Four page newsletter: March/April 2008| Four page newsletter: March/April 2008 | | |
| Morris County NJ Chapter, March/April 2008 Edition |
| JOIN HANDS DAY - MAY 3, 2008 |
Let's JOIN HANDS and work together on or near May 3rd! This is the Thrivent fraternal national day of service when youths and adults plan and implement projects that benefit their local communities.
This year we would like to encourage each congregation to conduct a FOOD APPEAL to collect non-perishable food items for a local food kitchen or pantry. Both youth and adults can be involved in assembling the items and delivering them to a center.
Just designate a location at your church where the food items can be collected and then pack them up and deliver! Report your activity to Thea Lubrecht (973-527-4713 email: omamom@optonline.net) along with the number of people participating and the number of hours contributed. No matching funds will be needed/allocated for a Join Hands Day food drive activity.
In addition to Food Drives, other hands-on projects qualify for Join Hands Day. These can be clean up projects for an individual or a park, making needed repairs in your community, working at Habitat for Humanity, or making items for a local agency. The Morris County Chapter has $1000 available to support these Join Hands Day projects! Funds can be used for supplies to complete the project, food for a work crew, or other needed items. These funds are available on a first requested, first approved basis. All requests are due by April 20th. Please submit your requests to Thea Lubrecht, Financial Director. email: omamom@optonline.net or 973-527-4713.
Be active in promoting JOIN HANDS DAY! Use bulletin inserts, announcements, newsletter notices, etc. to bring as many people as possible into the activity! Visit www.joinhandsday.org for information, bulletin inserts, request and reporting forms. Designate a leader in your congregation to organize an activity - it doesn't have to be a large activity - just one that involves youth and adults and promotes volunteerism!
Last year we completed 2 projects - let's try for many more this year! Work with other agencies such as the Boys or Girls Scouts, high school groups, etc. to complete projects. Get youth and adults involved!
| LOCALLY SUPPORTED ACTIVITIES |
Locally supported chapter activities are fund-raising, administrative, social and hands-on service activities hosted by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans chapter service teams that do not utilize funds from any of the three chapter Care programs. Some examples are confirmation recognition and other social activities. Locally supported activities should be reported because it gives a more complete picture of volunteer activity on behalf of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. This helps Thrivent Financial demonstrate its active fraternal nature and strength, and show how the benefit of its tax-exempt status impacts our chapters' efforts and all the good we do together to help individuals, churches and communities.
Congregational coordinators can report locally supported activities online via the Congregational Coordinator Administration section on the Congregational Coordinators Only area of Thrivent.com.
For details on locally supported activities and guidelines for reporting them, please refer to CHIP, the online chapter resource guide, at www.thrivent.com/members/chip and search on "locally supported." There is also a quick reference guide on the topic in the Volunteer Resources; Tutorial/Quick References area of Members/Chapters at Thrivent.com.
| THRIVENT BUILDS - A NEW INITIATIVE FOR MORRIS COUNTY CHAPTER |
Your local Morris County Thrivent Board had decided to pursue the potential of becoming a Thrivent Builds Chapter. After receiving encouragement from the local Morris County Habitat for Humanity organization which provides affordable housing solutions to people, we are embarking on a fact finding/assessment to see if this is a possible activity for the chapter.
We would hope that every Lutheran church in Morris County will seriously consider supporting this project with both funds and equally important with volunteer hours of work on the site. Individual members who ae reading this newsletter and feel called to this service, are encouraged to contact David Bowles (dbowles7@yahoo.com) to express their desire to support this undertaking.
If we are successful in generating sufficient monetary and committed voluneer hours, we will make our application later in 2008 and the build will start in 2009.
Your board is very excited about this proposal and way of helping people secure homes. We look forward to receiving your responses. Each church in Morris County will receive more updates and visits in the near future.
| CARE ABOUNDS IN COMMUNITIES |
Several service teams have put in requests for funds to supplement their benevolence and stewardship activities for 2008. We consider these requests at our monthly meetings and vote on amounts to support the request. To date, we have allocated about $4000 of our $22,000 allotment from Thrivent. That means that funds are available for your congregation to ask for supplemental funds to add to the "good that you do." Show you care for your community through an exciting Thrivent Financial program called Care Abounds in Communities®. Through this program, Thrivent Financial provides funding to support members like you who want to make a difference. Accessing supplemental funds for fund-raising efforts or funds to purchase supplies for hands-on service activities is easy through our chapter leadership board. Your first step is to form a community service team—a team of volunteers that conducts an activity to help individuals, families and/or qualified not-for-profit organizations. Then you can contact our chapter leadership board for more information and help.
Get your requests to the Morris County Board as soon as you decide on an outreach project. Projects must be preapproved and Thrivent must be mentioned as part of your announcements. Call us if you have quesions! We look forward to assisiting you in finding supplemental funding for your projects!
| YOUR THRIVENT MORRIS COUNTY CHAPTER BOARD |
Your board members are here to help you with any questions that you might have regarding your requests for Care in Community projects.
Each congregation has three congregational coordiantors who process the applications and carry through on completing the process. However, any Thrivent member can initiate a project as long as there are six people on the team that proposes the project. So - contact us!
We can also help with your Care in Congregation applications, although those do not pass through our board but are completed on line.
You will also note that there are vacant positions on the board and we could use more help! We meet monthly and give each other support for learning the assigned job. Please consider joining us!
President: David Bowles 908-393-4546 dbowles7@yahoo.com
Vice-President: Wanetta Phillips 973-361-3045 wannetta.phillips@att.net
Records Dir. James Mechtel 732-840-3518 morris.county.chapter.NJ@gmail.com
Financial Dir. Thea Lubrecht 973-527-4713 omamom@optonline.net
Congregationl
Service Team Dir. Viola Muriello 973-584-8158 gingermom123@aol.com
Communications Dir. Helen Sanders 973-627-6203 hssanders@yahoo.com
Youth Dir. Caitlin Cain 973-455.0566 Caitlin.C.Cain@gmail.com
Financial Advisor Bruce Kleindienst 973-586-4517 bruce.kleindienst@thrivent.com
Special Advisor Peggy Burke 973-998-0725 pburke8248@aol.com
Assistant Financial Dir. VACANT
Community Service Team Dir. VACANT
Events Director VACANT
Although it is only spring time in Morris County, we are already anticipating the end of the year and the distribution of our Thrivent funds! We request that you act promptly to put in your requests for funds. The last day for consideration of a request will be: NOVEMBER 30 with completion promised by DECEMBER 15th. Any projects not completed by December 15 will have the funds reallocated to other Thrivent projects. If you have a project approved and then decide to cancel, please do let us know!
A new schedule of allocations was mailed to each congregational coordiantor. This year, we will match $1 for each $3 raised by the service team. Hands-on projects follow a different formula, so contact us to determine amounts. These are guidelines set down by Thrivent and we strive to follow them.
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