April 2012 Report

AADB Board of Director’s Report April 2012

We apologize for the April 2012 board report being late this month. Jill Gaus, President, was originally compiling our reports for April. However, she had a family emergency and was unable to finish the full report in time for the deadline. We were able to complete it and it is provided below.

President’s Report Jill Gaus,
President Jill Gaus is unable to send the President’s report this month because of a family emergency. However, she plans to include her report in next month’s report.

Finance Committee Report Mike Reese, Chair
Because the original submission of the 2012 budget was rejected by the board, it was sent back to the committee for further review and revision. Several figures were readjusted once it was determined what the actual figures were to be. Also, a rationale was added to show that this was to be considered a temporary budget as such until QuickBooks for 2010 and 2011 were completed, and until that time, a few figures could only be considered as estimates. Once the committee members all agreed on the revision of the budget and its rationale, it was submitted to the board for review and approval. It is currently nearly wrapped up now and the results will be in sometime this month.

Law Committee Report No report given

Office Committee Report: Lynn Jansen, Chair
The office is now cleared out and empty. We are still trying to sublease the space. We had several interested parties but they found another place to rent. If you know of anyone who is looking for office space in Silver Spring, please contact Jill Gaus for more information at jagaus@sbcglobal.net.

We have a new address for AADB!
For any future correspondence, please send your mail to the following address:

American Association of the Deaf-Blind
PO Box 2831
Kensington, MD 20891

We are still using the same telephone number and fax number because we switched to eVoice and eFax. We canceled services with Verizon a few months ago to save some money.

We need legal advice on how to handle the lease and other contracts, since we no longer need the space and the services, and the contracts do not expire until 2013. We have found someone practicing law in the state of Maryland who can give us pro bono legal advice. We have sent in the required documents and are now waiting for an attorney to advise us.

For the month of March, we received and answered 34 phone calls and 121 email messages.  The SSP Refund Forms were sent back to me on March 30th and I will get back to work to re-organize the paperwork. The board is hard at work doing some fundraising to help pay for the remainder of the refunds.

Policy Committee Report By Chris Woodfill, Chair
Chris Woodfill, along with Art Roehrig and Jill Gaus, has been participating in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s rule making process, under the leadership of Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. (TDI). The process was completed recently.

Numerous organizations, including AADB, the National Association of the Deaf, the National Black Deaf Advocates, the Alexander Graham Bell Association, American Society for Deaf Children, the Conference of of Educators and Administrators of Schools for the Deaf, and various ethnic and religious national organizations for the deaf participated and signed off on the comment responses to FCC rule makings. More details as they relate to deaf-blind people will be provided in the next report.

The policy committee itself was not reactivated for this. Art Roehrig was appointed as the point person for AADB related to the FCC and Chris and Jill mostly monitored the proceedings. When time came for the organizations to sign off, Chris was given the authority to do this, and Chris did so as appropriate.

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

Sub committees IT committee –
Activities and tasks performed:
 1. Continuing to compile donor information from 2010 donations received via postal mail from March through October.
 2. 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.
 3. Numerous IM meetings with various board members to relay information, report findings, and validate compiled results.
 4. Updated AADB home page with new information.
 5. Continuing to organize all AADB files obtained from the Office Computers into a retrievable format.
 6. Began creating the next AADB Today email.
 7. Revised the IT report to reflect accurate information of Convio/Common Ground findings.

 PR committee – Co-Chair: Scott Davert Co-Chair: Kacie Weldy
 Activities:
 1. Posted AADB updates to Facebook, Twitter, and AADB blog.
 2. Approved requests to join Facebook
 3. Compiled and updated membership database of member preference requests.
 4. Provided messages from various media platforms to the Board members for review and provided responses back to all platforms.
 5. Began updating listings of state organizations, agencies, and deaf-blind listservs on the AADB resource page.
 6. Compiled data to be included in the next “AADB Today” newsletter.

 Strategic Planning Committee Karyn Campbell and Mark Gasaway, Co-Chairs
 The Five Year Strategic Planning Committee is currently developing a survey with the assistance of the survey sub-committee. The process is underway and when completed will be sent to membership to help determine what direction AADB should go with input from the membership. 

Support Service Provider Committee Elizabeth Spiers, Chair
Committee members have been getting some inquiries from members who are asking about legislation that helped to set up SSP services and other services for deaf-blind individuals. We have contacted people from SSP programs and different government agencies that are involved in legislative activities. Currently, we are waiting for more information. If anyone has information on how SSP services were set up in his or her region, please let Elizabeth Spiers know at elizabethaadb@aol.com. This information would be very helpful for those who are trying to set up services or get funding for services for deaf-blind people.


Member Questions

Question: For clarification regarding to the IT Report, "I contacted Convio and Common Ground..." Who "I" because it seems like I got confused about who submitted this report?

Answer:  Kacie Weldy/Scott Davert: This report was submitted and signed by Kacie Weldy since she contacted Convio/Common Ground to research what AADB's commitments and obligations were.

Question:  How can we propose an addition or change to the guidelines for electronic communications?

Answer:  Kacie Weldy: Proposals for changes/additions to the listserv guidelines can be submitted to the listserv directors, consisting of the AADB Executive Committee, the listserv moderator and the listserv liaison. The listserv directors will review and vote upon whether or not to make the proposed changes to the listserv guidelines. Should the number of listserv directors be an even number, the AADB President shall abstain from voting.

Question:  Have any of you thought about setting up an electronic general business meeting that is accessible for DB folks so that way we continue to have regular meetings in substitution of regular conferences because conferring is not a feasible option at this point?

Answer:  AADB Board: This question has been assigned to Jill Gaus. However, she is not able to answer this question for April because of a family emergency. She will provide the answer in the next board report.

Question:  Why don't we auction off the furniture in the AADB Office to get money for AADB? 

Answer:  Elizabeth Spiers: I took over the responsibility of emptying the AADB office after Jill, Lynn and Kacie went there in January, since I am one of the board members who live closest to the office. A friend of mine knows an auctioneer and she talked with him about auctioning off the AADB furniture. The auctioneer said, however, that furniture does not sell well these days because of the poor economy, and a lot of thrift stores do not take office furniture. We had given away most of the furniture by advertising through Craigslist earlier in March.

I had a furniture company take away the last of the furniture, at my own expense, because we had a few heavy desks and other items that are hard to give away or sell. We wanted to make sure the office is completely empty. That way, if someone is interested in subleasing with us, the office is immediately available for them.


 Question:  What did the 2012 budget consist of? Why was it rejected by the board?

Answer:  Mike Reese: The 2012 budget consists of the obvious income that has been generated up until the end of 2011 plus the expected income to be generated during 2012, plus the obvious and expected expenses that will be generated during 2012. Both should come to equal amounts, thus resulting in a zero balance. The above report explains why it was rejected by the board. With the correct rationale in place now, the budget can be re-set every so often, say per month or quarter to adjust for any differences in income or expenses, to keep from losing any money for AADB.