FCCNY 6/28/07

FCC Board Meeting Minutes

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Notes submitted by Mary Nealon, Secretary

 

Board Members Attending: Tim Stoenner, Margie Berman, Mark Maas, Mary Nealon, Ross Lewis, Deb Levine, Mary Sellner

Advisory Board Members Attending: Barry Radick

Board Members Absent:  Man-Li Lin, Dorothy Crenshaw, Amanda Baden, Lily Cardlin, Meg Tolan, Hollee McGinnis

 

Commenced 6:45pm

 

FCC Culture Day 2007: was a great success and feedback from community has been terrific.  The Board expressed great appreciation to this year’s Culture Day (CD) Committee and the many volunteers who dedicated their efforts to FCCNY’s annual signature event.  A very special thanks was expressed to Ruth Mullen, who once again chaired this event.  Board treasurer, Tim Stoenner, provided a financial summary of CD.  Income = $58,980.0; Expenses = $59,508.13.  There was slightly lower attendance this year, which the Board believes may have been related to the later date of the event, based on anecdotal evidence.  While Culture Day continues to be a basically breakeven event, it is an important day in so many ways for our community because it brings families together from all over the greater New York area, celebrating the Asian heritage of our children and the diversity of our families.   The Board would like to explore ways to ensure that the event remains at least a financially breakeven event.   To begin planning for next year, FCCNY will do the following:

  • Invite Ruth Mullen to an upcoming board meeting to provide input on this year’s event & ideas for improvement next year.  
  • Request the weekend after Mother’s Day as a tentative date for Culture Day 2008
  • Survey our list serve about CD programming ideas in general
  • Solicit new volunteers now for 2008
  • Work with Ruth and the CD committee to establish a reasonable budget for next year
  • Begin now to develop more sponsorship resources for next year

 

 

BY-LAWS:   Barry Radick volunteered to conduct a review of the current by-laws & make recommendations to the board about what possible revisions we may want to consider making. 

 

FCC’s Charitable Initiative Committee/Orphanage Assistance: Board members Mary Sellner, Mary Nealon and Mark Maas volunteered to join with Aileen Koger on Orphanage Assistance efforts. The board would like to create a larger volunteer committee, inviting members of the FCC community to participate in this important outreach effort.  The Board would like this committee to provide monthly meeting reports regarding contributions, FCC’s contact with Amity about projects and reports from Amity regarding the programs we have been funding to-date.  The committee will also hopefully explore new ways we can provide programmatic assistance to children currently living in orphanages in China.  Our understanding is that many of the older children currently residing in orphanages in China are disabled or chronically ill. Therefore, this might be a good time to re-evaluate the kind of programming we support to ensure that we are also helping the older children living in orphanages in the best ways possible. 

 

REGIONAL OUTREACH: The FCCNY Board is seeking to create stronger partnerships with the FCC chapters in the greater New York region.  Each board member has been assigned a region, for ongoing outreach efforts.  Chapter coordinators are being surveyed for input about ways in which the FCCNY Board can better serve and develop programming for our members and children.  The Board will be hosting a planning day in the near future to which all regional coordinators will be invited. 

 

The board briefly discussed the various ways chapters are legally connected to FCCNY, yet are also their own separate entities.   In the near future, the board would like to review in greater detail the relationships between FCCNY and the chapters.

 

FCCNY & FCC Long Island update: In May, a scheduling issue came up between FCCNY and the FCCLI School regarding the proximity of FCCLI School’s picnic to Culture Day.  Given that CD is planned as a regional greater NY event for all our families and is such a huge financial endeavor, FCCNY asked if the picnic could be re-scheduled so as not to conflict with CD.  The Board apologized about the timing of our request, which caused some ill feelings between the 2 entities.  It is FCCNY’s sincere hope that we can work cooperatively with everyone to support and ensure the success of all our events. 

 

In a follow-up conversation between FCCNY’s acting president and one of the FCCLI School’s volunteers, FCCLI shared many new ideas that the Board is considering about its role with regional chapters, echoing the sentiment that the Board should be functioning at a board level, doing those things individually regions are not able to do on their own – concentrating its efforts on broader areas such as advocacy about issues and legislation affecting adoption, adoption-related legal issues (visa-s, citizenship, name changes, co-adoption), developing educational and programmatic resources such as the ‘tween/teen film series, reading groups, and other educational events/resources related to culture, identity, race and adoption.  Toward this end, FCCNY has begun creating a library of resources called “Events-in-a-Box” for chapters.  

           

UPDATE ON ADVOCACY:

POWER 105.1: There was a follow-up FU meeting between the radio station and OCA Manhattan President Vickie Shu and other members of the Coalition, the details of which are pending.

 

FCCNY’s board expressed thanks to Tracy Schneider for once again spearheading FCCNY’s role in trying to get NYS to pass legislation that would enable our children to be automatically adopted in NYS without the need for the cumbersome and costly re-adoption process.  Once again the legislation did not make it to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

 

Adjourned 8:22pm

Next Meeting: Thursday, July 26, 2007