UCSC Alumni Assoc. - LA Chapter

UCSC Alumni Assoc - LA Chapter

Minutes of UCSC Alumni Association, LA Chapter, 10/05/03

Check out a copy of these minutes at our web pages at: http://alumni.cse.ucsc.edu/~franz

Present:

Roz Helfand, President
Rachel Barish, Vice President
Fran Zandonella, Treasurer
Robin Hart, Board Member

Meeting called to order at 11:45 AM.

Minutes from 7/23/03, 8/7/03, 8/24/03, and 8/29/03 were approved with corrections. (See those minutes for their corrections.)

The minutes from the meeting 6/8/03 were not approved since Charlie had not sent them to Fran yet. Fran agreed to take minutes since Charlie was absent.

Old Business:

New Student Send Off: September 6, 2003

This event was very successful. Even though we hit several snags last minute, we all worked together as a team.

We need to send Thank You notes to the following groups of people: Volunteers, the Co-Opportunity Food Coop, Randy Martin (for telling us about the Food Coop), Temescal Canyon park and Joyce, Judy Silk, Allison Garcia and Carolyn at the UCSC Alumni office for their support, and the UCSC Admissions office.

The balloons looked really neat.

Notes for next year:

How many people attended? Fran will ask Allison next week.

Minutes from 6/8/03

Fran will contact Charlie to get these minutes.

New Business:

Ideas for New Events/Efforts

Have a s'mores / anime movie night this Fall.

For next summer, organize alumni supported internships for the summer in Los Angeles.

We should plan an event where we get more involved in the community - something to give back to the community.

UCSC should let us know when they are doing events in Los Angeles or when professors are coming down to speak.
Roz will talk to Allison & Carolyn about contacting (sending a letter to?) the Divisions and Boards and offering them help. (Help = getting out the word about their events, Los Angeles knowledge, etc.)

We should start a subcommittee for fundraising for raising $20,000.00 for a Los Angeles endowment fund for scholarships for Los Angeles students in need. This fund will be administered through UC Santa Cruz.

We should have a "kid-friendly" event, like going to a Pumpkin patch, or doing the train ride in Fillmore.

October Mixer at the Trocadero, Thursday October 23rd, 2003

The October event is all set. We will have FREE drinks from 7pm - 8pm. A $5 donation will be requested at the door, and 75% of the donation will go to our scholarship fund for students going to UC Santa Cruz. (The other 25% will go towards the food cost.)

Fran will add a link to a web page about the donation information.

November Annual Business Meeting & Elections, November 15, 2003

Some people didn't get our last non-profit mailing until after the event. We need to send our postcard for the November meeting by October 12th.

We need to find a venue for the November meeting. Everyone should check out their venues and report back by Wednesday (10/8/03).

Venues: 

   LA Arboretum         - Fran & Rachel
   Huntington Gardens   - Fran & Rachel
   Gene Autry Museum    - Fran
   Long Beach Aquarium  - Fran
   Travel Town (Burbank)- Fran
   Brand Library        - Fran 
   LACMA                - Roz
   Armory Center for the Arts  - Roz
   Asian Museum         - Rachel
   Pacific-Asia Museum  - Rachel
   La Brea Tar Pits     - Rachel
   LA Zoo               - Rachel
   LA Library Downtown  - Robin 
   Skirball Cultural Center - Robin
   Museum of TV and Radio - Robin

Also, check out the places in Pasadena:
http://www.pasadenacal.com/special_mtg.htm
Agenda: Pull people into a review of what we did this past year: What did slugs find most valuable?
Get feedback regarding this past year
Get suggestions for this upcoming year

Do a brief review of the budget

Have a 3 page hand out with a review by month of what the chapter has done
Mention the expansions we've done; how we are a resource to the Los Angeles alumni.
Ask alums what they want to see.

Ask for people to become Members of the Board. We need six.
We need to define what this means to our alumni. A Member of the Board is in charge of a major event/happening. Areas needing a Board Member are:

Board Members need to be able to attend planning meetings (as needed).

We do planning meetings before an event and officer meetings as needed.

Roz will put together a draft agenda.

Volunteer Database:

We need to create a volunteer database that all the officers have access to, so we can involve our volunteers in future events. Maybe we can do something on the web. We need a volunteer photographer / chapter historian.

Scholarship Fundraising:

Fran explained about the scholarship funds that the Los Angeles Chapter can contribute to:
  1. An alumni group successful in raising $250 may have a $500 restricted scholarship awarded in its name. The award will be incorporated into the Alumni Association's scholarship program. Fifty percent of the award will come from UC Regents' Matching Funds*: recipients are selected by the UCSC Financial Aid Office. While $250 is the minimum donation, larger donations are welcome. Donations must be reported to the Alumni Office by March 1 each year if they are to be awarded in the following academic year.
  2. Donations of any amount may be made at any time to the Alumni Association scholarship fund endowment. Dollars allocated in this way generate on-going earnings in perpetuity; growth in principal is secured on an annual basis, insuring that funds maintain value against inflation as well as constant yield.
  3. Donor groups successful in raising a minimum scholarship endowment of $20,000.00 may develop their own scholarship specifications, such as particular geographic, major, college, or other criteria as well as the number or amount of awards. The process through which recipients are selected can also be specified by the donor group. In 1992-93, scholarship award earnings based on a $20,000 endowment were approximately $1,000 annually.
*as long as this source of funds is available. The first $5,000 awarded each year is matched dollar for dollar; from $5,001 to $10,0000, the fund matches at 75 cents to the dollar.

Fran will ask Allison about how the money is stored for the scholarships - $250 vs $20,000. We have a goal of reaching $20,000.

Finance Report:

Fran reported that we got our check for $2276 for this fiscal year from the Alumni Association. We receive $2 for each Alumni Association Member in the LA area (from Santa Barbara to Orange County). Our budget year goes from June to June, and we usually receive our monies in the Fall (Sept or Oct time frame).

We have $2289.26 in the bank and no outstanding debts.

We discussed getting a P.O. Box in Burbank, to have a general location to send correspondence to and to put on our checks.

Fran requested that we get new checks. She would like to get checks with a higher check number on them, as well as the new address. (Our checks still have Michele Ploessel's old address on them.)

Fran gave an update on the TeleCheck problem. (The problem was that when we went to pay $900 for our food from the CoOpportunity Food Coop in Santa Monica, our check was denied for no apparent reason by TeleCheck, the check processor for the Coop.) Fran wrote TeleCheck requesting the reason for denial. They wrote back a generic letter listing possible reasons for denial, but not *the* reason for the denial. Fran has written them again asking for the specific reason for denial so we may remedy the problem.

We spent some time creating a rough draft of the budget for 2003 - 2004.

UCSC Alumni Assoc Budget 2003-2004
  Month Event what subtotal Event total Money remaining Last Year 2 Years Ago
Initial budget           2,276.00 1,656.00 1,776.00
  October Mixer Food 200.00 (200.00) 2,076.00    
                 
  November Business Mtg            
      Mailing & Postage 300.00     636.65 475.98
      Food 130.00     136.00 118.00
          (430.00) 1,646.00   431 (venue)
  December Officer's Mtg Potluck 0.00 0.00 1,646.00    
  January Dim Sum Food 450.00     830.00 202.00
          (450.00) 1196.00    
  February Pizza Food 50.00 (50.00) 1146.00    
  March Mixer            
      Mailing & Postage 130.00     130.00  
      Food 200.00 (330.00) 816.00 200.00  
              31.00  
  April   Food 50.00 (50.00) 766.00    
  May Wine Tasting       766.00    
  June         766.00 20.00  
  July Summer Trip       766.00 1,364.00  
  August         766.00   747.00
Hollywood Bowl
  September New Student Send Off   300.00 (300.00) 466.00    
  On-going Account Fees $8.00/month x 12 96.00 (96.00) 370.00    
    Web $10.00/month x 12 120.00 (120.00) 250.00    
    Brochure $50.00 50.00 (50.00) 200.00    
    Copies $100.00 100.00 (100.00) 100.00    

Fran will look into getting an ATM/Debit card for the Alumni Association. This card could be used to auto-pay for our website.

Upcoming Events:

Currently planned upcoming events are:
Annual: Spontaneous:

The S'mores & A Movie Night will take place Saturday, December 6, 2003, at 7:30pm.

The December Officer's Meeting will take place on Thursday, December 18, 2003, at 6:30pm.

Website:

We need to upload our officer pictures to our new LA Slugs space on geocities. Fran will look into that.

We've created a LA Slugs group space on yahoo.com. We now have a LA Slugs calendar that people can post their events to, as well as chat space, and a photo album. We have updated the look for the Main Page (see link below). Our new group has a profile and a website through geocities.

Fran will look into how much it will cost to migrate our website to somewhere where a few people can update the website. (Currently, the website resides in Fran's personal account at UCSC.) We'd like "laslugs.org" for our domain.

Now that we have our group page set up, Fran will look into setting up a mentor space, including what it means to be a mentor. (How will mentors be paired up? What are their responsibilities?)

The UCSC Alumni - LA Chapter website is at: http://alumni.cse.ucsc.edu/~franz

Outreach:

Roz will talk to Allison about getting "in tune" with the Admissions office. We want to start planning the next New Student Send Off so we can lock down a venue early. We want to coordinate with the Admissions and Alumni offices (as well as any other departments that might be involved) so we know what the budget it. We enjoyed coordinating it, but we want to reduce the cost (both total and to our chapter) and increase alumni participation.

Next Event:

The next event is our October Mixer, and it will be held on Thursday, October 23rd at the Sunset Trocadero Lounge at 8280 Sunset Boulevard
West Hollywood, 90069

Next Meeting:

The next meeting will be our Annual Business Meeting and Elections, held on Saturday, November 15th at 10:30am. Location TBD.

Meeting adjourned at 4:50 PM. (Yes, it was a long meeting, but we had fun!)

Respectfully submitted, and emendations welcomed, by Fran Zandonella, filling in for Charlie Tripp.

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