4CGLAD Board Meeting Minutes

4CGlad board meeting
February 21st, 2009
4-5pm Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

In Attendance:
Board Members: Greg Chair, Diane Vice-Chair, Carol Treasurer, Tyombe Events Coordinator, Mark Secretary
Community Members: Christy, Ann, Catalene, Kim, Diane, Dionne, Don, Jim, Sam, Bill, Judith, Will, Scott, Trisha, Nancy, Sallie, Sandy

Business

Meeting started with General introductions of both board members and community members. Proceeded with an overview of the packet that was given, which included; the agenda, spring fling advertisement, upcoming events list, finances overview, volunteer sing-up form, and a membership renewal form. St. Mark’s asked for $1 for each participant to use that space, which is a great deal! Thank you St. Marks for letting us use your space so graciously!

Outreach Overview-
• City of Durango is now offering domestic partnership benefits to all employees. Currently there are also partial benefits for county level employees, issues with insurance companies, we’re still working with county.
• La Plata Leadership, offered through chamber of commerce, leadership conference, 20-25 people, Greg on Diversity panel, spoke to class about the community. Sign up for next year GREG!
• FLC professors asking for panels, PRISM(FLC Student group) has put together student panels that go into classes. Greg let us know that we are also looking into going down to talk to the GSA at the high school.
• HIV testing in the area. Enough organizations at last testing that they were able to test all sects of the population YAY! We are looking to take testing to the high school.

4cGLAD events –
• Spring Fling, 3/14, Strater 8:00pm (in place of the normal Valentine’s dance)
• 4cGLAD picnic at Chris Park, dogs welcome. May 30-31, can spend the night, bring tents, camper, trailers or your car like Diane =)
• Relay for Life 6/12-13. Coordinated by Diane (community member), we can sponsor the $100 dollars, looking at getting hot food throughout the night and that might be our fundraiser throughout the night. Would need multiple volunteers to run the food stations. Not sure of theme yet. Need people to walk throughout the 12 hours, please come out and support. No profits from this event, all money raised goes to American Cancer Society (ACS). We raised over $3000 for ACS last year. 3rd place last year for decorations. If you want to be on the team, please give your e-mail and phone number so communications can start about coordinating entirety of the event. Can find more information on 4cLN and 4cGLAD websites. As a group we had a great community response for being out and supporting.
• Campout, July 16-19th. Can bring tents, have our own private lake, can come whenever throughout the event. Dinner Saturday night and breakfast Sunday morning. Campout is reserved Thursday through Monday this year, not Wednesday, can stay late on Sunday because it’s reserved till Monday morning.
• Halloween dance still being planned for October.
• AIDS benefit, still being planned for November.
• Group interest:
o Float for snowdown, would need a large committed group, in past it ended up being two people on the float.
o Still wanting to put on a drag show as a fundraiser. Need support for that event.
o New Year’s events are hard to coordinate because of weather and people having their own holiday plans. Could do it at St. Marks for cheaper and they do allow alcoholic beverages.
o Talked about if MILK would ever be coming to town. Movie nights for both our community and the greater community: to facilitate dialogue.
o ManReach group had good success with bowling.
o Want a booth for the Welcome back FLC student’s party in Durango. Would work with PRISM, but would benefit us since the event is about community events.
o PRIDE festival road trips, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Denver, Mancos etc. Interested? Rent a vehicle and split costs.
o All of these events are great for spreading the word about our organization and having alternative activities for people who may not feel comfortable coming to large dances or who may not have heard about us yet.
o National coming out day: PRISM wants to extend their program to the community. They decorate closet doors to place around campus to spread the word about the day.
o UPDATE: Happy Hour Event: MILK is playing at gaslight theater and a group is heading over from Happy Hour to see the 8:30pm showing on Friday Feb. 27th, 2009.

Other Groups in the Area –
• ManReach - For gay, bisexual men in the region, alcohol free. The events are sponsored by Colorado department of health. Events are free for participants as they’re paid for by the grant.
• FCLN – lesbian network, up to about 140 members. Every first Friday of the month is lesbian happy hour at the lost dog. Have been getting about 30 women at lost dog. Second Saturday potlucks. One year anniversary of the potlucks is in February. It is hosted all over the area.
• PFLAG - Is alive and well in the Durango area. Have two motivated chairs that have slowed down because of time constraints and they are always looking for help and new members. They could really use a president who has great motivation or willingness to help out.
• PRISM - FLC student group.
• GSA at the Durango High School, some fledging groups in NM
• PEAT
• St. Mark’s, integrity group (Episcopalian GLBT group) Worlds AIDS day event. Non-denominational service on worlds AIDS day, usually around noon or 12:30. Props to St. Marks for their support of our community. Scott Hagler is the music director for the church. We know other members of our community who are active at the church including a pastor. Main pastor of the church is setting up integrity group.

Financial Overview –
• Learned that most of our profit comes from our events such as the Halloween and Valentine’s day dances. V-day dance isn’t as profitable as it looks because Strater gave us an amazing deal that we won’t get again and because we didn’t separate out membership renewals.
• Safe schools is a budget for promoting events in the schools. We have bought a button maker for the high school to use for the day of silence, coming out day, etc.
• There is a group through 4cGLAD for people affected by or living with HIV/AIDS. Confidential group but you can become a part of that by contacting Greg.
• We talked about continuing 50/50 fundraisers at dances.
• Susan Lander wrote and got us a grant for 1500 dollars. Susan we love you!!!!!
• Dawn H. is interested in Grant writing for us. Let us know if there is other inertest to help out Dawn. She can teach you =) Please fill out forms with other ideas for fundraising or contact any board member.

Board Positions –
We are looking for board members. Please let us know if you’re interested in any of the positions. We need to put more time into the positions. Enthusiasm and commitment are great qualities to bring with you =)

Volunteers –
We need volunteers and you all have been AMAZING about helping out with the current scheduled events, but would really need new enthusiasm and leadership to get the new events rolling. Please bring fundraising ideas and if it’s something you can lead or help with that would be amazing. Christy is interested in creating an excel spreadsheet for a volunteer database. Let us know about your special skills ;)

Closing –
• Talked about Out on the Colorado Plateau and how people would like to see that happen again. Discussed that current leadership is looking for fresh blood to take the event over. They have everything ready to go for the conference so you wouldn’t be starting from scratch or left out on a limb without guidance.
• Found out that 4cGLAD is approx. 8 years old as an official 501c3 organization but that it had years of being a group before that, so we’re probably 11. The group started with a small group of people who wanted to get together and has become an impressive community force.
• Had a great discussion about the climate for the community here in Durango. Had all perspectives; we’re still invisible, coming from other towns Durango is great, Durango is the HUB for this area, younger generation is coming out earlier and doesn’t seem to need an organization like this as much, that women tend to be more visibly out in the community. That we would like to see more men at happy hours =) pwease, That there seems to be a middle aged population that is struggling with their identity since they have their life set up.
• This was the kind of discussion we would like to facilitate with the community at events such as movie nights or socials. St. Marks would be a great location of the library here in Durango or Ignacio.
• Will stated that he was looking for people who would be interested in telling their life stories on camera. If interested please let Will know and you can discuss the process more.
• Talked about maybe writing stories for the Durango Herald to have those published.
• Will asked if anyone knew about gay white shirt day, we all wondered what straight white shirts would look like hehe. If you have information please let us all know.

End of Meeting.

POTLUCK!!