February 2012 Committees Report

From the President:

Hello Membership here is the January activities in this report. It is that time again for our monthly report. Some members have suggested we do our reports every 2 months; the board would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Most of the committees are hard at work, and we are working as a team to rebuild AADB. We have the Law Committee that is still working on the wording for the confidentiality forms and also the bylaws, the Finance Committee working on the 2012 budget, 5 Year Strategic Planning Committee working on a survey to hear from members and nonmembers what they would like to see the mission of AADB become. We also have the SSP Committee who has sent out a survey and the Office Committee hard at work to keep the bills paid, paperwork up to date and receiving phone calls, VP calls, emails and faxes. Last but not least we have the Multi Media Committee hard at work with the website, databases, membership forms and more. Please read below for more detailed reports.

Many have ask questions about the AADB office, we are still looking for someone to sublease but it is mostly emptied. Some of the board at our own expense went to the office for 10 days to work. We have donated, archived, shredded and stored many of AADB properties. I was able to negotiate with the landlord and Grady Management will not increase rent as they usually do in April of every year.

As for the FRC report I will add this into my President Report:

I have been working with CM Hall trying to find a co-chair for the FRC, so if anyone is interested please contact me. But after CM and I met in December, I sent the 5 Year Strategic Plan to CM and next week she and I will be working on a fundraising plan with the guidance of the 5 Year Strategic Plan. Our goal is to work on a one year plan.

We have 2 major Fundraising Raising projects happening right now. One is a challenge to the board to raise $2000 each toward the SSP funds for the past Symposium in the year 2012. The second one is the board has been invited to work with the Giving Library (National Philanthropic Trust) to do a filming and I will be flying to New York on March 1st to be the spokesperson for AADB. This is very exciting because the foundation has chosen very few nonprofit organizations.

Forever Yours,
Jill


Committee Reports:Law Committee: no report submitted

Policy Committee: no report submitted

Finance committee: no report submitted due to family medical emergency.


AADB Five-Year Strategic Planning Committee Report:
Submitted by Karyn Campbell and Mark Gasaway, Co-Chairs

A Proposal has been approved by the board, this will be sent separately.

The Five –Year Strategic Planning Committee has put together a subcommittee to work on a survey of the membership. Sar McMillen and Rene Pellerin co-chair this subcommittee. Carlie Grippi, Heather Grizzle, Corrina Veesart are committee members.

This subcommittee is talking about focusing on questions for all categories of members. Non-members will be done in a separate survey. There is a six-month time line for this project from start to finish. The main goal proposal was shared with the subcommittee.



SSP Committee Report:
Elizabeth Spiers

We sent out a questionnaire to 22 SSP programs around the country, gathered from a list of SSP programs provided by the Helen Keller National Center. We received 8 responses to the survey as of January 25th. The committee is now working on compiling the results. When this report is finished, we will have the survey results posted on the AADB website. The survey results will help the committee decide how to carry on with its goals and objectives. If anyone knows of an SSP program that would like to be included in the survey, please let us know and we will follow up.


Office Committee Report

During the month of January, several of the board members, Jill Gaus, Lynn Jansen, Elizabeth Spiers, and Kacie Weldy, were in Silver Spring for ten days at their personal expenses to continue to get many things organized in the AADB Office on Fenton Street. Our main goal was to finish cleaning up the office, scan all the important information for our files according to the Record Retention Rules for the State of Maryland and finish entering all the entries into QuickBooks so we could close the books for the year 2011. A big thank you goes to all the volunteers who came in and worked tirelessly with us, Leslie Foxman, Becky Hall, Candace Strayer, and Valerie. Also, thanks so much to Kacie’s husband, Mike Weldy and Hewitt Packard for letting us borrow their commercial scanner.

There has been significant progress on QuickBooks. We identified and reconciled those documents to the data already entered into QuickBooks. We verified that the data had been correctly categorized and recorded any necessary adjustments or corrections. A larger task has been to identify what had not been entered. In order to identify data that had not been entered, we have spent a considerable amount of time reconciling documents located in the office to bank statements and our online credit card processing vendor. The necessary entries were recorded to correct the QuickBooks balances to agree with the Audited Financial Statements for the years 2010 and 2011.

We prepared and sent out the required Form 1099’s. While all the QuickBooks data is entered, we are still in the tedious task of verifying and reconciling each line item to the paperwork to support these entries. We have made the arrangements with the auditor for an independent review or audit and preparation of the annual tax Form 990. Once 2011 is complete, we will have a solid base and be in a better position to provide accurate and timely financial reports.

We continue on with the tasks of looking over all important paperwork by separating these into piles by “to archives” at Gallaudet University, “to scan/save files”, and “to put into storage”. If not needing any of the paperwork, these were shredded. All the donor’s and membership due’s forms were put in order by the year, put into alphabetical order, and finally scanned. We also blacked out all the credit card information on all the forms to protect private information and we will continue to do so.

We canceled Verizon’s for telephone, Internet and TTY Services. To save money we are now using NexTalk, eVoice and eFax to be able to continue to answer telephone calls and to receive faxes. We also discontinue the lease on the copier that expired on February 1, 2012 and this was picked up on February 2, 2012. We also got rid of all the furniture and equipment as we no longer will be using these in the office.

Now that the office is pretty well empty, we are still looking for anyone interested in subleasing it. If you know of anyone interested in a spacious five room’s office located in Silver Spring, please have them contact Jill Gaus at mailto:jagaus@sbcglobal.net. In the meantime, the board members will continue to work on office tasks, such as receiving the mails, pay bills, answering calls/email, etc., so AADB can continue to be active.

Thank you!

Respectfully submitted by Lynn Jansen


MMC-Multi-Media Committee Report
Co-Chair: Scott Davert, NY
Co-Chair: Kacie Weldy, IN

Mission: To provide IT support with the membership database and the AADB.org <http://aadb.org/> website. Also, to provide continuous updates, notifications, information, and resources to the members of AADB and all others who have an interest in being involved in the actions and various roles of AADB. These will be provided, but not limited to the following means of public relations, communications, and various media platforms: Email, Facebook, Twitter, AADB Blog, AADB.org <http://aadb.org/> website, Newsletters, AADB Today, mailings, and any other means deemed necessary.

Sub committees

IT committee –
Activities and tasks performed:
1. Continuing the process of updating Common Grounds with donor and membership information since it was last updated in June, 2011.

2. Continuing the process of organization and scanning of donor slips and copies of payments received via postal mail from March through October 2010 into electronic format for future record keeping.

3. Continuing the process of compiling of donor information from 2010 donations received via postal mail from March through October.

4. Reports ran for data entry and administrative functions, including but not limited to membership expiration dates, duplicate records management, and online transactions to be entered into QuickBooks.

5. Numerous IM meetings with various board members in relaying of information, reporting of findings, and validation of results compiled.

6. Set up of Online membership registration forms for both Individual and Organizational memberships.


PR committee –
Co-Chair: Scott Davert
Co-Chair: Kacie Weldy

Activities:
1. Posting of AADB updates to Facebook, Twitter, and AADB blog.

2. Approval of requests to join Facebook.

3. Email distribution of Membership registration availability online.

4. Providing messages from various media platforms to the Board members for review and providing responses back to all platforms.

5. Continued creation of the mailing list from 2010 donors to utilize for fundraising postal mailings.

6. Research and compilation of information for state organizations, agencies, and deaf-blind ListServ, to be posted on the AADB resources page.


As Co-Chair of both of these committees, Kacie Weldy made a trip to the office in January with President Jill and Vice President Lynn to assist in the final Office Clean up duties.

IT and PR tasks worked on that week:

1. A Craigslist account and a drop shots account were set up for AADB to list furniture and office supplies for sale and activated to the local area.

2. Kacie and Jill began going through all the membership forms by year and alphabetizing them for effective retrieval after scanning them in to a digital format. They also began scanning all forms from the year 2002 onward.

3. Jill & Kacie worked on going through and organizing other paperwork within the office into groups by content, and then by what needed to be scanned, archived, and shredded. The document retention standards given to us by the AADB CPA, was followed and any documents no longer needed were shredded for information security.

The majority of the documents within the office were scanned or imaged to be organized for easy retrieval and for information security. Member financial information was blacked out and membership forms scanned for record keeping and papers shredded. Donor forms were imaged and then paperwork shredded. All audits, payroll information, insurance forms, tax paperwork and financial paperwork were all imaged and then boxed for storage and retention in a secure location. Organizational bills were gone through and boxed for storage in the same secured location.

4. Kacie provided several reports out of Convio and Common Ground to Becky of data needed to move forward on accounting tasks.

5. Kacie began the process of retrieving all AADB data and information from the computer within the office. The retrieved data and information and all of the scanned/imaged documents were brought home with Kacie to organize into a usable format. She will put all of this data onto some form of media or an external hard drive if necessary to send one copy to Jill as the president and one to Debby as the secretary and remain as property of AADB. Scott Davert has donated a 750GB external hard drive for this process.

6. Upon retrieving all the data from these computers, Kacie used the software program, PD Wipe to wipe clean the hard drives of all computers, including all operating systems.

7. Kacie went through all the software and disks to match to the equipment on hand and disposed of obsolete software no longer usable.

8. Since there was not any potential buyer for the office furniture and supplies, Jill, Candace and Kacie contacted numerous nonprofit agencies, such as Goodwill, Salvation Army, Purple Heart, Habitat for Humanity, American Red Cross, Gallaudet, HKNC, and many others. specifically, for the desks and furniture within the office and other supplies. All of the furniture and equipment was donated and is removed from the office at this time.

9. Boxes of office supplies to be utilized for AADB mailings and the software/data disks were packed into boxes to be sent Free Matter for the Blind to various volunteers

10. A Braille Book Maker Machine with software was packaged up and sent to board member Scott Davert via Free Matter for the Blind. There were reports that the machine was not working so Scott will determine if it is working and then a determination of what to do with the machine will happen from there.


To summarize, all important paperwork for AADB has been removed from the office and is either in a secure storage location or has been scanned/imaged for electronic retention. This data will be in multiple locations in case of a catastrophic event at any one of the locations listed above.

All equipment and furniture, with the exception of a few items has been removed from the office. Any remaining furniture will be part of any sub-lease signed by a future tenant. Archive items and items yet to be donated are still located within the office for volunteers designated to take care of these tasks in the near future.


Network and Recruitment Committee Report:
Mark Gasaway

Last month's report it was stressed that the recruiting of new members is the responsibility of the Networking and Recruitment Committee only to recruit new members who may otherwise know nothing or very little of AADB. Debby did a membership drive in part to get people to renew their memberships and in part seeking new members.

The NRC is responsible for coming up with ideas of how to do the membership drives. We will look into doing these drives by states connected to state DB organizations.