Dewan Meeting Minutes Oct 27, 2013

Subud Greater Seattle Dewan Meeting
Minutes:  Sunday, October 27, 2013
Present:  Marston Gregory, Oswald Norton, Elisha Gullixson, Paul Nelson, Hadiyah Carlyle, Sherwin and Hadijah Obar.

Review of Last Months Minutes – Committee

Minutes taken by Hadiyah Carlyle were amended and accepted by the committee. This is reflected on the Subud Greater Seattle website. https://www.subudgreaterseattle.com/dewan-meeting-minutes-for-august-4-2013/

Financial Report – Sherwin O’Bar
 
Current projects are that year end 2013 member contributions will be about $4500 less than budgeted, and so we will need to use some limited reserves to cover costs.

Please email Sherwin if you’d like a copy of the financial report.

Fundraising Efforts – The Committee
Marston Gregory is putting together two fund raising appeals to the membership to attempt to replace these savings:

1. Right away we’ll be sending out an appeal to members to contribute more at year end.  We also have a goal of having members who contribute nothing contribute something, no matter how small to support our center.  You will be receiving this appeal and an envelope in the next two weeks.  Please put something in the attached envelope and send it back as soon as possible

2. We are in the middle of trying to plan our budget for next year. We want that budget to be based on what members are willing to contribute.  We will be sending out pledge forms.  It is extremely important that you fill in this form and get it back to us as soon as possible.  Without them, our budget can only be a guess.

Old Business:
 
Helper Report:  Hadijah O’bar
Currently there are only two active women helpers to cover the latihans at our facilities on the eastside and in Seattle.  In November, when the weekday latihan changes to Wednesday nights (four nights a month), Annie will rejoin as the helper for that latihan.

In Seattle, only the Sunday woman’s latihan has helper coverage.  If we are to have coverage for other women’s latihans in Seattle, we need more inactive helpers to agree to become active again. Please talk to either Hadijah O’bar, or Hadidjah Gregory if you are willing.

New Business:
 
Holiday Party Dec 22.  We will have a nice potluck party after latihan and also honor our new to Seattle members, Lorraine and Sebastian Tedrow and Ida and Halstein Stralberg.
 
Spring Street Center – Paul and Marston
Bookings:
Revenues for 2013 are catching up. We have added a psychotherapy workshop and two weddings, December 31 and Jan 1.

Paul recently started marketing our facility on Air B&B.  This resulted in two clients.  We will be pursuing this avenue for additional bookings in November.

If you know of anyone needing a space to rent, please have them speak with Paul

Advertising:
We continue to explore different avenues for marketing Spring Street Center. Some websites marketing such as MiNeeds and Eventective are not providing leads. We are exploring new options and working actively on different marketing approaches, such as Air B&B. Expect to see more in the coming months.

Marketing Budget:
We are using the same budgeted marking dollars this year that we did in last years budget. The Spring Street Center subcommittee is to manage that budget and determine the best way to use those funds.

NOTE:  We seem to be getting a lot of our business recently from word of mouth.

Proposal to ensure our facilities are always ready for business:
Oswald proposed a percentage of rental income should always be kept aside for maintenance and repairs of the building.  This is a topic for our November Dewan meeting.

SICA Event Next Spring
Cascadia Poetry Festival:
As a part of our efforts to attract interest in Spring Street Center, we’ve agreed to hold open one night a month for SICA events at the Subud House.

Next year, Paul requested an expansion of the use of the Spring Street Center over an entire weekend.  Included in that use would be lodging and poetry readings the weekend of May 1-4, 2014. (No latihan times will be missed.)

In exchange for the use of the house Spring Street Center will be given a promotional table at the Cascadia Festival Small Press Fair where we can promote the Center. The committee also asked that SPLAB (the festival sponsor) pay a cleaning deposit of $250 to clean the house after the event. This was agreed.

All Subud members will be welcome to attend any of the events at the Spring Street Center

Force Field Poetry Reading – To Kick-off Festival
Paul hopes that Subud members will support the Force Field reading of 8 Canadian women poets on Thursday, May 1, 2014, the kickoff event for the festival to happen at Spring Street Center.

Announcements
Next General Meeting
Sunday Nov 24 General meeting at Subud house after latihan

Next Committee Meeting
            Sunday, Nov 24  at SGS Spring Street Center at 9A.

Menucha November 7th – 10th
            Next week.

Holiday Party
            Sunday, Dec 22 after latihan.