Date: Wed. April 9, 2003 3 - 5 PM
Present: Fred M., Karissa L., Ellen F., Howard G., Ellen B., Marcia M., Ruth Y., Mike Y.
NOTE: Brenda C. arrived about 4:00 and Rad C. arrived about 4:30
Next Meeting
AGREED: Ruth will facilitate the next general meeting of SNOW. Marcia and Fred will help her with agenda.
Hiring
Mike updated those present on the hiring of Spencer Sundell as our new webmaster. We deferred the discussion of to whom he will report. Ellen F., may be willing to supervise for a short time but this has not yet been confirmed.
AGREED: The hiring committee (Rad C., Ellen B., and Mike Y.) will proceed on a time line to which they agree for the hiring of an organizer. (Closing date for applications is 4/11.)
Behavioral Norms
We agreed to adopt CC Behavior Guidelines proposed by Mike and slightly revised by those present. (See attached.)
Fundraising
AGREED: Fred and Ruth will lead a fundraising committee, calling for a fund raising "working group" at the next SNOW meeting. Fred and Ruth might decide to do some things to begin the fundraising process prior to that meeting.
AGREED: There will be a notice on SNOWAnnounce apprising people of the fundraising campaign.
Structure of SNOW
There was discussion of "What is SNOW". Two (or more?) dichotomies were identified.
AGREED: The CC is central to SNOW. It is not simply a collection of completely autonomous neighborhood groups which could meet from time to time in a "spokescouncil" arena. The CC helps to coordinate the efforts of its various members.
AGREED: Neighborhood groups are central to SNOW but they are not all that SNOW is.
Mike identified what he saw as the "role" of the CC. Our purview of responsibility being: staff (hiring and supervision), major big SNOW efforts, resources, custodians of the "brand", diplomacy (our "state department" function.
He noted that neighborhood groups should be autonomous in their individual actions/events unless those are not consonant with the SNOW Points of Agreement.
We seemed to agree that perhaps the Points of Agreement outline our "vision" but that we need a "mission" statement. Strategies are (among others?) neighborhood groups, organizational members, and working groups.
AGREED: There needs to be further fleshing out of the mission and strategies by the CC
Membership on Coordinating Committee
A super-majority (7 out of 9) voted for a Coordinating Committee starting now that would have the following members:
AGREED
- Eight (8) Neighborhood liaisons to be chosen by the neighborhoods in the way that they determine
- Three (3) Working group representatives:
- Office/Fund raising
- Civil Disobedience
- Education/Outreach
- (EX-OFFICIO, non-voting) Office staff person, maybe organizer, probably only rarely the webmaster
- Neighborhood liaisons would have alternates who could vote if the regular liaison was not present
- A representative from the media committee would be the Coordinating Committee member from Education/Outreach for now
A number of suggestions were made for aspects that we agreed to consider later:
- Meeting in neighborhood clusters at the big SNOW meetings to alleviate the need for some new neighborhood liaisons right now
- Have each liaison represent fewer groups, e.g. four
- Have the number of neighborhood liaisons grow at the organization grows
- Set up a larger committee with representatives from each group that would set the general direction and meet much less often, who would in turn select those on the steering committee that would meet more often.
- Possible flexibility of time that a liaison would serve, e.g. 3 to 9 months. Our suggestions ranged from 3 months to a year.
- Have the liaisons represent a given geographical area.
We said we would put these decisions in a special notebook in the SNOW office with dates so we could refer back to previous decisions.
— Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation