The Board of Directors’ Retreat was held on Wednesday, May 17, 2023. On the final day of April, our club had 232 Active Members. Attendance for the month’s three meetings was 31% (down 2% from last month). Average attendance at each meeting was 73 members and 4 guests. Our Engagement Ratio for the month was 56% (down 3% from last month). The board voted on two new member nominations: Sam Kottamasu (transfer) and Mary Sutton.
Our club financial highlights include the Foundation’s total assets of $2,702,172 and the Club Operations balance of $5,751.
Over the past two board meetings, the board has approved the Club and Foundation budgets for the 2023-2024 Fiscal Year. Many thanks to Norman Herbert for his hard work putting the budgets together with Mark Foster’s leadership.
Our new Executive Administrator, Shari Faulhaber, is getting engaged in our club and has been hard at work the past month getting to know everyone and our processes. She is busy trouble-shooting ClubRunner details, listerv hosting, data migration, and preparing for Officer and Leadership changeover on July 1.
The approved nominee for Director of Club Service is no longer able to do the job starting July 1, 2023. The nominating committee is active again and working on a new nominee for this important service.
The board had a long discussion regarding our ability to continue with the Hybrid Meetings. We simply do not have funding in our budget to continue to support the Hybrid Meeting format. In addition to the major expense of utilizing the University of Michigan Audio Visual equipment and their technical expertise ($8,000), staffing is also an important issue as there is no one available to cover this feature from our membership. Communication to the club is critical to get their buy-in if we need to discontinue. We are hearing feedback that keeping hybrid meetings is essential; however, it is not clear that our membership fully understands all the challenges a hybrid meeting presents. A representation of the facts and figures can be very helpful/compelling. After much discussion, the board approved to use the Club’s operating reserves to continue the Hybrid Meetings through September. This will allow more time to do more research and hopefully find a solution that will work for our Club.
