churches. Will be held on Feb 5th. M Erwin/S Norm/C as outlined. Lynette will ensure that the forms are filled in and submitted; and ensure that volunteer hours are tracked.
Norm brought forward a project #2 where Thrivent would provide one or two workdays for the final days of the Habitat for Humanity Workday. We would provide the lunch and odds and ends for the volunteers. M Norm/S Dick/C up to $300 to provide for Thrivent Work Days at the Gant Home. All work hours those days would count for our chapter project.
Old Business: There was a committee appointed last year to work out details for the computer projector; Dick, Traci and Norm. Recommendation from the Committee is that it be reserved for our own usage only. If it is used by others we should have Norm or someone experienced with it go with it, and the user should pay for the time. It would be usable by FA’s when needed; Darrell mentioned that they probably wouldn’t use it except in an emergency of some kind. M Dick/S Erwin/C to restrict its usage to chapter events, including FA’s in unusual situations.
Habitat house update provided in the packet. We are doing OK financially currently. There is a lot of detail work to finish the house, getting the interior done, then finishing up the exterior when the weather improves.
Tsunami Appeal – in bulletins this Sunday and subsequent Sundays there should be announcements of this appeal. Watch for the bulletins and if it’s not there find out why it’s not listed, and contact your church office to get it inserted. Doesn’t go through us at all; it goes directly to Lutheran World Relief. We have nothing to do with it other than to publicize it. We can also do something locally to help the victims. Suggestion is that home office is already doing something for it, we probably shouldn’t duplicate the effort.
Officer Rotation: An idea from Judy is that we need to think about Officer Rotation as several of us approach the final year that we can be board members. We don’t currently have anything in place, it would just be ourselves – not anything from corporate. One point made is that we need to recognize that if you are the assistant financial director for one year, the second year you move to financial director. Our terms are for 1 year, but you can only hold office for 4 years, then you take 2 years off. If you take a year off every three years you can do it that way. Brian asked whether you can be very effective at the position in one year – sometimes it helps to have a person in each position for 2 years. There are two places where it really makes sense; VP/P and Vtreasurer/Treasurer. It was mentioned that Records Director could also be in the position swap agreement. Also, we don’t want to kick people out of the position before they are ready, but we as a board need to ensure that we have continuity and training for the positions over the years. Darrell mentioned that there is a position in many boards – Past President – who is non-voting but sits as an advisor for the president to provide for continuity. (later: there is a “Past President” concept for Thrivent, and we can designate such a person if we want). Nancy mentioned that we should attempt to stagger the terms, so we don’t lose both a President and a Treasurer in the same year for example. Many of us did start when Thrivent started, but we have been fairly successful this past year attracting new members. Judy feels that we need to get something written up; Lynette was asked to do something; she can call on others as appropriate.
Project Guidelines: When we have a project, we need to designate an officer who is responsible for that project to help the people bring the project to fruition. They need to ensure that all application paperwork is filled out appropriately and the requestor understands the requirements that we have, that they make use of Chapter resources (advertising, promotion, banner, documents, taking pictures of events, etc), and that the appropriate paperwork gets done and submitted. We need to expand our application form or have additional forms that have some kind of checklist to help people understand what needs to be done. They want that .. people want to understand what they need to do to get money from us. It helps them get their money faster, and make sure they satisfy our requirements. Noone who is forming these committees knows what we need, we need to have better communication to help them to understand what is needed. On project completion we need to have in our files backup information to track expenses, income, and hours for each project .. for the volunteer hours you need names that can be checked in the case of an audit. Brian read the Community Service Team Director job description, and it basically covers all of this. Judy: It’s not fair to dump it all in his lap .. we can still designate someone for each project, Brian just has ultimate responsibility to ensure that everything is done correctly. Most likely the person to do it is the person who is contacted in the first place.
Traci brought forth a question on what her job actually is. It was mentioned that we don’t have enough communications out to the community that we are here and we have money to give away. As unbelievable as it is we struggle to give away money each year. We have pastors (who know about Thrivent and our programs) who do a project and don’t even come to us to involve us. We also don’t want to be called after the fact .. the whole idea of this is that Thrivent Members start the project; it’s not that someone creates a project then comes to Thrivent and tries to fit their project into our guidelines. Some of this is the lack of volunteerism – it’s difficult to even get people to volunteer for an easy job such as congregational coordinator. Advertising – The Habitat house was in the paper the other day, if we had media contacts and could write a story and submit it and get it printed it would help get the good that we do out to the public. Our Tsunami appeal could generate a letter to the papers talking about the match. Could we be notifying service agencies in our community that we have funding available – food pantries, etc. We can develop contacts on the newspaper and know how to get an article submitted and printed. Typically a person trying to publicize a project won’t know how to get it published in the paper. Lynette says that she as a church secretary has a contact at the news gazette (Rachael Ard), and can regularly get news items submitted; if it’s there wed by noon it will be in Friday or Saturday’s paper – the religious section. We need to get more personal contact with people who are doing the projects. Business section will have a section on business announcements. Pampered Chef gave $1000 to the Tsunami .. it could just as easily say “Champaign County Chapter of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans gave $…”. Getting back to continuity .. as Traci does these things, she needs to maintain a listing of what she does and how she effectively advertises things, and she can pass that information on to the next person who takes over as Communication Director.
Planning ahead for future meetings; What night works for most people: Tuesday is a problem for Bev and Traci; Monday is a problem for Erwin and Lynette; Paul can’t make 1st/3rd Monday; Lynette can make Mondays work. Second Monday appears to work best for everyone. For February it is Valentine’s Day. Do we want to skip February and go into March? We can approve projects via email, so .. our next meeting is March 14th at 6:30 at St John’s Lutheran Church. It’s a winter month so we should do it in Champaign. Are there churches that we haven’t met at yet? Messiah was mentioned; Rick said it’s a very small congregation and they probably don’t have 6 Thrivent members.
We need to plan our Chicken dinner, ideally before the March meeting. It’s a social event to try to get Thrivent members together, and help people understand that they can get together to do projects. We held it in May last year – it was too late. Easter is March 27th; April 3rd is the suggested date. It’s the Thomasboro Community Building in beautiful downtown Thomasboro. Darrell won’t be there on the 3rd, but will arrange for the building. Darrell will try the 10th then the 3rd. ALL BOARD MEMBERS need to show up and help out with this. It was mentioned that we need to get a Chapter Mailing out ASAP so that we can tell people how to RSVP for this. Norm will get Traci information on this, and she can handle it.
In the packet from Norm is a page that says “Information on Internet Sites for the Chapter”. Norm wanted each of the board members to be aware of what is available on the net. Also included is the application for grants – the categories that we judge the grant on, all the forms, etc. http://champaignchapter.org/apply is the URL. The last page has pictures on it .. we have a second on the website that gives a brief bio of each of us. It would be nice to get a short writeup from each board member saying who you are so people can figure out who they talked to. It would get a good idea to get a head shot of each board member so people can check the web site and figure out who we are. I forgot the camera tonight, come to the next meeting expecting to have your picture taken.
It was M/S/C to adjourn. Next meetings: March at St John Lutheran/Champaign
Respectfully submitted,
Norm Fisher
e-mail motion by Norm on January 19th to appoint Susan Moore as FA Advisor. We found out that contrary to the rules in past years we do not have a limit of 2 FA advisors; the only rule is that any one advisor can only be advisor for one chapter. Motion carried by e-mail, Susan has been added as an FA advisor to the Champaign County Chapter.
e-mail motion by Norm on Jan 25, 2005, second by Judy, to approve the following project submitted to Judy:
I have been asked if our chapter could match funds raised by a benefit being held in Rantoul, Feb. 18. This is for Bill & Judy Chumbley. Judy is very, very ill. About 3-4 months ago she began having severe back problems. Things progressed rapidly. She has been unable to work most of that time. She is diabetic. She has a cancerous growth that is pushing on her liver and 1 kidney. The doctors want to do surgery but, can't get her system built up for that. On top of all that she has been uninsurable the last several years. So you can imagine the hospital/medical bills that accumulating.
Bill is very, very well know in and around Rantoul. Judy had been employed by the Rantoul Chamber of Commerce for the past 15 years. Her boss and other chamber members are organizing this benefit. My husband and Darrell Brandt have joined this planning committee. There will be a meal and auction. Entertainment is planned. Donations are also being accepted by the Busey Bank, Rantoul. They are requesting $5000 from Thrivent. They know the Thrivent rules: Must raise $10,000 to get the full match; 6 Thrivent households; track volunteer hours; all funds will go through our treasury for matching. I will be responsible for handling the forms and reporting.
It was carried by email.