Families with Children from China – Greater NY

Annual Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

 

 

Board members present:  Marjorie Berman, Tim Stoenner, Mary Nealon, Nicki Genovese, Deb Levine, Mark Maas, Lily Cardlin, Ross Lewis

 

Others present:  FCC Advisory Council member Barry Radick, Aileen Koger, Carol Rial, Jennifer Maslowski, Ruth Mullen

 

Absent: Amanda Baden, Timothy Helck, Judy Fiorini, Mary Sellner, and Hollee McGinnis

 

Report on FCC’s 2008 Orphanage Assistance / Amity projects – This is FCC’s twelfth year working with Amity.  Aileen Koger presented a report on the status of our projects with Amity, financials, and future direction.  The past few years, FCCNY has raised around $150,000/year in contributions.  This year, we estimated $100,000 so in discussions with Amity, we asked them to pare down the programs that we supported in the past, in anticipation that charitable contributions would decline, given the economic downtown.  FCC contributions in prior years supported a range of programs such as the “grandma” program, foster care, school fees, equipment purchases and medical costs.  This past summer, Aileen and her family toured a number of the orphanages, which have received Orphanage Assistance funding. 

When FCCNY began its charitable initiatives, we were one of the only organizations raising funds for Chinese orphanages.  Now there is a proliferation of organizations with various missions.  Amity from early on has played a leadership & educational role in promoting foster care as an alternative to institutional care.   With fewer children in orphanages, and more organizations providing services such as “grandma” programs, FCCNY’s niche is shifting to foster care.  Amity decided to not include their “grandma” program in our funding package this year, encouraging orphanages to employ “the grandma’s” as full-time, staff employees.  By choosing to concentrate our resources on supporting foster care and the school fees for the children in foster care, Amity felt they would be giving waiting children better quality of individual care for a longer period of time.  This is particularly important as the waiting period before adoption is now so long; children can now spend several years in foster care.  The Chinese government does not cover school fees for children in foster care, so this is an area where Amity can provide much-needed assistance.

 

With regard to foster care, Amity is actively fostering a collaborative process of professional development by enabling personnel from different orphanages to meet one another for the purpose of sharing information about their respective foster care systems, such as how each orphanage selects the children for foster care.  Amity wants to play a leadership role in promoting foster care. 

Amity proposed a budget for the coming year of $112,000.  FCCNY has raised $85,000 to date.  In addition, we will have $15,000 coming from FCC New England.  That leaves FCCNY to raise an additional $15,000 to fully fund Amity’s proposal.  Where we are now (percentage-wise) is in line with where we’ve been in our fundraising efforts in previous years, so we are confident FCCNY can raise an additional $15,000 in the next six months.  Fundraising efforts in the pipeline include our spring Mother’s Day / Father’s Day email appeal, a targeted mail appeal (2,000 families) similar to the one we conducted during the holiday season, and an attempt to reach people who have not yet donated this year.

FCCNY Earthquake Relief funds; Amity was unable to use these monies immediately for a number of reasons including restricted access to stricken areas and the fact that the Chinese government was already providing temporary aid.  However, there is ongoing need in the affected areas.  FCCNY raised $29,000 specifically for earthquake relief.  Amity hopes to provide long-term support for children affected by the quake.  Wu Anan went to Sichuan specifically to see how our $29,000 could be used.  Her visit led to several initiatives: to provide food subsidies to children from this area who were injured; food subsidies to children of the poorest families in this area; and toys and equipment for two schools, including video platforms specifically for use with deaf children (similar to overhead projectors).

For the upcoming FCC newsletter now being prepared, Aileen is contributing a journal article focusing on her site visit, Amity’s ongoing foster care efforts, and earthquake relief.  She also discussed FCC parent Jessie Cohen on Long Island, who helps families from Jiangxi Province, where his daughter is from, to provide the full amounts required to cover Amity’s charitable efforts there.  There is also a 16-year-old girl on Staten Island who fully funds Amity’s efforts at her orphanage.  Annie Silverman donated $1,500 from her bat mitzvah, as well.  Aileen will put a tag line describing these efforts in her newsletter article. 

In addition to the proposal for $85,000 in funding to assist foster care initiatives, Amity presented a second proposal requesting $7,000 in additional funding for follow-up earthquake relief. 

Mary Nealon made motion, seconded by Nicki Genovese to approve funding of both Amity requests.  The FCC Board voted unanimously to fund both proposals.  It was noted that every year since we began working with Amity, someone – either an FCC Board Member or an FCC member involved with FCC’s Orphanage Assistance program – has travelled to China on orphanage site visits to evaluate the effectiveness of our partnership with Amity and the programs we support.

Hague Convention - Marjorie Berman described a recent conference she attended on the Hague Convention.  She learned that China has hit the three-year mark in terms of the wait time for adopting a child.  Another decline in the number of children adopted from China is looming as the impact of the Hague Convention continues.  The number of adoption agencies has declined, as it is expensive and time-consuming to get accreditation.  This fact, combined with the decreased number of available children in China, has caused many China-only agencies to shutter their doors.  In addition, the regulations imposed by the Hague Convention, while intended to protect children, do slow down the adoption process.  Over time, worldwide, the Hague Convention should help ensure that children available for adoption were in fact actually relinquished.  However, in the short term the adoption process is greatly slowed.  Adam Pertman has data about international adoption, foster care, and domestic adoption.  Mary Nealon will ask Adam if he would be interested in having an article in the upcoming FCC newsletter.

FCC website – Tim Stoenner discussed the national FCC website, www.fwcc.org, which was formerly run by Jim Weaver who has since retired.  Our website is more of a functioning database as opposed to the national FCC website, which is basically a collection of static pages.  It was noted that FCCNY does not need to coordinate the national website as we move forward on our website upgrade.  Tim Helck and Tim Stoenner are meeting with someone about preparing a Request for Proposals to update our website, which FCCNY will then put out for bids.

OCA annual summer picnic – FCC has been asked to provide sponsorship of OCA’s annual summer picnic.  The FCC Board approved an expenditure of $500 to co-sponsor the picnic. 

Membership categories – The FCC Board continues to discuss the idea of membership categories.  In particular, considering the precarious state of the economy and its impact on our membership, it might make sense to offer a “pay what you can afford” option for those who cannot afford FCC’s membership dues.  The cost of membership should not deter anyone from renewing their membership.  At this time FCCNY has 1,140 paid members; at this same point in time last year, we had 1,350 members.  By the end of last year, we had a total of 1,500 members. 

Supporting regional events – The issue of membership tiers feeds into the request from Long Island and Westchester regionals to receive money back per member that resides in their regions (per last month’s Board minutes).  They question the idea of having to apply to FCCNY for funding requests. There appears to be a misunderstanding on the part of some FCC regionals that the individual $45 annual membership fee goes to supporting New York City events.  In addition, there is an erroneous assumption on the part of some regions that with additional monies available, more people will be involved in and attend their events. Of the $50,000 annual membership revenue, , a huge portion of that covers insurance, credit card fees for processing registrations and memberships, bookkeeping and tax preparation, phone and mailing costs,& newsletter production..  For each of the approximate 12 regions to become autonomous they would need to be completely self-supporting, each with its own bank account, bookkeeper, insurance policy, and so on.  The numbers in the regions cannot support these kinds of costs, which are now part of FCCNY’s operational budget. Membership income offsets these costs, and therefore it does not possible to rebate a substantial portion of membership fees to the individual regions. 
 

On the other hand, there are ways FCCNY can improve its support of the regions.  For example, right now the procedure by which a region obtains funding support for an event is not clear-cut.  It makes sense to clarify, simplify and streamline this process.  The Board discussed writing a letter to the regional coordinators to explain where FCCNY income goes and to outline a simple process for obtaining financial support for a local community event.  Nicki Genovese agreed to draft the letter to the regional coordinators.

Culture Day – Ross Lewis mourned the loss of Culture Day this year, and suggested the idea of creating virtual Culture Day, perhaps consisting of music and art resources made available online for downloading.

Election of the Board of Directors – The FCC Board of Directors is elected at the Annual Meeting.  Currently there are twelve board members serving plus one member (Hollee McGinnis) on leave.  Board members serve two-year terms.  The following board members are in the middle of their two-year terms:  Judy Fiorini, Nicki Genovese, Tim Helck, Ross Lewis, Amanda Baden, Lily Cardlin, Deb Levine.  Board members up for re-election at today’s annual meeting are:  Marjorie Berman, Mark Maas, Mary Nealon, Mary Sellner, Tim Stoenner, and Hollee McGinnis, all of whom were re-elected to serve two-year terms.  Hollee McGinnis, who is on a leave of absence, was re-elected in absentia, provisional to her accepting the position.  Hollee may be stepping down from the Board due to the possibility of relocating to St. Louis, Missouri where she will be working on her doctorate.
            The possibility of expanding the Board by adding new members, to bring the Board of Directors to a total of 15 members, was briefly discussed, well received and tabled for a future meeting.  In general, Board members must be willing to attend meetings, serve on a board committee and deal with the business of running FCCNY in a timely and sensitive fashion as needed.

Mary Nealon, Board secretary, submitted minutes from the February 24, 2009 board meeting, which were approved unanimously by the board. 

 

Respectfully submitted by Mary Nealon, FCCNY Board Secretary

 

Families with Children from China of Greater New York (FCCNY) connects, sustains and celebrates families with children adopted from China.