Minutes of the Board of Directors, The Special Hope Foundation

After receiving proper notice via e-mail, 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:

TIME: 4:34 pm
DATE: September 17, 2013
PLACE: The Office of the Special Hope Foundation
2225 E. Bayshore Road
Palo Alto, California

Call to Order

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

  • Lynne O’Hara, President
  • John O’Hara, Vice-President
  • Margaret Motamed, Secretary
  • Lucy Crain, MD
  • Laura Shumaker
  • Stacey Milbern, Acting Treasurer
  • And our newly elected member, Phil Shemanski, elected below

Minutes Approved

The first order of business involved the review of the minutes from the previous Board Meeting from May 21, 2013. All reviewed and accepted the minutes.

Election of Directors and Officers

We elected the following:

  • Phil Shemanski: Treasurer

Given that there is an open position on our board, he was instated immediately and began to participate within the meeting.

Strategic Update

Champion the growth of local support networks to empower self-advocates

  • See Office of Developmental Primary Care grant request below
  • Updates from Dr. Kripke: she presented the cart model to the California state council. She also is working with AADMD and with a parent group to develop a targeted plan. She is redesigning the Office of Developmental Primary Care website. She is assisting the Society of Teacher’s of Family Medicine with enhancements to the family medicine residency curriculum resource. And has done programs and clinical rotations and electives with medical students. She will be the faculty recipient of this year’s Chancellor’s Award for Disability Service.Partnership with ASANSee Office of Developmental Primary Care grant request below.

Encourage specialists to raise awareness and spur action among their peers

  • AADMD Partnership on the RFP – we currently have 13 applications in draft. Dr. Lucy with pre-review with Special Hope staff, and then an AADMD committee with provide us with their recommendations.

Make research accessible

  • ASAN update: Organ Transplant Paper was used to develop an Organ Transplant bill in Pennsylvania called “Paul’s Law.” New briefs: Medically Underserved Policy Paper, ACA Policy Paper, and Transition Policy Paperand the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism interviewed Ar’i
  • Kaiser Research grant meeting – we received a “Great Job!” tweet from the science guy at Autism Speaks who had talked with Kaiser on the research that we are funding. The Kaiser study could grow as well.

Create sustained learning opportunities for donors

  • Autism Speaks collaboration – they are in the midst of a strategic planning project and are looking as an organization the adult population related research. In 2014, they may convene people in this space and include Special Hope. Laura Shumaker also helped author a transition toolkit (to adulthood) and recommended to them toconsider focusing on the medical gap for Adults with I/DD.

Convene cross-sector audiences for increased communications and collaborations

  • AUCD Grantee Symposium, Monday 9-11:30am November 18, 2013 in Washington DC (AUCD), sponsored by Special Hope. Lynne O’Hara is attending.
  • Federal Agency connections/ASAN Gala in Washington DC same timeframe as AUCD Symposium – Lynne O’Hara is attending.

Report from the Finance Committee

We reviewed the following reports. The only questions were in the area of validating our Grant Making spending plan.

  • Financial Report
  • Investment Report
  • Update on Grant Budget to date

Grant Review

Autism Self Advocacy Network

We spoke a bit about the difference in perspective between ASAN and Autism Speaks. As a Board, we choose as an organization, not to take sides on highly charged issues. We are hopeful that over time, they will come to some common understanding especially in this area of Adult Healthcare for I/DD..

We have some concerns about the organization’s success being based mainly on Ari Ne’eman’s own participation. Though we noticed that the organization does have a strong network and is bringing up new leaders.

And the policy papers that we have funded with them are very instrumental.

We believe that the proposal is sound.

We voted to fund this fully.

Office of Developmental Primary Care

Propose that Lynne O’Hara and John O’Hara meet with the Chancellor of UCSF to help propose the case to look at achieving the broader goals. .

An additional proposal was to fund partially for Objective 2 and 3 within the Grant proposal. Fund at the $75,000 level. And the additional $25.000 can be funded based on the January meeting if we are given specific goals and tasks against objectives 2 and 3 to review in our January meeting.

Rose F. Kennedy UCEDD

We voted to fund this fully.

New Business

Strategic Committees

We created two new sub-committees to provide focus areas for the Board members.

  • Action Plan Committee: Stacey Milbern (Lead), Phil Shemanski, and Lucy Crain
  • Communication Committee: Laura Shumaker (Lead), Margaret Motamed, John O’Hara

2013-2014 Meetings

  • January 21, 2014 – may be at a restaurant, might be at the Ed Roberts campus in Berkeley
  • May 20, 2014

Adjournment

There being no further business to come before the meeting, upon motion duly made, seconded and unanimously carried, the meeting was adjourned at 6:45 p.m. PST.

________________________________________

Lynne O’Hara, President

________________________________________

Margaret Motamed, Secretary