LTEF General Meeting Minutes
Monday, December 8, 2008
Attendees: Elyse Fiers
Anne Mankiewich
Noreen Ranallo
Bob Tabor
Mike Walsh
I. Treasurer’s Report – Elyse Fiers
q Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss Statements were distributed.
q We were never charged the $300 fee from PNC Bank for the ATM at the Blues Fest. This is reported as “unpaid payables”. Elyse is going to remove this from Liabilities.
II. President’s Report – Mike Walsh
q Mike distributed copies of e-mail from Alcatel-Lucent, approving use of their sponsorship money for two specific grant requests. These grants, which have been posted on the Enrichment Grant web-site, are for an iMac computer for Woodglen, and a computer cart for Valley View.
q Mike will present a letter along with the check to the Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, December 9th. The total for the two grants is $3,028.36. The difference between this total and the Alcatel-Lucent sponsorship money will be made up for by a donation made previously by Paula Nicolai, a Board of Education member, and her husband.
III. Committee Reports
A. Playground – Mike Walsh
q The proceeds from the Holiday Shopping Fundraiser were close to $2,000, up from around $500 last year.
q The Cabin Fever party will be held February 20 at St. Luke’s. There will probably be a DJ, and the theme will be the Academy Awards, which are on February 22.
q We have raised $132K; our goal is $150K, although this might not include expenses associated with handicapped accessibility.
q In order to help make up the shortfall, Mike has sent out a letter to 17 people in the township, making a personal appeal for playground donations and sponsorships. The letter includes an offer from Mike and Kathy to match 20% of donations, with a minimum of $1,000 and a $3,000 maximum.
q In addition, Susan Forenzo is working on a $10K grant for the playground from TD Bank/Commerce Bank.
B. Blues Fest – Bob Tabor
q The date is May 16. We still have Bourbon Street as the main sponsor; they are donating $7,000 this year.
q The committee is working on the band line-up. They know that CB Radio is definitely returning. Their goal is one or two big names, plus other bands and smaller groups to fill in.
q They have decided to put the stage sideways so bands are more visible as you enter the tent.
q There will be multiple food vendors, with the other vendors scattered in amongst the food to give them more visibility.
q They will be reselling the left-over T-shirts from the first event. The T-shirts were in a bad area last time, so they will be moving them up near the bands.
q The kids’ tent was located on the other side of the hedgerow last May, so it was completely out of sight. It will be located closer to the playground this time.
q There will be individual VIP tents for different levels of contributor.
q Elyse commented that there should be a better way to handle the money at the event. We need to find a more secure, out-of-the-way spot, such as the snack shack. Also, she said we should not take credit cards or checks, except from people we know. We are providing the ATM so people can pay cash.
C. Web-site – Noreen Ranallo
q Noreen reported the server is down tonight, so Mike Trudel needs to be contacted to restart it.
q Noreen has activated the e-mail address info@LTEFuture.org. Any e-mails coming into that address can be forwarded to Mike’s e-mail.
q Josh, the high-school student who designed the Enrichment Grant web-site, has re-done the site and it now accurately shows projects that have been fully funded. However, the site needs a direct link back to LTEFuture.org. Also, Noreen will contact Josh about changing the colors, etc. to coordinate with the LTEF site.
q Julianne Targan wants a separate link from other sites, such as the township web-site, directly to the grant site. It was agreed that this would be fine as long as there is then a link from grants to LTEFuture.org.
D. Enrichment Grant Program
q In addition to the requests funded by the Alcatel-Lucent sponsorship money, there is another grant request that was posted by Mr. Haenny.
q The biggest challenge now is to advertise the requests that need to be funded. The schools are no longer sending out detailed e-mails from other organizations, including the PTA and LTEF. Their e-mails only direct parents to check the school web-site, which many people won’t bother to do.
q We discussed the possibility of creating our own database of e-mails so we can send out our own messages to parents. Between the e-mail contacts of all the LTEF members, plus e-mails available through the Student Directory, we could put together a fairly extensive list. If we entered children’s grade levels too, then we could target specific groups of parents. However, setting this up would be a large task.
IV. New Business
q We will be focusing on three events for 2009; the Golf Outing, Blues Fest, and Cabin Fever. We should be able to net $10K for the Golf Outing, another $10K for Cabin Fever, and as much as $30K for the Blues Fest, for a total of $50K. We could make another $5-10K from an end-of-year mailing campaign. This would be a good base for fundraising for the year.
q We should be trying to get some coverage in both the township newsletter and the PTA newsletter.
q Mike would like to put together information on how much we have paid out for various projects and causes, starting with the Vreeland Children Education Fund and including all the teacher grants, etc. This information could appear on our web-site.
q To keep the donors page of the web-site updated, Elyse will send new names to Noreen. Past donors can stay on the web-site for now. Ultimately we can create categories for “current donors” and “past donors”.
q John Roncoroni suggested that we look into raising money through www.shoptoearn.net, a web-site that will allow us to earn money when people shop through the site using our ID. All present were interested in proceeding. Mike will ask John if he would be willing to set it up.
Prepared by Anne Mankiewich
