Reports:
Secretary (November Board Meeting Minutes)
Religious Leader
DRE-Adult
DRE-Children
Membership
Advertising
Website
BUUF Board Meeting Agenda
8:30 am, Dec 13, 2015
2015-2016 Board: Lisa Fuller, president; Harvey Johnson, treasurer; Ellen Higdon, secretary; Rob Hammond, trustee; one open position
Opening Words
Chalice Lighting
Approval of Consent Agenda* Items:
Secretary Minutes from November meeting (Ellen)
Minister’s report (Jim McConnell)
Website report (Lisa)
Marketing Task Force report (Lisa)
Membership report (Lisa)
DRE report (David Sarra, Renee Kauffman)
Reports:
Treasurer’s report
Other reports as needed, or not submitted prior to Board meeting
Committee on Ministry report (Emily Bettencourt)
Building and Grounds report (Charles Long)
Green Sanctuary report (Harvey)
Old Business:
Insurance (Harvey)
Office Administrator
Religious Leader Contract
Childcare
New Business:
State of the Fellowship: Celebrating Our Progress
Benton Harbor Street Ministry Literacy Outreach
Pathway to Membership
Closing Words
Extinguish the chalice
*At every board meeting, at least a few items come to the agenda that do not need any discussion or debate either because they are routine procedures or are already unanimous consent. A consent agenda (Roberts Rules of Order calls it a consent calendar) allows the board to approve all these items together without discussion or individual motions. Report items requiring discussion are added to the regular agenda for the meeting.
BUUF November Board Meeting Minutes 11-08-15
Present: Lisa Fuller, Ellen Higdon, Rob Hammond, and Harvey Johnson. Also present: Jim McConnell, Renee Kaufman and Dave Sarra.
Opening Words by Lisa
Consent Agenda Items were discussed and reviewed. Rob motioned to approve the consent agenda items. Harvey seconded, approved unanimously.
Membership: What are steps to take with new people who are not yet members? We could create a process for making people feel and be more integrated into the fellowship.
Treasurer’s Report: Passed out and discussed by the Board.
OLD BUSINESS
Insurance: Harvey discussed adding solar panels to policy. It was suggested that we insure for 90% instead of 100% to save $. Harvey renegotiated trash service to save $500 yr.
Office Administrator: Dave will need to be replaced. We are in the process of making a job description for this position.
Religious Leader Contract: Jim reports all his mileage as part of his pledge contribution. Jim’s contract will be amended to reflect expenses up to $2400/year in mileage instead of $400.00. The educational allowance was deleted due to no actual money in the budget for this. Requests for future training will be considered as they come up. General Assembly is in Columbus 2016 in June. Jim is requesting funds to attend that.
Childcare: We do want to hire someone for childcare on Sundays. Price will be $10.00 for 30 minutes beginning 10:15, with $30.00 to stay up until 1 pm if children come and need child care. Lisa will check with UUA for best practice regarding payment. Candidate will have to pass background checks.
Plumbing: West women’s restroom has been repaired. West side drain line issue needs to be clarified. Septic area was inspected by Charles.
Closing Words by Lisa
Religious Leader’s Report November 2015
(1.) Prepared three worship services
(2.) attended three lectures a.) a seminar by a Pakistani professor of religion at Notre Dame, in which he talked about the contentiousness in the Muslim world surrounding the issues of innovatioin in religious practice. This may wound boring, but I was shocked. You will hear more about this later in a sermon I am working on. b.) a lecture by philosopher Martha Nesbaum, at ST. Mary’s, in which she discussed anger and social change., using the examples of Gandhi and King. This was a big lecture with about 800 people present. c.) a lecture, at Notre Dame, by Steve Forbes, former presidential hopeful and head of Forbes Media. This was another big lecture, with about 500 in attendance. Forbes is a surprisingly entertaining and charismatic speaker. The young conservatives, in the crowd, ate up Forbes’ Adam Smith-flat tax-free market fundamentalism, but he seemed on the edge of crack pottery to me.
(3.)Attended several strugglesome BCAC meetings and was elected to the position of board vice president.
The fund raising committee of the BCAC, of which I am chair, put on a walk-a-thon. About 2500 dollars was raised. More money keeps dribbling in. I have decided that fund raisers are not the way to go. They are great for community building, but they just don’t make that much money. We have hired a consultant to teach us how to be more systematic about fund raising.
Peace,
Jim
Adult RE Report December 2015/Renee Kauffman
November
- Prep time and Facilitate:
- Sharing Circles, (2nd Monday)
- Creative Conversations, (3rd Wednesday)
- Spiritual Memoir Writing, (1st Wednesday)
- Cakes for the Queen of Heaven (Every Thursday for 5 weeks began 10/15/15 ends 11/12/15)
- Attend Web Training 11/14/15
- Preparing Intergenerational Winter Solstice Service (Dec. 20)
- Preparing A Seat at the Welcome Table Sunday Service
- Leading Sunday Service
- Responding to emails regarding Adult RE
- Attend Board Meeting
December
- Prep time and Facilitate:
- Sharing Circles, (2nd Monday)
- Creative Conversations, (3rd Wednesday)
- Spiritual Memoir Writing, (1st Wednesday)
- Preparing Intergenerational Winter Solstice Service (Dec. 20)
- Co-Leading Sunday Service
- Planning Meeting with Womyn’s Group for On-going Movie Night (Jan? 2nd Thursday of each month)
- Initial planning of Cakes for the Queen of Heaven Sunday Service in Jan.
- Monitoring/Responding to emails regarding Adult RE
- Attend Board Meeting
- Gathering information regarding Hunger Banquet
Dave’s DRE report for Board, December 13, 2015
Classes for the youngsters have switched from the Circle of Trees curriculum to reading stories that relate to our seven UU principles (thank you Gloria!). Since I began including our visitors (family of Eleanor, Charley, and Teddy) in my RE Family emails they haven’t returned to BUUF (don’t know if there’s a connection). Our high school students have helped out with the youngsters and have continued on the Building Bridges course.
I’m working on scheduling a BUUF All-Ages Christmas Movie night for Friday, December 19.
The high school class has been invited for a two-day session including a sleep-over at our house the night of Monday, December 28. We’ll be covering eastern religion/philosophies, having some fun activities, and watching Bride and Prejudice.
Only Charles and Dorothy joined me for November’s Senior Brunch, so I’ve asked them for topic suggestions for our December brunch.
I’m working with Renee to put together our RE programs for Jan-May 2016. Since I won’t have any evening classes to teach at LMC or SHU, I’ll be able to take over or share duties with Renee on the Spiritual Writing and Creative Conversations meetings. I’m also going to schedule the eight week Building Your Own Theology 3 course for the spring (to avoid snow days).
I’m anticipating the return of our Monday evening jam sessions starting in mid-January, and will let you know of any progress as it occurs.
Respectfully Submitted,
Dave Sarra
Membership Report Dec 2015
Regular visitors weekly, including some families with young children.
Attendance 12/6/15
Total Adults 18
Total Children 7
Visitors 5
Email welcome sent to visitors.
Visitors’ contact info shared with minister, DRE
Needed:
New membership chair
Someone to take attendance each week
Submitted by Lisa M. Fuller
Advertising/Marketing Report December 2015
Workgroup: Tom Hackley, Lisa Fuller, Ellen Higdon
Direct Mail Postcard
Postcard was sent from the Benton Harbor post office on Oct 26, 2015.
At least one family has visited as a result of the mailing.
Business Identity
Marc Shade (2 Acre Studios) has been contracted to create a business identity for BUUF. Materials should be available in January 2016. Cost is $600. Includes:
- Logo Design
- Style Guide
- Post Card Template
- Poster/Flyer Template
- Letterhead Template
- Business Card Template
- Event Banner Template
Other Advertising
St. Joseph Today advertising still needs to be explored.
Submitted by Lisa Fuller
Website Report Dec 2015
Launched new www.berrienuu.org website 12/4/15
Designer Marc Shade is finalizing all aspects of the launch
Website Rebuild Launched 12/4
www.berrienuu.org launched 12/4 without difficultly.
@buuf2.org email addresses now forwarding to @berrienuu.org addresses
Project came in $72 above budget due to addition of solar power widget and issues with transfer of domain name.
Total cost of berrienuu.org launch: $3272, plus hours and hours of review, writing, and training
Leadership team met with Marc 11/14/15 for a hands-on workshop during which many pages were edited.
Google calendar entries for Chasing Ice film screening and Christmas Eve service did not import to the berrienuu.org site properly. Troubleshooted with Lisa Thorne without success. Finally deleted those two events from Google and entered them into the BUUF calendar via WordPress.
2 Acre Studios submitted final invoice. Marc will provide new site support for two months to address issues that will fall within the bounds of “new” site support etc. From this point, new builds etc will be charged his usual hourly rate. He is willing to provide gratis support for anything that just amounts to questions about how things work.
Submitted by Lisa Fuller
