Fairbanks Youth Advocates Board Meeting
February 26, 2014
Call to Order: 5:06
Present: Patrick Endres, Meryem Kugzuk, Barbara Tyndall, Brad Johnston, Sarah Finnell, Kathy Birch, Marylee Bates
Visitor: Mark Harris
Absent: Dave Miller
Barbara Tyndall opened in prayer.
Patrick moved to approve the minutes; Kathy seconded. Approved unanimously.
Mission Review: Board reviewed goals set at our meeting with Foraker.
Unfinished business: Board reviewed financial information posted on the web site. Members committed to reading this by our next meeting
ED Evaluation: No template arrived from Foraker. Patrick found information on line. We need a committee to formulate the evaluation format. Patrick volunteered for this committee. Brad and Barbara also volunteered. Patrick will interface with them via internet. Marylee offered to give the committee her job description to help with this. Brad said we need to look at the goals and objectives we have given her and then evaluate how those have been attained. Our job is to give resources for her to accomplish these tasks.
Mark Harris from Fairbanks Community Health Services arrived and board members introduced themselves to him. Mark and his wife came to Alaska for Boys and Girls . They have been in Alaska 18 months. He came to observe and is considering ways to help FYA.
Donor Tiles : Patrick suggested we add up donations through 2013 and see who has earned a tile. The tiles have names of donors or messages of hope to be put on the wall of The Door. Brad brought up the difficulties of measuring in-kind donations. Things have to be measureable to attach a value to them. Donated labor also requires a judgment call. Brad said to document how amounts are determined so we can establish a precedent for future donations. The board agreed that the policy will be to acknowledge cash donations and in-kind that has a readily established value. For 2012-2013 we will determine value to the building and cash donations.
Donor reports—Donations are recorded in quick books. Brad will have a record of donations for 2014. Marylee will get totals from Google-Docs. We are hiring a person to do this leg work. Patrick said Marylee needs to have access to the quick book files to determine who our donors are and to profile and target populations for future fundraising. Gary Pedretti has donated 40-60 hours of his time for IT. We would like to thank him in some way in the future.
House Parent : We are trying to generate a funding source for this position (maybe local churches). Marylee said that churches have already donated $6000 this past year.The board agreed that we should use these funds for this purpose. Sarah moved,and it was seconded by Kathy, that the donated funds from churches be used to fund the house parent position. Motion was approved unanimously. Meryem volunteered to visit other churches and educate them concerning this need.
Treasurer’s Report: Brad reported that Clearwater gave us $12,000 for first quarter. Report is available on line. Current assets are $ 129,000. We are ahead of the game. Brad issued a caution, reminding us that the contractor hasn’t sent us a bill ($70,000).
Executive Director’s Report—Marylee said that last week they submitted the BEHAP grant and …….grant which combined amounts to $220,000. The shelter is currently housing 2-5 kids nightly. Two new employees have been hired. These are fill- in, part-time people at the moment. But we will need people on hand when The Door opens. There was a walk-through by the state licensing people today. Two large items we need to address are provisional background checks for all personnel and volunteers. We need to receive a code from the state to accomplish this. The cost is $80 per person and this item is not in our budget. However, Marylee pointed out that these volunteers save us a lot of money. We used $80,000 of volunteer time toward grant money. Volunteers filled a staff position for four nights when the staff person had a personal emergency.
Donations continue to be dropped off at The Door daily. The student council of Tanana Middle School donated $400. A gentleman with a towing business came by and gave $100 and offered to train youth in his business. Another woman came by yesterday and handed Marylee $1000.
Marylee will be gone from March 6-9 on vacation.
This Friday, February 28, from 11-2 Marylee has invited agencies to walk through and see The Door. Marylee is submitting Sarah’s name for Alaska First Lady’s volunteer award.
MeryemAttended a New Orleans conference on Ending Family and Youth Homelessness.Topics included Human Trafficking , Transitional Housing, and Family Mediation. Family mediation stressed the need to include the families of youth in the mediation process. Meryem said that she learned that homeless youth use social media quite a bit and she thought it was a venue we could pursue to reach out to them. A homeless youth website was suggested.
Meryem gleaned some ideas of how to reward our workers from Fanta(?). She suggested we offer one paid day off or maybe free movie tickets. She thought a survey of what employees want would be beneficial.
President—Patrick reported that we are out of brochures and it is re-crafting time for the newsletter. The opening of The Door will be big press event.
He has done some back end review of Google analytics. Looking for demographics and age to market our donors.
Marylee showed a picture of Claudia Pierson who is one of our volunteers. Her husband, Jeff, has volunteered to be our facility man.
The misc tab on our website has 2014 goals listed.
Board members were instructed to read the annual operating plan review and check out the links.
Forming a committee to work on Annual Operating Plan (Business Plan)was tabled until the next meeting.
Fundraising—Walk for Charity registration has been completed. A garage sale is also generating funds. These are events that others are doing for us. We would like to create some events of our own.
FYA Couch Surfing Race; 5 K Run—ideas to brainstorm
It was suggested that we add the Couch Surfing to One Homeless Night.
It was suggested that we see if a volunteer would like to head up a 5K race in September.
Patrick suggested we check with Running Club North to see runs listed and solicit expertise.
Next meeting April 3, Thursday 5-7
How do we thank our donors? News Miner. Personal phone calls; personal letters. Brad suggested a letter saying “Here’s what you allowed us to do”.
For next meeting—We need to be thinking about long term plan for our office building. The building needs work. A list of expenses should be generated.
Meeting adjourned 7:04
Respectfully Submitted
Barbara Tyndall, FYA
I don’t remember who was going to work on the “running club” idea for couch surfing 5 K?
I think the movie tickets could be donated by the Regal Theater-they didn’t have any when I asked for picnic door prizes, but the lady seemed to like the idea-they get new batches of tickets for donations