01-09-2014 Meeting Minutes for Northern Wisconsin NORML

1-09-14 Meeting Minutes for Northern WI NORML
Board Members Present: Jay, Jessie, Jason, Dani, Linda

Meeting called to order at 5:57 pm

4 signatures were handed in from field activist Chris. Thanks!!!

December Treasurer’s Report: Beg Bank Bal $560.31, PayPal: $131.31, $127.60 contributions, $2.43 expenses, Ending Balance $645.31 – 4 New Members, all came from our December 2013 public meeting.

Gene brought us a contribution from Smokey’s in Shawano – Thank You!

Gene shared with us som fundraising ideas, including:
Products (tshirts, braceles, pies, etc)
Grants (do we have any people experienced with grant writing?)
Donations (seek out corporate sponsors or wealthy individuals)
Events (concerts and other venues)
Generating Membership
Fundraising Websites (Rally, Kickstarter, etc)
Miscellaneous (auctions, movie screenings, tabling events, etc)

Jay spoke about the progression of salesmanship. Ask them to sign a petition first. Then ask them to write a personal note about it. Then ask them for a donation. If they do all of those things… you can leave it at that, and maybe next time you see them, ask if they want to buy a Tshirt or pin or other merchandise.

Right now, the merchandise we do offer to people, are as follows:
Tshirts
Gold Leaf Pins
Activist Kits
Bracelets

A new member asked, what is the goal of fundraising? What are we working towards?

Jay explained a bit about our fundraising goals and efforts. For example, we are out of business cards. We need $233 to print 1000 cards. We need to order more shirts, we only have 3 left, and need to order more. We are almost out of gold pins and need at least $200 to order more. Every time we print a thousand petitions or informational sheets, that costs money as well. Every time we table at an event, there are usually permits and other fees associated with those events. We also need to purchase other equipment and materials. There are so many different goals that we have, just to cover the most basic of operating costs. However there are a lot of other, bigger things we could do if we had enough money. The board and core volunteers who are always here, spend a great deal of their personal time and money in order to fund and provide these things. We are already spending all that we can afford to out of our own pockets. We need to find ways to get the general membership base to donate towards these costs as well.

The member asked why we are not seeking grants out, and what we would do with a large grant if we could get one. We had a general discussion regarding grant writing.

We continued the discussion of products and fundraising ideas.

Gene pointed out that one way to generate membership is to go to coffee shops, gas stations, etc, which offer bulletin boards, and hang our Northern WI NORML business cards.

He also mentioned that he thinks it would be beneficial to contact people are in legal trouble due to cannabis. So, he thinks that those are the people we need to contact. We discussed this a bit. First of all, most of those people are too busy fighting their cannabis charges to divert time to activism. After their cases are resolved, if they are not in prison, we would have to use CCAP to look them up, cross reference their other crimes to make sure that they are not using other drugs or have any other types of convictions. And then track down their contact information. That is a lot of work to do, for each and every direct contact. This may or may not be a practical idea, depending on logistics.

Briefly discussed the billboard project. Gene would like to put a project on a site like rally or kickstarter.

Membership – we need to do something about expired memberships, etc. Database, or other solution. We discussed this, and email lists.

We should make a list of items that we need funded for our website and then direct people to that page, so that someone could choose to fund a specific project.

Board of Directors – please review the by-laws v. 4.2 as of 4/20/2011, for our chapter and make suggestions for any proposed changes in 2014. The bylaws are available in Google Drive in the Board of Directors folder.

Review National NORML Affiliate By Laws also and develop committee and procedure to and/or for::

Membership Reporting to National NORML and keeping better track of members, possible membership cards?

Working with National NORML to hold one joint event/fundraiser each year. (Perhaps all regional/city chapters in Wisconsin working on this project together)
Discussed Lobby Day on January 15th, and having someone from our chapter attend the other chapters’ meetings around the state, so that we can share information more efficiently.

Meeting adjourned at 7:21 pm