- Three wonderful non-profits were presented by members at the meeting: The Stone Soup Cafe, The Buckland Historical Society, and The Peoples Medicine Project. The selected non-profit from this round of giving was The Peoples Medicine Project with 30 votes. The stone Soup Cafe had 29 votes and the Buckland Historical Society had 6 votes.
- We now have approximately 115 members. This means we expect to donate $5750! Please spread the word so that our numbers and therefore our impact continue to grow.
- We are working on our website and will let you all know when it is up and running. All forms and information will be available through the websites well as updates and news.
- Consider donating a raffle item to help us raise funds to cover our costs, which include the venue rental, food, and supplies.
A big THANK YOU to Kristine Jelstrup (gift certificate) Linn Bower (painting) and Kim Klein (necklace) for donating the amazing raffle items for this meeting.
Another important part of the meeting was a discussion of nominations. We need your help. It is crucial to our work to get non-profit nominations from members. The steering committee will continue to work on making the process clear and easy. Please look for Franklin County non-profits that could use our help and consider nominating one.
- Funding Policy- Several members asked for clarification of what groups qualify to be considered for nomination. Here are the basics we discussed.
- It is the goal of this giving organization to be unifying not divisive. Because we want to respect our members’ beliefs and differences, we do not fund political or religious organizations. Municipalities, and schools are also not eligible because they are already funded by Federal, State, or Local taxes.
- We only fund organizations with 501c3’s.
- Funded organizations must have a presence in Franklin County
We will periodically review funding policy and we will solicit member input. We are planning to send out a member survey to get your feedback on various issues.
- All nominations are due one month before the quarterly meeting. Look for reminders and helpful information soon. Once all nomination forms are submitted, the names of all qualifying non-profits will go into a hat and a non Steering Committee general member will draw the 3 which will be presented at the next meeting. This means that only the members who nominated the 3 drawn non-profits will need to prepare a presentation and find a representative to attend the meeting. Those members will be notified at the time of the drawing.
Our next scheduled meeting is Monday November 4th, 2024. We will be at the Buckland Shelburne Community Center. Refreshments and social time begin at 5:30pm. The meeting will start at 6:00pm and end at 7:00pm. We are committed to keeping these meetings fun and efficient so that you will want to be part of the action each quarter.