Doc. # 2010-
Community Relations Committee
Cayuga Lake Watershed Network
November 2, 2010
10am downtown Ithaca, NY

Present: Amy Galford (chair), Hilary Lambert, John Mawdsley.

Tasks: Committee names, descriptions, and members do need to be updated in by-laws documents and online. John will address this with entire board. (He did so in November-December.) The relevant language for this committee follows:

Duties of Chair:
“The Committee Chair provides leadership to ensure that committees:

• Build membership of the committee
• Call meetings and send out reminder notices
• Review Board minutes and bring relevant items to the attention of the full committee
• Set meeting agenda and have productive meetings
• Take and approve meeting minutes
• Submit approved minutes to staff for distribution to the Board and for posting on the Web. In order for them to be sent inthe Board packet they need to be received at least 8 days in advance of Board meetings
• Draft annual plan of work and budget that is then approved by the Board. Work within those, revising as appropriate
• Have a spokesperson for the committee at Board meetings”

John’s Updated Committee Description:
The Community Relations committee shall solicit new members, prepare and update materials explaining the purposes of the Watershed Network and reasons for participating in the Network. It shall lead fund raising efforts from private individuals or companies. It shall oversee and update the web site. It shall advise the Board and other committees on media contacts.”

The committee members list online was updated in November but the bylaw page still needs updating - http://cayugalake.org/personnel/chair_and_bylaw_description.pdf - item for next agenda to have someone make sure Judy gets the final version.

Pamphlet:
John sent additional suggestions to Jim Clark. Ideas for information for the back space: publications available from CLWN (weeds, CD, restoration plan); website URL; contact information

Website:
Overall goal is to make it easier to update and manage, and have multiple people able to do so.

One promising option is to work with River Network, to which Hilary is already connected. They offer subsidized training and web hosting with a template with content management. Next training will be at next national River Rally – try to have Hilary and Amy attend that session.

Hilary and Amy need to

• get examples of their basic web template; present that and the possible training/hosting to the entire board soon;
• find out what up-front work is needed by this committee or the Board.

Amy needs to make a plan to divvy up current content across the various committees for review and start presenting that to the entire Board.

Email lists:
Would be helpful to have email lists for the board, board + committee members + major volunteers, and general members and advertising contacts

Hilary set up a Google group for the Board in December

Membership Database:
Stick with a spreadsheet format rather than converting to database for now.

Best to keep all donation history in one place, while also clear when their last contribution happened – will try to work this out while keeping columns readable

Yes, would be helpful to have more tags to identify member characteristics, e.g.,

• Sort out by zipcode for geographic distribution of members
  Current board;
• Current committee;
• Previous board/committee service;
• T owns or other governments, organizations, businesses, wineries, lakeshore property, etc.
• A ctivities – attended conference, fundraiser, stream cleanup, other volunteer work, etc.

Amy will work with Hilary on this in the current Excel spreadsheet