June 2010 Board Meeting Summary

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NCCNA Board Meeting Summary for June 8, 2010, which was held at 950 Glenn Dr., Suite 150, Folsom, CA.

SUMMARY OF MOTIONS
DETAILS

The meeting was called to order at 6:00 PM.

Present were Bev Anderson, Karen Polastri, Penni Smith, Wayne Hewlett, and Arvin Magusara. Katri Kehraevuo and Yuliana Wiseman were not present (Yuliana is a poll worker for the election).  Board candidate Don Davenport was also present.

Karen requested a motion to officially approve the agenda.  M/S/C to approve the agenda for the June 8, 2010 Board of Directors’ meeting, with one abstention.

Penni was unable to prepare a report of the previous meeting, so there was nothing to approve.

Karen explained about how she is going to be handling the meeting agenda from now on, and Bev asked if anyone had any questions or concerns.  Penni said she had a few issues with the change that she wanted to discuss.  She thought having an agenda item that was called “President’s Report”” was confusing of the report Bev sends each month.  She noted that the deadline of a week beforehand for items might be hard to meet.  She wondered how the website interaction would work, and she questioned the need for some of the procedures.  There was extensive discussion, but no specific resolutions.

Bev then addressed the regional policy she is working on.  She sent out the regional policy only a few days before this meeting, and realizes that people haven’t had much chance to review it.  She wants feedback on the policy one week before the next board meeting.

It is time to renew our Directors and Officers insurance.  Karen was going to check to see if there might be a better option.  She was unable to do a complete check, but talked with someone in her group who said what we were paying seemed reasonable.  The renewal will be paid within a few days.

We talked about the upcoming Neuropathy Action Awareness Day (NAAD) on June 17.  After some discussion, we decided to not have a drawing this year.

Bev still has to finalize the staffing for our table.  In addition to brochures and other information, we will have DVDs and books for sale.  There was some confusion about the sales at the annual meeting.  Penni had discussed the procedures with the initial people at the table, but they didn’t pass it on to the others who staffed it later.  Therefore, this time Penni will provide detailed written instructions about how to log the sales for our records.  She will send these around before the event so that people can review them beforehand.

Bev gave an update on her negotiations with Anodyne Therapy and Healthlight.  Anodyne Therapy will offer our members $50 off a purchased unit, and will give us a $25 donation.  Healthlight is still pending, but will be giving some sort of discount.  Anodyne Therapy sent us a trial sample of their new home model.  Sandra Vinson, who has been using their previous model for a number of years, will try the new model and let us know what she thinks. 

Bev explained that a chiropractor affiliated with the Neuropathy Treatment Centers of America will have a display at the NAAD, and explained how that had happened. The Neuropathy Action Foundation was not aware of the situation with NTCofA.  Bev filled Dominick in on our experiences.  Bev wanted us to know about what was going on.
 
Bev gave a status update on the TNA proposal.  She sent TNA the letter that we finalized after our last meeting.  There has been no reply yet, but it is really too soon to have heard anything.  Arvin brought up affiliation agreement.  He sees a lot of issues in it.

Penni started to give the account balances, but never did, as others started asking about the financial reports, and no one seemed to find the balances particularly relevant.  For the record, since it was pre-typed in here, on May 31, the bank balance was $32,046.10.  There were six checks outstanding, totaling $1,718.59, so the actual balance was $30,327.51.  The support group sub-accounts totaled $12,738.92, so the NCCNA general fund had $17,588.59.  There are a few outstanding bills to pay and a deposit pending.

We took a look at the financial reports.  Karen questioned how a calculation was arrived at, and it was found that the line with the beginning amount had not printed.  Penni explained that she never intended the workbook to be printed.  She feels the best way to look at a workbook is on the computer where one can examine the formulas for validity and not be constrained by the dimensions of paper.  She further explained that there is no protection on the workbook, and people can set up the printing however they desire.  Nonetheless, she will look at the printing setup for each page and try to have it set to print in a manner that should work for most people.

M/S/C to accept the financial statements as presented, with one abstention.

Don Davenport is the group leader for the Oakland group.  Bev, Penni, and Karen spoke with him at the annual meeting about his interest in being a board member.  We asked if he had any questions and affirmed his interest, then asked him to leave the room while we discussed his candidacy.  M/S/C to accept Don Davenport as a new board member.

We turned our attention to the strategic plan.  Penni told Karen that she just didn’t quite understand what we were supposed to do with it.  Don said he had a chart that helps to manage the process of implementing the plan, and he will send that out to us.  After some discussion, we began going through the plan item by item and determining who would be responsible for which points.  Penni annotated a copy of the plan with the assignments as we went along.  She will send out the annotated plan to everyone.

We realized we could not get to the rest of the agenda items, but we did have to discuss the meeting schedule.  Karen had listed the schedule using the second Tuesday of the month as the meeting day.  We had been meeting on the first Tuesday except for this month.  Karen asked if the second Tuesday was okay.  Bev said it would give Penni more time to prepare the financial reports.  The second Tuesday seems to be okay for everyone for regarding July, but we couldn’t say about after that.  Bev needs to check with Kat, who may have an issue.  Tuesday definitely needed to be the day.  Meeting time of 5:30 was still okay.

Arvin spent several minutes discussing the contacts he has made with veterans’ associations and his research into veterans and neuropathy.  Penni was unable to get down all the details, and asked if he could send out a report summarizing all he had done.

Although we were holding the rest of the agenda items until next time, Bev asked for a clarification of the agenda item Community Service Aid, which Penni had added to the agenda a couple of meetings ago.  Penni explained that we might be able to get help from people who needed to do volunteer service, such as students doing projects and internships, people assigned to do community service, and other such situations.  Don said Americorps might be a source, and Penni agreed that that’s the sort of thing she was talking about, but that we needed to save the discussion for the next meeting, as it was getting quite late.

M/S/C to adjourn the meeting at 8:35.