Editing 2024-02-11 AGM Meeting

Published location of this is https://gay.hfxns.org/pics/ElderBerries/2024-02-11_AGM.pdf =Elderberries 2024 Annual General Meeting= February 11, 2024 In the absence of the Chair, Barend Kemperman, Past Chair Lynn Murphy presiding. More than seven members of Elderberries being present, Quorum was established (By-law 16). Board member Kaitlyn Drury distributed a document providing the meeting agenda, Chair’s Report, Treasurer’s Report, Membership Report, and a slate of nominees for the Elderberries Board. ===Agenda=== * Approval of this agenda * Chair’s report * Treasurer’s report * Membership report * Election of Directors * Adjournment Motion that the agenda be approved : Moved by Stephanie; Seconded by Kirby. Approved by acclamation. ===Chair’s Report=== Presented by: Deputy Chair Dan MacKay If you measure by number of events, diversity of events, or number of attendees, 2023 was enormously successful. In fact there’s no way to measure it in a way that doesn’t indicate that. I looked at the list of things and tried to find highlights but I really couldn’t - what a year! Here’s almost the whole works: Events : * Dozens of Elderberries donated about 600 LGBTQ-related books to the first Elderberries Book Sale, and the estimated 70 plus attendees gave us more than $450.00 in sales and donations (January) * Author readings: from her graphic novel Call me Bill, Lynnette Richards retold the true story of a Victorian woman who dressed as a man to pursue a career as a sailor (March); Garry Williams performed a one man version of his musical KAMP, set in a gay men’s unit of a WWII concentration camp (November). * Other : No Talent Show (January); Turret story-telling round table (April) ; Emily Davidson presentation on the Turret Arts Space Society (June) ; picnics (August and September) Outreach : * April: Speaking at Kings Central Rural High School * July: Road trip to South Shore Pride for Bridgewater’s FIRST Pride Parade! Dan & Paul, Kirby … and who else? went? * November” Speaking to Gerontology class, MSVU * Support letter : St Andrews United Church Pride Project By-laws: the Board prepared a completely modernized revision of the Elderberries by-laws, which were approved by the members (March). ==Treasurer’s Report== Despite not having aggressively asked for money this year, we ended the year with only $44.36 less than last. At the end of the year we had $761.52 in the bank and $240 worth of mugs which are at Kevin Dadouse’s house. ==Elderberries 2023 Financial Reports== ===Membership Report=== In the last year we’ve had several references of members from social workers and therapists which is extremely gratifying - it means that a) we’re known to them and b) they consider us a healthy place for their members to be referred to. The software we use for memberships doesn’t really track how many members left the Elderberries last year but we had 45 new members. 2017: 23; 2018: 55 new; during covid 25 new per year. Emails: we currently have 356 emails. We don’t know how many of those get looked at. Facebook, we have 685 followers; it looks like about 300 of those read our posts. Facebook offers 41% men; 59% women. 221 in Halifax, 45 in Dartmouth, 20 in Fredericton, 18 in Toronto, 17 in Bedford NS. We have eight members who would prefer to be phoned and Caitlyn is currently doing that each month - thank you! We don’t know how much overlap there is between the Facebook membership and the email membership. I know that we get very VERY little engagement from our Facebook members. Maybe we should do a project to encourage Facebook members to get on email. Of those possibly 960 members, we get fifteen, the same fifteen, coming to most of our meetings. That’s pretty normal and totally OK. Still it would be good to work on expanding that range. Motion that the Chair’s Report, Treasurer’s Report, and Membership Report be adopted as circulated : Moved by Janet. Seconded by Deb. Adopted by acclamation. ===Election of Directors=== Nominations from the floor: none. Slate of Directors * Renée Clark * Kaitlin Drury * Pauline Fedrick * Barend Kamperman * Daniel MacKay * Lynn Murphy Motion that the slate of candidates be elected as circulated. Moved by Deb. Seconded by Janet. Elected unanimously. Motion to adjourn : Moved by Dan. Adjourned 2:45 pm.

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