AADB June Committee and Board Reports

Dear AADB Members,

There have been some good changes happening within AADB.

AADB’s Office Lease
We have been able to release part of the AADB office, so our chances of leasing out the other half is better. This has decreased our rent by half so this helps with our finances. We were previously paying $2979.68 each month towards the lease. Now, our new rent is $1499.58 and this lease will end on March 31, 2013.



AADB Elections
We have set up an Election committee and the board has approved Blaise Delahoussaye as chair and Janie Neal has been very active with this committee. Please look soon for the details on the election process and nominations!

From the National Task Force on Deaf-Blind Interpreting:
NTFDBI has been meeting to work with all our new members to advance our mission of establishing a standard of effective practice to ensure the quality and availability of interpreters for deaf-blind people. If you would like to be added to the mailing list, please send an e-mail to NTFDBI@gmail.com.

Committee Reports
The committee chairs have been in discussion on how we can better serve AADB and its membership. The majority of the committee chairs supported one suggestion: to provide committee reports on a quarterly basis. Most non-profit organizations report on their committee activities three to four times a year.

We feel strongly that the efforts and time of putting together and sending the reports to the members via email and/or postal mail on a monthly basis has become an inefficient use of AADB’s limited resources. We need to use our time and resources effectively to tend to the committee tasks and duties on hand, and more importantly on fundraising, membership growth, and advocacy and support within the Deaf-Blind community. Therefore, to more effectively utilize the resources we have, the next report will be sent out in September, 2012 and will be sent out quarterly from now on.

The majority of the committee chairs also agree that the reports should continue to be one of the privileges of an AADB membership. Therefore, beginning with the September, 2012 report, these reports will only be posted on the AADB ListServ and mailed to current members only. If people wish to receive the reports from AADB then they must become members of AADB and show their active support of AADB through membership.

In regards to the members’ questions, we will continue to have René Pellerin compile any questions from the membership, from the AADB ListServ or contact can be made with any of the AADB Board Members to submit questions. Then we, the committee chairs, will answer these to the best of our ability and will report these back to the membership with the quarterly reports.

Sincerely,
The AADB Board and Committee Chairs


FC (Finance Committee Report)
Since last month's report, we have completed the temporary budget for review by the board. The data entry and the 2011 final financial budget created from QuickBooks have been just completed. The Finance Committee will next be reviewing this information from QuickBooks prior to having the entire Board review and approve it. By the next report, we will be able to report exactly what funds are available overall as well as in each part, such as restricted funds, general funds, and so on.

Mike Reese
AADB Treasurer


Office Committee Report:
Lynn Jansen, Chair

Since the board has raised more money, the rest of the SSPs who requested refunds from the AADB Symposium were sent checks in the mail.

Now that the office lease is reduced in half until April 2013, we can focus more of our attention to working with Convio/BlackBaud and their Senior Account Manager to see if we can get rid of some of the database expenses.

For the last month, we have received and answered one fax, 35 phone calls and 102 email messages.


MMC-Multi-Media Committee Report

Chair: Kacie Weldy, IN
Sub committees

IT committee –
Activities and tasks performed:
1. Continuing the process of compiling of 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 in relaying of information, reporting of findings, and validation of results compiled.

4. Updated AADB Home page with new information.

5. Continuing of organization of all AADB files obtained from the Office Computers into a retrievable format.

7. Revision of the short draft of the March IT report to reflect accurate information of Convio/Common Ground research. Continued work on revision within the Review Committee to complete the long draft of the March IT report.

8. Administration of the AADB-L list.


PR committee –
Chair: Kacie Weldy
Activities:
1. Posting of AADB updates to Facebook, Twitter, and AADB blog.

2. Approval of requests to join Facebook
3. Compilation and updating of membership database of member preference requests.
5. Continuing work on updating state organizations, agencies, and deaf-blind ListServs listings on the AADB resources page.


Election Committee Report:
Submitted by Janie Neal

The Election Committee is submitting, to the board for approval, a request to form a subcommittee to assist the Election Committee with tasks such as printing, brailling, posting announcements and other tasks as needed.

Networking and Recruitment Committee report:

The committee members have been notified and the membership drive proposal will be sent this week, at which point we will begin working on recruitment.

Thanks,
Mark

The following committee reports were not submitted:
5YSP (5-Year Strategic Planning Committee), SSP, Policy, and Law