Board of Directors

Regular Meeting -- November 18, 2012

The Board of Directors held its regular monthly meeting at 2007 Bert Avenue, Austin, TX 78704, starting at 2:30 pm. The following directors (constituting a quorum of the full board) were present at the meeting: President Kathy Lee, Vice President Tamara Vogt, Secretary Pam Chambers, and Laine Morales. The following directors were absent: Treasurer Penny Chambers. Robert McGarey (Executive Director) was also present at the meeting.

Reading of Mission Statement and Approval of Minutes

The Mission Statement was read aloud at the beginning of the meeting. Minutes from the previous meeting were read aloud and approved as read.

Executive Director's Report

Board Meeting Schedule. Suggests that we change the board meetings to every 2 months on odd months. Approved by all.

New Member Buddies. Proposes that board members work with each new member to help them understand the Center and what's going on. Tamara suggests that we come up with a list of questions and things to tell them: What are they looking for? How can we support them? Why did they decide to join? What's their background? Give them necessary info, like our Facebook pages. Send them a welcome email. Et cetera.

Moctgage. Bob talks about refinancing the mortgage and the co-signers. He's working on the banker for the second cosigner.

Key Employee Life Insurance. A 10 year term is $43 monthly, a 15 year term is $55 and a 20 year term is $65 a month. They all include a $5 surcharge for paying monthly instead of annually. The board decided to go with the 15 year term.

Finances. Discussed finances starting with Cash Analysis. There was discussion around how to increase income and reduce our expenses. Bob noted that going to IHLRN cost some money, and we met a lot of potential good future donors there.

Garage Apartment. Bob talked about Lesleigh, and how we really appreciate how involved she is in the community around her -- us. She is the first tenant who has really been involved, and it's delightful.

Marketing. Bob is working on going to get togethers and open houses to network for the Center. He has noticed that the attendance is going down. It may be that everyone is going online these days. We do have a new volunteer who is going to be working on Facebook exclusively.

AHP. AHP is in a transition and the person who is in charge of the newsletter, the finances, and membership services is resigning. They pay her $42 K a year. Bob believes that he could have the Center do all that she does and be able to cut down what AHP paid her by $10 K a year. He is checking on that. Questions that come from the members can be answered by the bookkeeper. We have an excellent volunteer bookkeeper.

We would hire a page layout/editor to do the newsletter. And have a committee to figure out what will go into the newsletter as in articles etc. $10,000 would make a big difference to the AHP budget. It now cost about $12,000 a year to have the bookkeeping done. Bob thinks the Center can cut that amount in half.

Tamara asks Bob how he feels about taking this project on. He is dithering. He knows that it is going to take a long time to interview the people, editor, etc to take this project on. Laine asks about the time Bob will put into this and if it will be worth it to the Center and to Bob's time output. Bob will check into the situation more fully and possibly present a proposal to AHP at their board meeting in January.

Connections. Bob met one of his heroes, John Vasconcellos,. at IHLRN and he referred Bob to Mike Reyna, who used to be the Director of a nonprofit where they had a board composed of 120 lawyers. This may be a good connection.

Practicum Students. They have to do work in the area that they want to explore and be supervised by a LPC. Oceanna may be interested, but her life right now doesn't allow that kind of time usage. They would need to have 4 hours of "face time" each week (which can include sessions with individuals, couples or families, and workshops) and 8 hours of administrative time. We're concerned that we cannot provide enough face time for them right now. Bob is reluctant to call the man in charge of the program due to the lack of things for the students to do. Pam asks if some of the practicum people could do some of the work on the AHP project. Bob says he will think about it.

Mural. Pam reported on the flower mural on the north exterior wall of the Center project. She and Ben-Linda have been using a projector to get tracings of different flowers which will be painted as examples of what will go into the mural. So, progress is being made.

Since there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at around 4:08 pm.

Minutes submitted by Pam Chambers, Secretary, November 18, 2012.