Minutes from December 2021 WNA meeting

Woodlawn Neighborhood Association General Meeting

Minutes (draft until approved at next meeting)

Agenda for December 1st, 2021 – 7pm meeting (zoom info at bottom)

Agenda:

7:00 – 7:10 Welcome and Introductions-Meeting is recorded

Attending: Board members – Melody Randolph, Beth Heins, Dennis Kennedy, Nancy Flynn, Barbara England, Anjala Ehelebe, Thelma Diggs, Keith Baich ; not present: Chida Chaemchaeng, Shirley Minor

Community: Liz Kennedy, Maria Gould, Ross Danielson, David, Jan

Move to approve last month’s meeting minutes: Dennis moves, Beth seconds; all in favor.

Move to approve tonight’s agenda: Dennis moves, Nancy seconds; all in favor

7:10 – 7:20 Follow up from last meeting’s action items:

Dennis will report on previous donations done by WNA – Dennis researched what we’ve done since he took over as treasurer in October 2018; total donations from WNA is $2300 since that time.
- Of that, $800 went to the farmer’s market;
- the other $1500 was:
  - $900 to Meals on Wheels;
  - $200 to community garden;
  - $200 to SEI;
  - $200 to Across Culture.
  - Looking 3-4 years earlier he sees $300/year (likely to Meals on Wheels); also another $600 but can’t tell who it was donated to. $300 we think was to the PTA one year. Possibly another $100 to the community garden as well.
Dennis & Melody will work on getting Venmo/PayPal set up – getting approval from the bank
Melody will investigate Amazon Smile – will still look into that. Melody contacted Friends of Trees and is waiting to hear back.
Barbara: will check into Fred Meyer for how to get on their donation recipient list. – She’s coordinated the application, there’s still a form to send in. People can link their Fred Meyer reward card to the Neighborhood Association; that will result in small donations based on their spending.

7:20-8:00 Fundraising ideas, meeting in-person again, other topics?

Meeting in person: we have received a donation of a projector and a screen so we can still have online participants join us in a hybrid format.

Because Classic Foods distributes food to hospitals, they can’t host us at this time.
Other options:
- Gretchen at Woodlawn Coffee and Pastry: can host us but the space is smaller.
- Woodlawn Elementary: waiting to hear back from the district to be sure it’s okay. At one time Anjala recalls that it used to cost us money to meet at the school since there were extra cleaning times involved; Melody will check about that.
- Oregon Public House can’t host us on Wednesdays as they have a game night that night.
- After discussion: we’re willing to change to a different night (first Tuesday, first Thursday) if it would mean meeting at the Public House in some dedicated space. We’d like to also check capacity for the odd meeting when we have a big turnout.
- Anjala: I make the motion that we meet on Tuesday nights, same time, 1st Tuesdays, if OPH is available; otherwise first Thursdays; will ask if they can commit for 6 months-one year. Ross seconds; all in favor.

Fundraising:

Last time we talked about buying gift cards and then having a raffle. Could spend $50 to Black Rose Market and a few other businesses, but how would we then sell the tickets?
- General consensus is we don’t think a raffle would be very profitable.
We could also just tread water for a while and hope that businesses come back, city cleanup coming back.
Could we do a creative neighborhood cleanup? On a smaller scale than the city-sponsored ones.
- We’d need someone willing to organize it, no volunteers at present. Nancy will do some research and will report back in January. If anyone has information they can send it to her at Nancyflynn55@gmail.com
What kind of long term solutions do we have in mind? Asking for money once Venmo/PayPal get set up.
- Barbara also thinks we may still see more grant opportunities may work out.