City Club of Eugene
Board Meeting Meeting Minutes
Directors Present: Scott Coltrane, Marilyn Milne, Skip Coburn, Ralph Pledger, Sandy Smalley, J. Ingrid Kessler, Kaarin Knudsen.
Executive Director Present: Silver Mogart
Guests: Paul Thompson, Bob Choquette
- Call to order and Welcome at 5:34 pm
- Approval of minutes of January 2022 Board Meeting — Moved, seconded, passed.
- UO Planning, Public Policy, & Management (PPPM) Strategic Planning Support. Bob Choquete, presenting.
A. History: Our previous strategic plan had some items, such as podcasts, that were accomplished, but otherwise it has languished a bit. So, we’re starting a brand new strategic plan.
B. PPPM Class in Strategic Planning Methodology: The students learn to create a strategic plan by partnering with a local nonprofit using a methodology championed by John Bryson at the University of Minnesota. They look at the externals (the environment that the organization works in) to understand the scope of the organization. The students interview 25 key stakeholders, identified by City Club of Eugene as community partners whose opinion we value, to produce a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). The student interviews would cover all four areas of a SWOT. Often people feel very relaxed talking to students in a good way.
C. Timeline: This class is offered during the upcoming term. In the second week of March, we would send someone from the club to talk about City Club to the entire class. After that, students would self-select in to work with City Club in a team of three to four students. We would provide our list of stakeholders to our student team. Then the students would work to produce a report in mid May. At that time they would sit down with us to review the report and let us know what they found. They would continue to work with revisions through mid June.
D. Expected Results:
a. SWOT: 90% of the information gathered we may likely already know, but 10% may be crucial, new information.
b. Research: Additionally, the students will research an issue of importance to our Board and present their findings to us. In the past this has included, for example, Fundraising Techniques for Directors or Roles & Responsibilities of Directors.
c. Ongoing Work: This is the beginning of a good plan, but goals, timeline, costs would still need to be filled in by City Club of Eugene, after the student work is done.
E. Questions:
a. How large is the class? About 30 students. There will likely be 7 – 8 projects with 3-4 students per team.
b. What kind of students are in the class? It’s a mix of graduate and undergraduate students.
c. What is the cost to the club? There is no financial cost.
d. What kind of stakeholders should we choose? Past Directors, current Directors, donors, frequent attendees, prominent members, ED at other clubs that know us well, etc. It should be people who know the club well and people whose opinion we value.
e. How qualified are the students? Is this their capstone course? The quality of the questioner and their ability to elict information determines how useful that information is. People are relaxed talking to the students who they know don’t have a dog in the fight. And a lot of the power is in the question itself. In the past the results have been impressively good. When they present in May, the students will know more about CCE than we do.
f. What other organizations that they have worked with? This class has beend held for about 15 years with 6 to 8 teams per year. Previous nonprofits include: Boys and Girls Club, Habitat for Humanity, Volunteers in Medicine, Oregon Mozart players, and many more.
F. Next Steps: Dr. Choquette will provide previous reports for our review. Additionally, should we move forward, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be provided outlining obligations of both the student group and of CCE.
G. Board discussion: There is appreciation for the external approach. People will likely feel comfortable to talking to students and be honest. We will take great care in producing our list of 25 stakeholders. Except for this step, the students do the vast majority of the work. Importantly, we will need to follow up on the work provided by the class with ongoing strategic planning which will need to include budgeting. The SWOT with our follow up will allow us to have an actual document that we can refer back to and use to gauge club development. City Club is growing and this is a great opportunity for us to mold that growth. The organization is respected in the community and we want to grow from there while maintaining the best parts of the Club as they exist now.
H. Action: A motion was made to enter into the MoU with the nonprofit strategic planning class. It was seconded and then passed.
- Executive Director’s Report
A. Discussion of what our board wants in the ED report:
a. Metrics: There was support for high-level metrics as they are shared now: membership tallies, sponsorship, podcasts. Let’s add in-person attendance as we return to in person meetings. Otherwise, we don’t want to spend too much time ferreting out too many details.
b. Progress on goals: The Board would like to hear progress on annual goals.
c. State of the State: Silver is encouraged to choose a couple of items of interest that he experienced in the past month that he would like to call to Directors’ attention.
B. This month’s update:
a. Google Account Access: Varying people need access from time to time. A premium account may allow us to parse out access. Ralph will help look into it. Alternatively, we can change passwords as needed.
b. Membership numbers – These change with the political cycle. Our numbers now are a bit more modest which is expected. Likewise we expect to see growth this year.
C. Salary discussion: This is moving forward with Skip having already provided some data on salary and benefits.
- President’s Report: Scott, Kaarin, Kitty are following up with Silver on his review. The six point plan is being discussed in ongoing regularly scheduled meetings.
- AARP (American Association of Retired People) grant –
A. Club Needs: We have opportunities for technological improvement, especially in the audio area including equipment for the hearing impaired. We could use lapel microphones for speakers to free up their hands. We have two cameras and at times need three. Some of our equpiment is now generously shared for use by one of our volunteers – it would be better to own it. Also, we need people! It would help to have a professional to provide part of our production needs. It would also improve resilience – right now if certain of our volunteers aren’t available we would have production difficulties.
B. Grant Description: The average grant size is $13,000. There are many applicants, with a success rate of about seven percent. The targeted audience is people over 50. The submission date deadline is 3/22. The grant application emphasizes three goals: leveraging additional funds; advancing change and overcoming barriers; and diversity. Mary Leighton can help with the grant writing. Susan Schroeder with Square One was successful in applying for this grant in 2017 and has offered to help. Thank you Susan! Silver looking forward to working with Mary on this.
C. Action: A motion was made to move forward with pursuing the grant. It was seconded and approved. - Treasurers report –
A. Monthly Reports: will be provided soon.
B. Liability Insurance: This needs to be renewed. The quote is $2,400 which is double what we are paying. Our agent is independent and shopped this for us. Coverage for equipment comes as part of the package – it can’t be parsed out to help reduce cost. Our policy expires in the next 30 days. If anyone knows of another insurance company, please let Skip know. How about adding a rider onto the Church’s policy? Skip will look into that. Otherwise, we need to go ahead. Action: A motion was made to approve the policy proposed by Advantage Insurance unless a better alternative is found. It was seconded and passed. - Committee Reports. The Media Committee previously submitted a written report for Board Review. Thank you Marilyn!! All Committee Reports were tabled for time.
- Indigenous Land Acknowledgement – Brief discussion for time contraints: Inspired by the 4J students, Mary Leighton, Silver, and Kaarin have been working on language for a land acknowledgement to possibly be woven into the opening remarks at our Friday Fora. Kaarin provided background paperwork to the board prior to our meetings. Directors are asked to please review that document, especially the second page. U of O has done research that helped provide the proposed language. Additionally, Directors attend other venues that have simple, respectful acknowledgments. It was shared that any statement needs to be honoring and not sound pat. A great question is: How do we have a deeper relationship with our Native American community members? Further discussion was tabled for time.
- Call for ongoing topics. None were noted.
Adjournment at 6:41 pm.
Respectfully submitted by J. Ingrid Kessler, DVM, Board Secretary.
