Minutes: May 10, 2004

Minutes of the Board of Directors, The Special Hope Foundation

After receiving proper notice via email on April 21, 2004, a quorum of the Directors named either by the Incorporator or listed in the Articles of Incorporation, constituting the Board of Directors of this Corporation, held their meeting at this time, on the day, and at the place set forth as follows:

The following Directors, constituting a quorum of the full Board, were present at the meeting:

• Lynne O’Hara, President
• John O’Hara, Vice-President
• Mary Wilson, Treasurer
• Ed Hoskins, Secretary
• Carrie Jones
• Tracie Sloat  

Minutes Approved

The first order of business involved the review of the minutes from the previous Board Meeting on February 2, 2004. All reviewed and accepted the minutes conditional to two correction:  changing the name of the “Disability Roundtable Breakfast” to the “Advisory Board Roundtable Breakfast” and the spelling of Carrie “Jone’s” to  Carrie “Jones’.”  

Review of Existing Business

There was no existing business.  

Committee Reports

Communications Committee – Ed Hoskins

• The members of the board were asked if they had any trouble downloading and printing out the documentation for this meeting from the internal site.  The main issue was that only the first two columns of the budget spreadsheet were being printed.  (Ed will investigate saving the spreadsheet as a .pdf file, which should print the entire spreadsheet properly.)
• It would be nice to have a links page on the website where site visitors can find information relating to special needs
• Lynn is having trouble with an error message on her machine.

Advisory Committee – John O’Hara

• Update on Questions of the Month (Carrie):  Two q & a’s will be posted from last month on the advisor site (there will be a new menu).  It would be nice for Special Hope to be of more benefit to the advisory board.
• Newsletter: At the next roundtable, lets have a sign-up sheet to allow them to receive the newsletter.  We should also send it to our grantees
• Roundtable Update:It was nice to hear from more people in the field.  Two visitors were outstanding.

Finance & Investments Committee – Mary Wilson

• The Foundation was funded again
• We are in the process of diversifying investments, hense our percentages are off
• We have more money available to fund
• Our budget has been very close to actual
• The grant budget on the annual budget spreadsheet were omitted

Issues:

• What to do the rest of ’04 fiscal (through June)
• Should we attempt to lower our tax rate by giving more money?
• Conserve money vs. take advantage of tax rate

Issues to make decisions on:

• A motion was made to violate the spending policy up to and including the amount required for the 1% excise tax distribution which is $65,000.  This authority will not be extended past June 30, 2004.  This was unanimously passed.
• We must check the bylaws to make sure this is ok
• The motion was made to have the finance committee explore how to philosophically handle the tax vs. distribution issue in the future (they will report back to the board) — This was unanimously passed
• A motion that the operational part of the budget and tax be approved was unanimously passed (we still need more info on the grant portion)  

Grant Review

• Carrie excused herself from the grant discussions and vote due to here potential conflict of interest with the Hope Technology School
• The Hope Technology School has indicated a desire to continue to seek funding with a shift in focus (we granted 10,000 but they were hoping for 70,000) but we don’t know what they plan to do
• CAR shifted gears will submit new questionnaire (they are out of consideration)
• PHP – there proposal is as stands
• Motion was made to vote on funding the Hope Foundation of India of $3500 which was unanimously passed (except Carrie)
• Motion was made to give 80% of the  yet to be determined grant allotment to the Hope Technology School, 20% to PHP, but not to exceed PHP’s request (the remainder will go to the Hope Technology School) passed unanimously  

New Business

• Motion to elect the 4 nominated members for another 3 year term was unanimously passed
• Should we allow questionnaires to be held over until the next board meeting?  Can it be extended for one quarter?  Or should it be handled individually?  Since we run the risk from being bogged down, lets re-examine it a year or two from now
• Next meeting Thurs Aug 26th  

Adjournment

There being no further business to come before the meeting, upon motion duly made, seconded and unanimously carried, the meeting was adjourned at 9:25 pm.

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Lynne O’Hara, President

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Ed Hoskins, Secretary