June 7, 2007 BoD Minutes

Minutes: June 7, 2007 PERC BoD Meeting

Present: Randal Marlin, Kristin Miller, Kristina Inrig, Steve Gurman, Mike Kaulbars, Margaret Jensen

Minutes: Steve

1. Check-in

2. Assign Time-keeper Kristin volunteered to be Time-keeper

3. Adoption of Agenda

The agenda was adopted as presented. Motion to adopt. Moved by: Steve. Seconded: Randal. Carried.

4. Selection of Board Officers

Steve moved a motion to select the following PERC Board officers, with effect at the end of this meeting:

President: Kristin

Vice-President: Randal

Secretary: Kristina

Treasurer: Steve

Member-at-Large: To be determined

Seconded: Margaret. Carried.

5. Approval of Minutes of April 3, 2007 Board Meeting

Margaret noted a clarification to the minutes under Section 11. New Business: Delete the first two sentences, beginning with �Margaret expressed....� These statements were not made during the meeting.


 * In the last paragraph of this section: delete �Margaret�s concerns� and replace with �these concerns�. Also, in the same sentence, delete �with Margaret�.


 * There was a typo in section 12. Next Board meeting: two instances of �at�. The second one should be replaced with �that�.

The minutes were approved as amended. Moved by Steve. Seconded by Kristin. Carried.

6. Business arising from the minutes

i. Proposed PERC Anti-Harassment Policy: Kristin has taken over this project from Jason but has not made any progress yet. She hopes to make more progress by the next board meeting.

ii. Board Retreat: Kristin and Kristina have met to discuss this topic and will meet again. Steve volunteered to meet with them as well.

iii. Update on search for new board members: Kristin will email James with the ads that will be posted to Volunteer Ottawa. Steve has spoken to Lorraine Stuyt, who has expressed interest in joining the board. During their last conversation she told him that she would contact Mike and begin her board orientation. She has not yet contacted Mike, so Steve and Mike will follow up.

Kristina suggested that the Board Development committee work on board orientation as its main priority.

iv. Rehiring of Coordinator: It was noted that Mike has been rehired after a Board approval process undertaken via email.

7. Reports

i. Financial

Steve reported that the Garage Sale income of $3,071.48 shown on the Profit and Loss sheet for May does not include expenses to purchase the food that was sold in PERC�s veggie booth. The net income is therefore less than $3,071, but is more than $2,600.


 * Mike wondered whether the May Balance sheet total already includes Garage Sale income or not. Steve replied that he would check back with Joe and then email the response to board members.

Steve moved that the financial report be accepted as presented. Seconded: Kristina. Carried.

''ii. PEN Editor''

There will not be an issue of the PEN printed over the summer.

Margaret reported that the grant application to TD FOE has been submitted and that their next meeting to consider submissions will take place during the 3rd week of June. Mike is expecting to make a presentation in support of the submission. The application requests $9,300 to print 4 issues of the PEN Insider on the theme of �Climate Change�.

Mike noted that the amount requested included money to pay the PEN Editor�s honorarium so that we had some room to negotiate down from the requested amount and still obtain a grant that would be large enough to make a significant difference to our budget. Mike acknowledged Margaret�s help in the preparation of the proposal - her input improved the submission. He also noted that he was careful to word the submission so that proposed PERC activities would not overlap with those of Just Food.

Mike described a number of interesting ways in which PERC could provide more resources to the general public, e.g. setting up an on-line personal �carbon challenge� with a self-assessment tool. He thought that this activity could reuse software developed for the commuter challenge.

''iii. Committees''

Admin: There may be someone able to take on the role of Chair for this committee.


 * Finance: Some volunteers are taking time off for exams, so not much is happening.


 * IT Admin: There may be someone on committee who could be the chair. Otherwise, things are as usual.

Communications: Testing out someone new in a leadership role. Mike will be organizing a �photo-shoot� day. He will ask committee members to troll the web to look for good free images for our on-line articles. Hannah has done a proposal for the participation portion of the web site.

Fundraising: Committee is very short on volunteers.


 * Membership: No one is really left.


 * Special Events: No one on this committee either.

Library: This committee is coming along well.

Management: Mike would like to revive this committee - this depends on how RFD goes and the stability of committee chairs.

Outreach: Nothing special to report.

Participation: Still working on �Virtual Volunteering�. Tried out system with someone in Minneapolis, but it did not work. Still working on using Moodle to provide training.

PEN Support: Still looking for someone to take this on.

Web Committee: Athena project is moving along. It�s actually ready to implement but the volunteers are hesitating. The committee is considering a follow-up to its popular �100 km Food Challenge�. This would be a �One Year Compact� to not buy anything new for one year (excluding food).

PVN: Denise is gone and possibly also the 2 volunteers that she was supposed to be coordinating.

Coordinator: Mike is excited about a number of things going on at the moment:


 * The TD FOE grant application.


 * Some of the new volunteers look very promising.


 * The �One Year Compact� challenge idea.

In general he feels that there is a lot of positive energy around the organization.

8. Any Other Business

Kristina informed everyone that �Seventh Generation� is producing a new version of its Green Pages. She will follow-up on this with Mike to look for possible synergies with PERC.

9. Next Meeting

The next meeting, on July 5th, is supposed to be a Members� Meeting as well as a Board meeting as we are below our board quorum. Unfortunately, we have not officially given the required notice of this meeting in the PEN and we are now too late. If we could get a new probationary board member nominated by July 5th, this would solve the problem

So, the following action items were proposed:


 * Mike/Steve to follow-up with Lorraine Stuyt, who had alreday expressed interest in the board.


 * Mike to contact Rob Campbell to see whether he would be interested.

Steve moved that the meeting be adjourned. Seconded: Randal. Carried.

10. Check-out

The meeting ended at 10:00 pm.

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