Recap of Vermont Leadership Meeting on September 21, 2002
Below is a recap of Saturday's Leadership Meeting in Randolph. It was written collaboratively by Dot Rand and Gudrun Hutchins. The primary purpose is to make sure everyone has an accurate record of the primary decisions announcements that were made and some of the topics that were discussed.
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Attendance and Site:
All eight state leaders and seven branch leaders attended the meeting; every branch was represented. The Langevin House of VTC suited our purposes very well. Since we were the only group in the House, we were able to use the conference room for our meeting and the dining and living rooms during lunch.
Mariafranca's Legacy:
Leaders shared personal memories of Mariafranca Morselli and what we have each learned from her. She will be missed for her active leadership in AAUW and many other organizations.
Report from Leadership Meeting in Washington:
The 3 member team from Vermont attending the leadership conference in June were
Dot Rand, President; Kathy Corrao, LAF Liaison and Kathie Balutansky, College/University Representative.
At the start of the 2 ½ day meeting in Washington our very large binder contained a one page "AAUW 21st Century Call to Action". Working with this new document, volunteers from our national boards and national staff urged us to depart from the traditional ways of doing things and work towards active participation to meet the needs of our communities.
We heard the words "coalition", "collaboration", "in partnership with" because it takes "multiple voices to change a community". For instance; to stop bullying in our schools we need to partner with the NEA and bring their Bullying Awareness Campaign to nearby school districts. To become more active branches, in addition to being informed about public policy issues important to AAUW members, we need to do something with that information such as spread the word and contact our elected officials.
We learned how to work as a team at the state level to provide resources for our branches when requested. We started to look at the Vermont State and Branch organization.
Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there? We focused on how to incorporate emerging technologies in order to be more effective communicators both with our members and potential members. We now have an up-to date website and can send our newsletter over the internet saving postage and printing costs.
We discussed some topics with teams from Wyoming, Montana, and Louisiana, states with similar demographics to Vermont. Often all 150 of us met together and other meetings were held just for Presidents, LAF liaisons, and EF chairs. We returned to Vermont with big ideas, knowing we must be pragmatic in our support for women and girls, and with the hope that our enthusiasm is catching.
Planned Future State Meetings:
Regional Meeting: October 4 and 5 in Providence. The Vermont group will meet over dinner on Friday, October 4 from 6:30 to 8:00 in the Riverwalk Cafe of the hotel. It is suggested that attendees register for the conference between 6:00 and 6:30, since we will be going from the Cafe directly to the Educational Foundation Reception. The subject matter of the meeting is a follow-up of Saturday's discussion about becoming a more active 21st century organization. Leaders not attending the meeting have been asked to mail their answers to specific questions to Dot Rand before the meeting. At this point the following Vermonters are registered to attend: Dot Rand, Andrea Weisberg, Kathy Correo, Gudrun Hutchins, Louise and Bill Luring, Jennifer Kern, Maureen Williams.
Winter Leadership Meeting: Saturday, January 25, 2003 from approximately 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The location will be Middlebury; the specific site will be determined at a later date. The primary topic will be specific program planning for the spring state convention.
Legislative Day in Montpelier: Date to be determined by AAUW in collaboration with Common Cause and League of Women Voters. It is generally held on a Wednesday in late February or early March and includes observation of the House and Senate (or committees), a briefing, and a lunch with a speaker chosen from state government.
Vermont State Convention: Saturday, April 5, 2003 in Middlebury. The specific site and the program will be announced at a later date.
National AAUW Convention: June 20 - 23, 2003 Providence RI. We will forward information about the Convention and about the financial benefits of volunteering as soon as the data is available. Some of the volunteers will be needed already on June 19 and all attendees should plan to stay overnight in Providence on the 23rd because that is the evening of the Educational Foundation banquet, an event not to be missed.
Finances:
Convention Stipends: We decided to use $3000 from our state reserves to create ten $300 stipends for leaders and members attending the national convention in Providence as part of our effort to revitalize AAUW of Vermont. Six of these $300 stipends will be designated for state leaders (several of whom will also be first timers) and four are designated for other first timers at a national convention. The availability of these stipends will be announced to the general membership in the October state newsletter; attendees at the meeting may announce it now to branch members.
Bank Account: Treasurer, Jenifer Ambler, reported that the bank holding our checking account will no longer allow interest bearing checking for non-profits. We authorized her to look into moneymarket accounts or other options for avoiding fees associated with a business checking account.
Email and Web Communications:
Better email and web communications between leaders is one of our goals this year. The Agenda and a letter from Dot about this meeting were emailed to leaders as PDF files and were also available on our website. Meeting attendees reported relatively little difficulty in obtaining the information from at least one of these sources.
Gudrun Hutchins reported that she had researched various hosts for our website. Homestead (our present site) is the least expensive option for what we need and presently costs us $70 per year. Leaders voted to obtain our own domain registration (a www address). This has been completed and will cost another $24 per year plus a $10 set-up charge. The new address www.aauwvt.org is already working as of Monday morning; The old address will also continue to work. Gudrun is continually updating the site and each branch may have their own web page for program information, newsletters, or even a photo.
Educational Foundation:
Andrea reported that nearly $1500 have been contributed to the Educational Foundation in memory of Mariafranca Morselli and that she has received many touching notes with the contributions.
We have two recipients of Educational Foundation Grants from Vermont this year. They are: Kendry L. Rickerby who received an Eleanor Roosevelt Teacher Fellowship and Ellen L. Kahler who received a Career Development Grant and is pursuing her MPA at Harvard. Kendry is a member of the Burlington Branch.
Legal Advocacy Fund:
Kathy Corrao reported on the method in which cases are selected for LAF and the large network of consulting attorneys. She passed out a sheet with information on the video tapes of litigants that can currently be borrowed from LAF to use at a meeting. The state owns "Speaking out for Justice", a video that gives an overview of four cases. The others are of a single litigant discussing her particular case.
Public Policy:
Raylene summarized her work with the Vermont Women's Commission and the Pro-Choice Coalition. She urged members to attend the gubernatorial symposium on October 2, 2002 from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m. in the House Chamber of the State House. Candidates Racine, Douglas, Hogan and Badamo will participate and the questions will center on women's and family issues.
The Middlebury Branch currently has a student intern from Middlebury College that is working with the Commission half a day per week and getting college credit for it. She urged other branches near colleges to consider this possibility and is happy to give them more information.
Membership:
Louise Luring wrapped up the meeting by explaining how much of what we had discussed relates to membership. Many of our branch members do not really know what state and national AAUW does. She urged that we encourage individual members to become more informed about AAUW by asking them to research AAUW support of a particular issue or program and giving a 3 minute report on it at a branch meeting. By asking a different member to do this at every meeting, we would in time educate our membership, especially the researchers.
Louise also recommended that we model an interactive program at our state convention that is tied in with a well known speaker. Groups of branch members would research an assigned topic ahead of time and give a short report. This would help branch members to have ownership of part of the program and hopefully boost attendance. In the discussion that followed a possible example for the state meeting was considered -- having Michelle Forman as a speaker and then reports on Testing, Vouchers, Title IX, Bullying and Harassment and related Education Issues from branch members.
