United Way of Tompkins County Affiliate Member Organization

NUTRITION FOR THE ELDERLY

IN TOMPKINS COUNTY

FOODNET

BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING

January 12, 2004

Gertrude Armbruster, Chair, called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. and welcomed Faith Sternstein, our newest board member.

Present: Board Members: Gertrude Armbruster, Bob Baker, Jean Blanchard, Loren Colbert, Chris Decker, Kay Friedlander, Keefe Gorman, Anna Holmberg, Liz Norton, Helene Rosenblatt, Elaine Saunders, Faith Sternstein and William Tomek. Staff:  Carolyn Arnold, Stephen Griffin.

Excused: Board Members: Marian Kira and Mary George Opperman.

Changes to the Agenda: none.

Minutes of December 16, 2003: Motion to approve the minutes as written. Motion made by Helene Rosenblatt, seconded by Chris Decker and Elaine Saunders. Passed.

Reports of Committees:

Finance Committee: 

The Balance Sheet and P&L statement for 2003 are attached. I will be looking at them with Jon and to see if we need to correct any coding errors, examine variances from budget and so on. The annual audit is scheduled for the week of March 22 and will be performed by Marilyn Wesche and Matt Dealia of Sciarabba Walker & Co.

Our income came in at just 91.7% of our projections for the year, and we held our expenses to 93.3% of the budget. We had a net loss of $13,324.43 from operations, and an overall net loss of $51,677.41 when depreciation expense is included. Our total equity is $277,544 compared to $315,704 at the end of $2002.

The Board and Staff will work together throughout the year to reduce costs and to secure additional revenues.

Program Education and Personnel Committee: Kay Friedlander reported that the PEP committee met on January 6. Joe Fort, Foodnet's Food Service Operations Manager attended this time to join the discussion on emergency preparedness. The committee met to consider Foodnet's current level of preparedness, how we would serve our clients in a disaster, and to see how we might be involved in community disaster planning and assistance. Unfortunately the person scheduled to meet with us from the Red Cross couldn't attend, but we discussed these issues on our own and will focus on steps we can take to serve our frail elderly clients with minimum disruption. The next PEP committee meeting will be on Tuesday, February 3 at 4 pm at Foodnet.

Buildings and Property: no report.

Publicity and Public Relations: Chris Decker said that although she is leaving the board of directors, she would be staying on as a public relations volunteer with the Development Committee. Her goal is to plan PR for the year, including articles for the Senior Circle.  She attended the January meeting of the Southern Tier chapter of the Association for Fundraising Professionals (AFP). The topic was "branding" - how to set your organization apart and use the greater recognition in fund raising. Chris will bring these ideas to the Development Committee. Other board members may be interested in the AFP meetings, so Steve will forward the next email announcement so board members can choose whether to get on the email list.

Nominating Committee: Kay Friedlander reported on the recruitment of directors and officers. Elections will be held at the Annual Meeting next month.

Class of 2004

This is the last meeting for Chris Decker and Elaine Saunders. We are grateful for their service and gave them each a snapshot of their participation in the Wheel-A-Thon.

Class of 2007

Bob Baker - has agreed to serve a 2^nd term

M. Keefe Gorman - has agreed to serve a 2^nd term

Faith Sternstein - new board member starting her 1^st full term

We have two openings that the nominating committee is seeking to fill by the Annual Meeting.

Class of 2006

Kay Friedlander - will serve two more years to fill the unexpired term of Carolyn Peterson. This will bring Kay to a total of six years, which is our term limit.

Officers:

Chair: Gertrude Armbruster

Vice-Chair: Anna Holmberg

Secretary: Helene Rosenblatt

Treasurer: Mary George Opperman

Development Committee: Keefe Gorman reported that the Development committee met on January 5. Our final total of gifts to the annual fund is $54,9444.34 for the year. It is considerably short of our goal of $90,000. We have set a goal of $75,000 for 2004. After our successful capital campaign, it seemed like a nice idea to do an annual campaign to build some savings and fund special initiatives, but now it has become something that we need to do in order to survive.

Our big fund raising event is the Wheel-A-Thon. Keefe, Gertrude Armbruster, Diane Conneman, Chris Decker, Loren Colbert and Steve Griffin are on the committee, and we have four volunteers from a variety of affinity groups helping specifically with the Wheel-A-Thon: Velma German, Pete Middaugh, Diane Dillon, and Rick Holt. The next Wheel-A-Thon planning meeting will be on February 2^nd at 4:30pm at Merrill Lynch.

Save these dates:

September 18, 2004 is the date of the Wheel-A-Thon. Come and have fun!

June 25^th is the date of our annual picnic; it is a public awareness event, and a chance for board members to meet many of our clients and people from sister agencies that collaborate in our work.

Executive Committee: no report

Registered Dietitian: We are starting the New Year with another round of blizzard bags, providing a day’s worth of shelf-stable, mostly ready-to-eat foods.  Girl Scout Troup 270 will return Thursday, January 15, to help Steve and I assemble them.  Drivers will then deliver them along with the prepared meals. (Kay Friedlander suggested that we remind people to be sure they have a manual can opener in case there is a power outage, and Carolyn Arnold added that a regular phone that plugs in will work during a power outage when a cordless phone is useless.)

The New York State Office for the Aging (NYSOFA) has stopped providing support for the Provider Data System (PDS) used to collect and report NAPIS (National Aging Program Information System) data required by the Federal Administration on Aging (AoA), and required the County Office for the Aging (COFA) to find (and fund) an alternative system.  COFA has decided to replace PDS with SAMS, a software program currently used by 40% of all AAA’s to track and report NAPIS data.  Synergy Software, which also has the contract to develop the new NAPIS system, has quoted a price of about $10,000 initially and $2800 annually.  The county will house the program, with user access through the Internet website.  This is expected to eliminate the speed issues we have had with PDS.

We are continuing to make progress on the development of our in-house database (in Microsoft Access 2000) to manage the home-delivered client information and produce labels for meals plus delivery lists for drivers.  The tasks involved are more complex than I realized at first, and I am getting volunteer assistance from an experienced database administrator.  I will continue to work on this as I can spare the time from my other responsibilities.

Executive Director: Steve Griffin gave a report comparing our services and participant contributions of 2003 with the previous year. The main growth was in the congregate sites. The board asked for further information about which meal sites and which age groups constituted the most growth. Although our total meals increased by 2.9% overall, the grand total of participant contributions decreased by 1.9% and the average donation per meal was six cents less than in 2002. Clearly, increasing the amount of participant contributions would help our financial situation, but we must maintain the voluntary and confidential nature of participant contributions in order to fulfill our contractual obligations with the county and the restrictions of our state and federal grants. We are not allowed to send a monthly statement of services (or anything that looks like a bill) to our clients or their families unless they have requested it in writing. So the board suggested that we ask all the clients and their families if they would like to receive such a statement of services. Just the asking might get a message across, and increasing the number of requested monthly statement would likely lead to an increase in contributions. Perhaps we could work this into new client intakes and have delivery people ask clients if they would like to sign up for a monthly statement. There is interest in finding ways to get more people to contribute regularly. Some families might be unaware that a donation is not being made by their loved one and would make one for them. Jean Blanchard, who works at Charter One Bank, suggested that banks can set up automatic bill pay for their customers and this could be offered for the purpose of making meal donations. In spite of our grant restrictions, we need to do a better job of getting a statement of services to the bill payers of the families who have a member receiving services from Foodnet. Our newsletter should include how much it costs to provide these meals: gas, electric, food, etc. Tie in the amount of $35, which is how much it costs for a weeks worth of meals for one person, to our PR and fund raising.

Here is the report that generated this discussion: