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HomeMy WebLinkAboutFMinutes101012Friends of West University Place Parks Fund, Inc. Board Meeting Minutes Wednesday, October 12, 2012 Friends of West University Place Parks Fund, Inc. ("Friends") Board met on Wednesday, October 10, 2012 at 11:30 AM at West University Place Recreation Center, 4210 Bellaire Blvd., West University Place, TX. The following were in attendance: Board Members Amanda McGee Susie Boyce Ting Bresnahan Jeth Jones Matt Foytlin Debora Connelly Michelle Huth Sara Edgecomb Katie Hill Kristine Martinez Grace Ebaugh Executive Director Guests Donna LaMond Sara Barbatano Staff Tim O'Connor Call to Order (Amanda McGee) The meeting was called to order at 11:30 AM. Welcome, Opening Remarks, and Approval of Minutes (Amanda McGee) Jeth Jones was introduced and welcomed as a new member to the Friends Board. Jeth will serve as Auction Chairman for PLB 2013. Direct Energy has confirmed they will be our major sponsor again for PLB 2013. Steven Murray, Direct Energy CEO and West University Place resident was instrumental in securing this sponsorship. All Board members are asked to thank Steven for this generous financial support. Minutes of the September 5, 2012 Meeting of the Board were approved. Fathers & Flashlights Update (Sara Edgecomb, Amanda McGee) Fathers & Flashlights netted approximately $62,000. It was a sold out event with 250 dads and 491 children in attendance. The weather was beautiful and overall was a big hit! We are wrapping up thank you notes, itemizing supplies, and storing items for use next year. Thank you to all who participated and helped make this another successful event for Friends. The 2013 chairs are Judy Cheng and Dee Dee Gilder along with their spouses. Park Lover's Ball 2013 (Kristine Martinez) The Committee for Park Lover's Ball 2013 has been named: Auction Chair - Jeth Jones Currently there are 14 Auction Committee members and we are still recruiting. Decorating Chair - Maria Elena Herbst Currently we have 5 people assigned to assist on the Decorating Committee. Invitations Chair - Carolyn Tanner Underwriter/Sponsorship Chairs - Christina Milligan, Allison Laird PR - Peyton Popp Thank you to all the Board members who have already volunteered to help with PLB: Michelle - decorations and auction Grace - auction Jeth - auction Susie - Wine Pull Anne and Courtney - Big Board All that took time to sign the underwriting letters! Table prices and amenities have been finalized. Let the contest begin! Auction donation letters were mailed two weeks ago. We have already had a great response with over 15 donor contract forms being returned. The auction committee will start their follow up to the mailing list this week, as well as identifying and working new donors. Remember that Board members are responsible for securing 5 donations of at least $100 each. Extra donation contracts are available if needed. Underwriting letters and reply forms were mailed out Tuesday morning. Don't forget to ask everyone you see if they received their letter and if they replied yet. Get selling those tables and win a night at the Hilton! Donna will be contacting last year's sponsors to give them the first opportunity to have sponsorship this year. The underwriting/sponsorship Chairs will then work on securing the remaining sponsorships. If you know anyone or business that you think would have an interest in sponsorship opportunities, please pass their information to me and I will make sure that the Chairs get in touch with them. There will be a few changes to Ball seating this year. 12-top tables will be priced at $10,000-15,000 and 10-top table will be available for $6,000. The lowest priced table will be $2500 and we are adding tables of ten for $3500 that will include tickets to the VIP event. First Wine Pull event is scheduled and the Evite has been sent. It is scheduled for October 26 at the home of Susie Boyce and Frost Bank is underwriting this event. Thank you to Michele Huth for securing this sponsorship. There has been a great response to the event already. Please let Susie know if you did not receive the Evite or have someone you would like to include in the Evite. Susie Boyce, Debbie Crow, Sue Jensen and Cheryl Butler will be planning a few more Wine Pull events, including a couple's event in December. Parks and Recreation (Tim O'Connor) Tim presented the Proposed 5-Year Park Redevelopment Plan for 2013-2017 (see attached). This plan includes projected use of funds raised by Friends, an average of $200,000 annually, for the purpose of parks improvements. Friends currently has $480,000 in reserves so money is immediately available without tapping into the proceeds from 2012 Fathers & Flashlights or additional fundraising anticipated in 2013. Improvements are to begin immediately based on the schedule proposed in the plan upon approval of Friends Board and City Council. Amanda McGee called for a vote on the plan as presented, with annual reviews. A motion to approve was made by Jeth Jones, seconded by Katie Hill, and approved unanimously. Tim will now take the proposed plan to City Council for approval. Executive Director Report (Donna LaMond) Congratulations to all on the huge success of Fathers & Flashlights 2012. It continues to be an amazing event and we are so fortunate to have had such dedicated co-chairs, Sara and Chip Edgecomb and Amanda and JR McGee, who made sure the event was a complete success. This was their second year to co-chair the event and I am sad to see them step down. However, they have lined up chairs for next year and assure me that they will be awesome. Thanks also to the Parks and Rec staff who worked hard too. Unless you have been there, done that it is difficult to convey just how hard all of these people worked on behalf of Friends. In addition to Amanda's welcome, I would like to officially welcome Jeth Jones to the Friends Board. I look forward to seeing Jeth work his magic on the auction for PLB2013. As Amanda mentioned earlier, we are so very fortunate to have Direct Energy back for another year as the Friends Corporate Sponsor. Through a pending donation of $50,000, they will be the Friends 2013 Corporate Sponsor. I will be putting a media event together as soon as we can nail down a date with Steven Murray, the President of Direct Energy Residential. We will have a mock check presentation similar to what we did last November. Your attendance at the event is very important so I hope you all will make every effort to attend. We began a more detailed planning for PLB 2013 with a meeting at the Hilton Americas on Sept. 17th with Kristine Martinez and Maria Elena Herbst, the decorating chair for the ball. Kristine and I worked together to get the auction letters mailed out for the ball as well as the first round of underwriter letters. We finalized the supporting underwriting and sponsorship materials as well as the amenities listing and the reply contract. Mummy's Night Out party planned for first wine harvesting at the home of Susie Boyce on Oct. 26. More wine harvesting parties are planned between now and the ball. Since F & F is behind us for a while, it is time to really crank up PLB2013. I'd like to remind all board members that we are looking to each of you to bring in at least five auction items, each with a value of at least $100. If you prefer to make a cash donation in lieu of auction items, that is fine. You can also donate wine for the wine pull as part of your auction donations. The donated wine has to be valued at $25 or higher, so it could take four bottles of wine at $25 each to fulfill one auction item responsibility. We also expect each of you to sell at least one table at the ball. This is a good time to remind you about Kristine's table selling contest. We provided an article on Friends for the Fall 2012 City Currents as well as an article for the Parks & Recreation Department Winter/Spring West U at Your Leisure brochure which should arrive in West U households the month of November. Following our last Board meeting, Matt Foytlin and I met regarding Friends pavers. We do not have any current pending paver installations so Matt has shifted the focus to the online delivery system. Promodular, the paving company, utilizes Google Docs so that both Promodular and Friends can upload and view information without having to worry about whether the spreadsheet is current. We are working on creating a "link" to the actual order form to further reduce transcription errors. Our goal is to have all of the paver information, including inventory and original paver orders, within the four corners of the document. Matt would also like to work on marketing. One suggestion is to have some of the recent donors (including the council members) take a picture with their pavers for us to include on our Web site. We are open to other suggestions that publicize Pavers in West U. The Donor Wall Committee is planning to present a report at the November meeting and everything is on track for a May 2013 installation date. All other Friends activities have been included in the weekly reports that you all should be receiving via email. Adjournment The next meeting of the Board is scheduled for Wednesday, November 7, 2012 at 11:30 AM in the Conference Room, West University Place Recreation Center. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 12:30 PM. Respectfully submitted, Debora Connelly Piccolo Secretary