Development Committee Meeting June 21, 2016, 4:00 – 5:00 pm Conference Call
DRAFT MINUTES
Attendees: Cheryl Lulias, Jim Durkin, Jan Conneely, Valery Gallagher, Thad Smith, John Benjamin, Arnie Widen, Judy Haasis, Aleta Rupert, Laura Starr
Welcome, Introduction, and Mission Moment
Approve minutes from May 17 Dev Committee call
Cheryl put out a call to approve the minutes. Thad moved to approve, Valery seconded, the group voted, and the minutes were approved unanimously.
Fundraising priorities and updates
Individual fundraising dashboard:
· Was discussed in March committee meeting, and the response was positive. A few minor edits were incorporated, and this will be implemented beginning in the new budget year (October 2016).
· Group discussed frequency of reporting, and it was decided that these reports would be distributed to board members at meetings every other month.
Spring appeal:
· Has gone out. This appeal typically has a much smaller return than fall appeal, but we will begin to see results in June financials.
· ACTION: Forward emails and share social media posts to help close looming revenue gap. It is OK to send more than once, as many people need a reminder!
Leadership recruitment:
· Aleta stressed the importance of this and that it needs to be prioritized. A few board members have contributed notes, but many still have not reviewed.
· No additions to committees or chairs lined up for 2017. Staff continues to keep pursuing leads from leadership document.
· At the last meeting, Valery suggested someone on board/committee should “own” the recruitment effort. No volunteers yet. Laura/Jim to follow up. (JH note: Please be sure to keep reaching out to Jim on this. His follow-up on a couple of items for me has been slow but he did respond earlier this morning J)
· Several members feel it is important to always have a board member co-chair on an event. This would be great, if we have the tools/leads in place for this person to aggressively recruit additional NEW committee members and new sponsors. Plan will incorporate both one board co-chair and 1-2 outside chairs working together in the future.
· ACTION: Review the prospect list (link above) and either make connections to names listed there or use it to generate ideas of your own for new event chairs and committee members – Please records all notes/ideas in this list. ( I reviewed and added a few comments on 3-4 tabs last Friday.)
New donor management system:
· We are changing over from ResultsPlus to Little Green Light.
· Framework set up underway, data will be transferred in late July.
· It is a much more intuitive system with increased functionality, which will make gift processing, reporting, contact management much more intuitive, complete, and easy to do. This will make it easier to:
o Produce reports (like the data that feeds individual board member fundraising dashboard, references above)
o Segment and customize donor communications
o Track all donor interactions/insights (rely less on individual staff member’s knowledge or institutional memory).
· System is web-based, which will make it easier to access in the field. Thad asked if board/committee members would be given access, and the answer was no, but a great deal of additional reporting capability will be available, so we should be able to pull any requested reports much more easily for them.
Board Give/Get Discussion
While there was some agreement in the last meeting that a give/get policy was a good idea for CommunityHealth to provide to board members, no policy proposal was set.
· There is currently a written overview of board roles/responsibilities but not a formal policy. Suggestion has always been “give” of at least $1,000 and participation in appeals/events.
· Committee members felt it is useful to separate out give and get (not or).
· Cheryl suggested setting at a lower level for current board members, with a built-in plan to step up to goal levels at two-year intervals to reflect board term length.
· John noted that activities/efforts are also important metrics; there was some discussion about whether to include activity numbers in policy (e.g., send out X letters for annual appeal) instead of, or in addition to, dollar amounts.
o Can we set an initial goal around increasing the number of solicitations?
· Committee agreed that we need to define fundraising as an essential part of board’s role and include in board roles/responsibilities document (developed by Governance Committee). This needs to be a very clear communication during board recruitment.
· Committee needs to identify the “right number” – it is also important to define exactly what counts (donations, event tickets, corporate sponsorships, auction purchases, etc.)
o John suggested this number might be reached by working backwards – dividing the budget by the number of board members to determine.
o Do we need to separate out individual vs. corporate in “get”?
· Committee questioned how board members would be held accountable for a policy.
· Board members will be able to review their own successes on individual dashboards (referenced above) to be prepared for each board meeting. The dashboard will also reflect the board minimums (to be established), average (or median), and range.
· Judy expressed some urgency around getting a policy established sooner rather than later, as we are preparing to recruit new board members and want to have a policy in place to share with new recruits.
· Laura will provide benchmarking at committee’s request – looking at past CommunityHealth board performance and other organizations’ board requirements.
o Judy will take prepared data to Governance Committee meeting 6/28.
o Goal should be set somewhere between median and top of range.
· ACTION: Once Laura reports back on data, Committee should create policy proposal before next scheduled Development Committee meeting to submit to full board at upcoming meeting
Without further discussion, the call was ended.
Next call: August 23
Prepared by: Laura Starr, Director of Development and Communications