Class Officer Minutes
January 4, 2004

In attendance: Erin took roll on the conference call. After all attending officers were announced present, the meeting began.

1. Head Class Agents’ Report – Alicechandra Fritz and Amy Porter

   To date, the Class Agents have collected just over $11,000, and have achieved 12% participation.

   The goal for the year 2004 is to reach $25,000 total collections, and achieve a total of 35% participation.

   The key is increasing participation. The question was raised, how do we increase the number of volunteers to help reach out to more classmates? One idea is to include a call for volunteers in both the e-blasts and the quarterly. More agents means less work for each of them. Currently, our class agents need to call between 20 and 22 classmates. The goal is to achieve an assignment of 10-15 classmates each. In recruiting volunteers, it is important to make clear exactly what their responsibilities are, and how many additional volunteers we need.

   The Board members agreed to each try to get 5 classmates involved to help increase participation. Regardless of dollar amount contributed, our primary goal is to get everyone to participate.

2. Class Financial Status – Jen Warner

   Currently, we have approximately $3,300 in our class bank account. This is a very strong financial position compared to other classes, and compared to our own financial history. The class account balance going into our 5th year reunion was $3,800, and $1,600 going into our 10th year reunion. We still have 3 years until our next reunion to raise funds.

   Reunion generally pays for itself. Our goal, however, is to collect as much as possible in order to decrease the cost of reunion, thereby making it more accessible to as many classmates as possible.

   We need to reach out to our classmates to get class dues paid. More than a financial issue, the lack of payment of class dues is due to logistics of payment. In addition, with so many calls from the college for collections, this may be seen as one more collection drive. In fact, however, class dues are key to our account.

   In order to help increase participation, a new section will be added to the class website listing those classmates who have paid their class dues. For those individuals, if any, who wish to have their names removed/not displayed, they will be given a method to contact Kate, who can remove their name.

3. Technology Report – Kate Gombos

   We explored the possibility of setting up a PayPal account to allow payment for class dues, donations, and purchases via the Internet. The PayPal option, however, turned out to be problematic because, among other things, it required a personal social security number rather than the class employer identification number, which called into question our tax-exempt status. There were other problems with using this service as well.

   As a result, another service for collection of dues – justgive.org – was located. Justgive.org will collect donations and dues online and send the class a check in exchange for a fee of 3%. It was agreed that this is a reasonable fee and is worth the ease of collections. One concern is that Justgive.org requires that we use our official taxpayer name – which is the Alumnae Association, rather than Class of 1992. Therefore, it is imperative that when class dues are paid, the payer specifies that it is for DUES, and not a general contribution to the Alum Assoc.

   Our e-blasts use a service company called Vertical Response which reports to us who is actually opening the messages and on which parts of the report. Our “spotlights” features have been particularly successful in getting people to visit our class website. Moreover, we see a surge in updated contact information immediately after the e-blasts. E-blasts also save the class the cost of mailing – thus, through the Vertical Response reports, we can begin to contact those classmates who regularly open e-blasts through e-mail newsletters, and use regular mail only for the remainder. This could be a significant savings in both money and time.

4. Reunion Outreach

   We need to begin thinking about reunion. We are working on an outreach program to determine what classmates liked and didn’t like in the past, and what they would like for our upcoming reunion. We also want to learn what we can do to get the highest amount of participation at reunion. These issues require additional thought and planning.

5. Class Participation Generally

   A discussion was held concerning how we account for classmates who have definitively and affirmatively stated that they do not wish to participate, be contacted, or otherwise remain involved in the class. It seemed problematic to include these individuals in our participation goals since they have made clear that they are no longer interested in being involved with the class – thus, no efforts will be successful in raising our numbers above a certain level. The development office does use a process to help increase numbers by discounting for those individuals who are not interested in remaining involved, but the Alum Association does not have such a process.

   A decision was made that we would make an effort to find out what, if anything, can be done to recapture these affirmatively inactive classmates. To date, we have approximately 160 “inactive” classmates – although not all of them have affirmatively stated that they do not wish to be involved. An effort will be made to try to recapture as many of these classmates as possible. The Board Members will review the list of “inactive classmates” and divide up among themselves which officer will contact which classmates in this outreach effort. We will make clear that there are many ways to be involved in the class – it can be extensive, or it can be very limited, it can be in the form of money, time, or something else. Erin will draft up a basic outline for the outreach calls/letters, and the individual officers will then personalize and individualize it as appropriate.

6. Class Volunteerism – Julie Temlak

   We discussed trying to track and capture the efforts made by our classmates to contribute to their communities through volunteerism. Many of our classmates are already doing a lot of volunteer work, and those efforts should be acknowledged and applauded. More thought needs to be given to how to track volunteerism, and how to get more classmates volunteering. We would love to be able to talk about this at reunion – the efforts we are all making either as part of our daily jobs or in addition to our jobs, and say that the Class of 1992 is still out there making a difference.

   One idea is to include a section in the Quarterly, or devote an entire Quarterly edition in our class, to volunteerism. We will be making a call in our e-blasts, website, and Quarterly submissions to ask our classmates – what are you doing to volunteer? We want to hear your stories! We want this to become one emerging theme for our class.

7. Reunion Planning – Kristen Kelly and Megan Kelly

   Although reunion is a few years away, time flies and we need to start planning. We need to look at the class finances, come up with a budget, a plan, a theme, formats, and concepts for reunion weekend. We need to all begin thinking about this, and giving our input.

   One idea that was discussed was a potential live and silent auction. Class members and others could donate things for auction – personal items, class items, anything. For example, the idea of trying to have Liz Kennan attend part of reunion and/or auction off a “tea with Liz” was discussed. We may also try to get favorite professors to auction off lunch at their homes or similar items. We will also look into hiring a professional auctioneer to add to the enthusiasm of the event. This is just one of many activities that we hope to plan for the weekend.

   We also need new ideas for fundraisers. We are still selling towels and posters, but need additional ideas to raise money so that reunion can be as successful, and as accessible, as possible.

8. In-Person Board Meeting

   In order to further plan upcoming reunion and have more in-depth discussions concerning class matters, the Board plans to have an in-person meeting. The meeting is likely to occur in Phoenix, Arizona during late September or October 2004.

   All Board members agreed that everyone on the call sounds exactly the same as they did in college. The call then ended.