February 16, 2006 Minutes

PERC Board Meeting February 16, 2006

Present: Stephen, Jason, Randal, Margaret and Mike

Regrets: Joe

Minutes: By Jason

1) Check-in

2) Adoption of Agenda

Motion to adopt: Steve. Seconded: Randal. Carried

3) Approval of January 12, 2006 Board Minutes

There were 2 amendments to the Minutes:

Under the Financial Report:

- Margaret noted that the Minutes should state that she objected to a plan that would see the coordinator laid off again as a way of reducing PERC's deficit.

Under PEN Editor's Report:

The last paragraph should be replaced by the following:

Margaret noted that the December 2006 issue of the PEN would have a focus on Ethical Small Business. Steve mentioned that one of his cousins and her husband have a small printing business which has recently won a “green award” and that he would approach them to see about contributing an article.

Mike suggested the possibility of another PEN issue that looked at the history of a number of local ethical small businesses, i.e. how these businesses got going and managed to survive.

Motion to approve the Minutes as amended: Randal. Seconded: Steve. Carried.

4) Business arising from the Minutes


 * Identification of new Board members. The Members' Meeting on January 19th did not result in the identification of any new Board members. According to PERC's bylaws we need to have another Members' meeting within 60 days (of today) to try again.

Since this timeframe brings us close to the time when PERC would normally hold its AGM in May, it was decided to move the AGM forward a couple of weeks and combine the 2 agendas. Randal noted that 60 days from February 16th lands us in the middle of Easter week, so the Board decided to delay the AGM/Members' meeting 1 week, to 20th April in consequence.

5) PERC Financial Situation

Mike noted some errors in the budget projections, e.g. (the projected garage sale gross was too high).

After making the corrections, Mike indicated that the projections show that we will have a budget shortfall of between $7,500 and $10,000 in the 2006-07 fiscal year. This will be the 3rd year in a row with such a large deficit. Last year the shortfall was covered by the Coordinator taking leave without pay and a shortfall of this size would require a layoff of up to 6 months. This is not feasible for Mike and not a sustainable situation for the PERC.

The only way to address the sustainability of the situation is to attract new PERC members. Mike noted that the typical new member donates a total of about $40 per year to PERC, so we need about 250 members to meet our projected shortfall.

Steve and Mike had a discussion with Connie Berry, a former PERC Board member in late January. She proposed to undertake a special fundraising appeal with PERC's major donors. The funds raised through the appeal would be used to challenge PERC's volunteers to match these funds with their membership recruitment efforts.

Mike therefore proposed a strategy in which each volunteer would be asked to make a pledge to recruit 2 or 3 new members this year. They would be told that if the pledges were sufficient then the special funds raised from PERC's major donors could be used. If insufficient numbers of new members were recruited, the funds would be returned to the donors and PERC would start to look at downsizing its operations.

- Jason brought up the idea of tabling at events such as the Environmental Lifestyle Fair as another way to increase memberships.

- Mike agreed but noted that volunteer efforts were the most effective way to get new members.

- PERC's biggest expense is the Coordinator. Without a Coordinator, there would be no PEN.

PERC's Fundraising PLAN would be as follows:


 * Solicit major donors for additional funds.


 * Have members pledge to sign up new memberships with the understanding that these would be matched by new funds from the major donors.


 * Renewals - memberships that are more than 6 months lapsed - will count as new members.

Steve presented the following motion regarding this plan:

That the Board agrees to the plan to match new donations solicited for a “save the PERC” campaign (or whatever we name it) to a Volunteer Challenge in which PERC volunteers would be asked to achieve a specific goal in new memberships (the exact number to be determined in consultation with the coordinator and Membership Committee).

If the volunteers achieve the desired membership goal, the new donations would be cashed by PERC.

If the volunteers do not meet the agreed upon membership goal (and miss it by a substantial margin), then the significant donations to the matching fund would be returned to the donors who made them and PERC would begin examining the option of scaling back its activities.

The motion was approved unanimously.

6) Reports

i.) FINANCIAL: The bulk of the financial report has been covered above. We will end this financial year (March 31st) with a deficit of about $1,500.  We started the year with a surplus of $1000.

ii)Pen Editor's Report

Next PEN issue will have an announcement of the April AGM and a request for new board members. Next Tuesday is the cut off date for articles.

Margaret will contact PEACE FUND CANADA to request funding for an issue on "Children as Peacemakers".

iii) Committees


 * A number of leadership opportunities have arisen.


 * Financial administration taking shape.


 * IT Committee holding together.


 * May have a new PVN Editor who can improve the PVN


 * Fundraising - still no membership sub-committee.


 * Library Committee growing and doing well.

iv) Coordinator - could be better

7. New Business

There was no new business to report

8) Next meeting

Next Board meeting will be on 23 March 2006

10) Checkout The meeting ended at 10 pm

Return to BoD Minutes Archives