2018-06-10 AGM Meeting

Welcome members of Elderberries to our 2018 AGM

Order of business today:

The day actually consists of two meetings: the last meeting of the old board of directors, then the first meeting of the new board.

The only function of the last meeting is to present the Annual Reports, and to elect the new board.

The new Board can do whatever they want, but we’re suggesting that we talk about

• future directions of the Elderberries;
• ways to make sure we’re engaging as many members as possible, and
• how to be more transparent and formal decision making process.

Does that layout for the day sound OK? Any suggestions for improvements?

Chair’s Report

Just a reminder, this is a report for 2017 even though we’re halfway through 2018. Several things happened to repeatedly delay our AGM. We’re going to try to have it more punctually next year.

Similarly our Treasurer’s Report is for 1 January to 31 December, 2017. If you ever want some info on what we’ve done with your money since then, just ask in advance, we’re happy to meet and give you the current state of affairs.

2017

• January : program cancelled due to weather ; rescheduled for May.
• Feb 12 : Longish introduction of people including their work and hobby history; presentation by Dan about our meeting with Pride; long discussion about outreach to the black lgbt community following that about (documented 2017-02-12 Meeting
• MARCH: Caregivers Nova Scotia. Contact: Angus Campbell.
• APRIL: Michael Collins from the Seniors College Association of Nova Scotia
• APRIL AGM: Halifax Pride has some $$ for us; what do we want to do?
• MAY: Gays In The Military. Anita says: LIKE WOW!!! WHAT a meeting!!!! Fantastic...extremely well attended...the 4 speakers where beyond amazing.....the interaction incredible... food..of course..good..yum!!!...I can send a list...photos coming soon....the stories would be great for WAYVES or GayHalifax...for sure..informative and lots of questions and answers...many inquiries about Lynn...So LYNN...let us know what is up...what we can do to help...what do you need...etc. big hugs to all and have a glorious week!!
• JUne 11th: Downsizing / Spring Cleaning
• June 29th Elders New Glasgow Expedition on
• JULY: Gathering at Pride: across the street from The Smiling Goat; gather at about 12:30 to get a good location and get in some social time.
• AUGUST: Picnic at Wayne's - Musquodoboit Harbour - August 13, rain date: August 20.
• SEPTEMBER: A Workshop On Inclusive Pronouns, Facilitator: Dan
• OCTOBER: Barend: life in Japan
• NOVEMBER: Partners: What's a partner? Do you want a partner? How are you looking for a partner? What does partnership look like for you after 60?
• DECEMBER: Christmas Social- storytelling, best Christmasses

As always it would be great to get more people out to each event - you can see that about 5% of our membership comes to most of our events; we don’t see the other 95%.

Treasurer’s Report

Income:

• We sold one cookbook for $10
• We got $25 for speaking at a Youth Project GSA Event
• We received 468.65 in meeting collections

Expenses

• We spent 102.00 reimbursing speakers for expenses, and meeting food
• We spent 98.15 on Society registrations and bank charges
• We spent 249.16 on promotional materials

That's 19.49 more money we received, than we spent in 2017.

Our opening bank balance was 610.58 Our closing bank balance was 630.07

Membership Report

We had 23 new members in 2017! As of end of year 2017, we had 230 members; as of today we have 18 new members for 2018.

We have ten members who have asked us to call them to notify them of meetings, and we never have. If anyone would like to volunteer for this, please speak up. Presumably people wouldn’t need to be called every month.

Election

Now, presentation of our slate of new board of directors. For our election, we propose to present to you a slate of directors, a motion to accept that slate. THank you very much to Nomination Committee Chair: Lynn Murphy; Members: Carolyn Gesner, Scott MacNeil

Chair: Dan MacKay Past Chair: Lynn Murphy Vice-chair: Allison Brewer Treasurer: Anita Martinez Newsletter Editor: Barend Kamperman Board members at large: Scott MacNeil Laura Shepherd Mike Sangster

Do we have any nominations from the floor?

Motion that the slate of boardmembers be accepted.

Discussion.

Vote.

Thank you old Board, welcome new Board. This meeting is now ended.

Second Meeting

Based on some recent discussions among the board and comments from a couple of members, there are some obvious ways that the governance - that is, how the society is run - can improve.

Here’s an email we got last week to open some discussion topics.

Letter To Open Discussion Topics

I am writing this to give you some further feedback which I hope you will share with other executive members. So far the feedback I have given has gone nowhere and I have had no response from anyone on the executive.

Several people I know as well as myself have stopped attending the Elderberries meetings because:

• They are always potluck despite the fact that money is collected at each meeting. Potluck is a pain. What is being done with those funds? Where is the accountability?
• The group is run by a small group who have known each other for years and who have lived in the area for years and who seem to be living in the past glory days. There is not a welcoming attitude to newcomers to the group/area/province. In fact I would suggest it is run by a clique. The group is mostly men. Where are the women?
• The meeting format needs to allow for more informal discussion and interaction. Having speakers is nice but people want to talk to one another and get to know each other.

I attended a very fullsome discussion with great ideas generated about elder participation in Pride one year ago. The Pride organization had approached the Elderberries and even offered funds for some activity/involvement in the parade and/or the Pride celebration. Absolutely nothing came of this. The Elderberry group participation in observing the parade was only about 8 people. A real disappointment. There seems to be a sense of inertia in the group. Many people seem to be on the list so why are they not involved?

You need to be getting new people on the executive and trying to have a more interactional style.

Discussion

Allison: I would like to speak to a larger Issue: How is decision making made? How was the decision made to have the event at Plan B? This letter went out raw and has invited a vast amount of hate mail. Moving forward, we need a more formal way of making decisions, so that the board participates more. What is the approval process? How can I get involved?

Alex: I haven’t met many of you, but when I first joined, I didn’t feel particularly welcome when I walked in, I didn’t know who the board was. We could make a better effort to welcome newcomers - starting with introductions at the beginning of each meeting. This is a great location for a board meetng. it’s not a good layout for potlucks, Salon Sunday etc. We could do this in the comfy chairs, we could do this in a pub. For someone walking into a meeting, to have it look like a board meeting, it’s not great. We could have this as a pub meeting. I’m not usually around on Sunday afternoons - we could vary the time of day. I’m not fond of the pot luck. I was a bit surprised about the lack of promotion for the group. The gayhalifax page is somewhat out of date. Have you considered MeetUp? It’s a way to get people together. We should do more advocacy. I will help with the Meetup group.

Lynn: As much as I’d like to meet in a pub, in the beginning of Elderberries, one of the original principals was a thing that was *away* from the drinking scene. Partly we had a lot of recovering alcoholics, and others wanted to be away from alcohol for other reasons. I’m wondering how many different platforms have been mentioned, and I’m wondering how much extra work that is? It seems to me that we have not had speaker’s bureau requests this year as we have had in previous years. It might be a good idea to reach out to them and ask, “Why have you stopped asking us?"

Richard: seeing that letter up on facebook really hurt. They make some really valid points, but I’ve found the group to be very welcoming, from the day I stumbled up here. We could talk about other locations, but for example pubs downtown are mostly not accessible; even Menz Bar is not accessible and is an oven from May to September. To me, this location at Northwood works. It’s wheelchair accessible.

Laura: Throughoutt the radicalized youth community, calling people out like this happens all the time, and it’s always a shit show. The more you can reduce it on line, the better. At a workshop last month, someone who runs a dance theatre in an urban setting was talking about trying to get people involved, communicating and organizing. They remind people that we’re engaging in rituals which build relationships and communities. Also, we’re a bunch of white people, making decisions in a diverse community - where the diversity has been consistently marginalized. We should be going out to other communities. As long as we expect people to come to us, that’s not outreach. I’m concerned that the younger people do not know their own history. In short - less formal meetings, more outreach. We should also be reaching out to members of the community of like mind.

June: Item 3 kind of threw me a bit. the meeting format needs. I think that having speakers is nice.