Mann Village People

 

 

 

January 31st, 2002 Meeting Minutes

 

 

 

Attendees: Amanda Doyle, Jan O'Leary, Heather Macarthur, Jan Stanford, Dorothy Burns

 

 

Updates

 

Healthy Kids at Play Grant - although we were unsuccessful this time around we fully intend to reapply for the next round. Heather agreed to contact Ken Sowell and find out about the written feedback that we were supposed to get.

 

Amanda reported that she had been invited to talk to the committee organizing the Grand/South Grand House Tour in December to pitch our playground idea to them as they had some money to donate. Despite doing a grand selling job (no pun intended) they decided to give the money to some other worthy cause. How could they ?? They were concerned that we were still a fairly young organization.

 

Anyway after all this rejection we put our heads together to brainstorm some other fundraising ideas. These were as follows:

 

a) Other grant awarding bodies - Heather had a list from the Internet. It was agreed that it would be best to limit these to shorter proposals that could be sent to more than one place simultaneously....Heather agreed to deal with the rejections personally as Amanda can't take any more!!

 

b) Playground Fundraiser in conjunction with the Centennial dinner planned for Mann School. This dinner was supposed to take place in February but has been postponed. Amanda will find out from Sally what exactly has been planned. If there are mailings that are going out to alumni we thought it might be a good idea to include an appeal for donations. They are tax-deductible after all. We thought we could also ask if people want to buy bricks to be incorporated into the playground landscaping with their names on them. Likewise it was suggested that if certain alumni were so inclined or rich enough (or both really) they could actually donate enough to buy a piece of the equipment and we would put a plaque with their name on it.

Other ideas included selling notecards/T-shirts made especially for the centennial; making a program for the evening with ads from local businesses etc; silent auction.

 

c) An "all you can eat dinner" for a separate occasion was suggested with a sockhop ...this needed to be explained to Heather...they don't do that sort of thing in Scotland!! Schnucks would probably be willing to donate food etc.

 

d) Other ideas included finding out from Fraternities/Sororities what crazy fundraising schemes they do. Heather has some contacts at SLU and will ask.

 

e) Jan (O'Leary) reported that she is involved with the Junior League and they adopt certain worthy projects. She will ask if we are worthy enough for their support.

 

We also talked about publicity for any event we do end up planning. The SouthSide Journal, Post Dispatch as well as Public Service Announcements on 88.1 and 90.7 were touted as possibilities.

 

 

Wonderful Wednesdays

 

The next one is due to take place on February 6th and Amanda volunteered herself and Matt Ghio to be the bearers of our love to Mann School being as it's Valentine's Day this month. [Amanda’s note: after drafting Matt to help in absentia, she ended up not telling him about it and just going by herself, but making a darn cute little display of heart-shaped baked goodies and passionfruit juice (“Replenish your passion for teaching right here!”), along with a sweet Valentine’s poem.]

 

 

 

St Louis Quest

 

Amanda reported that there is a new professional woman's volleyball team in town. They are the St. Louis Quest and they play at Washington University. They are keen to get out into the community so we thought that it would be great if they could come to Mann School. Amanda will find out more.

 

SLACO

 

It appears that we were volunteered to present a workshop on our work with Mann School to the St Louis Association of Community Organizations (SLACO). This is due to take place March 23rd so if we are going to go ahead with it we will need a presentation. Aghh!! After some discussion we felt that it may be a worthwhile (and even fun) event to take part in. Amanda is going to find out more.

 

Next Meeting

 

Date of next meeting will be Tuesday, March 5th, 2002 at 6.15pm. Heather will check if room at Oak Hill Church is available.