AAUW Tar Heel Branch

Becky Mock receives Margaret Sanger award

Nancy Shoemaker — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:03:13 +0000

Alison Kiser and Becky Mock

The Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina 2012 Champions of Choice Breakfast was an energizing and inspiring event on January 19.

The highlight for me was seeing Becky Mock receive the PPCNC Margaret Sanger award for lifetime contributions to advancing women’s rights. Alison Kiser, who grew up in Alamance County and considers Becky one of her mentors, presented the award.

Both Becky and Alison are members of the branch. Other AAUW members there were Anne Mackie and Dana Jennings from the Tar Heel Branch, Lisa Price and Dona Jean Koeberl from the Chapel Hill Branch, and national member Laura Roselle. If I missed seeing you, please let me know or post a comment!

If you’re near enough to Chapel Hill to attend this event mark your calendar for next January and plan to celebrate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade with friends from around the region.

Miss Representation in Durham Nov. 29

Nancy Shoemaker — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:42:31 +0000

The branch will be a co-sponsor of the showing of the film Miss Representation in Durham on Tuesday evening, Nov. 29 thanks to contributions from members in Wake County.

For more information see the event on the Ipas Facebook page.

More than 100 people from a wide range of organizations are expected. Join us for a great evening!

Members Out and About

Nancy Shoemaker — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 23:29:53 +0000

Tar Heel Branch members have represented AAUW of North Carolina at two events recently.

On October 23, along with the Chapel Hill and Greensboro branches we hosted a reception for the AAUW Fellows in the state.

On November 2, we partnered with other NC Women United members (especially NC MomsRising) to staff the NCWU booth at the NC Conference for Women and, in particular, spread the word about the HERVotes project. (AAUW and MomsRising were two of the initial members of the HERVotes coalition at the national level.)

Please check these links for pictures of our members:

AAUW NC post on the reception
AAUW NC post on the conference
Branch Facebook group (members only)

Updates from the Fall AAUW NC meetings

Nancy Shoemaker — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:06:43 +0000

Nancy Shoemaker
Tar Heel Branch President

Three AAUW NC meetings were held this fall: two on 9/17 in Brevard and New Bern and one last Saturday in Statesville. Forty-one members representing 15 of the 20 branches attended at least one of the meetings. Of the 41, 18 were members of the Tar Heel Branch and we welcomed one new member, Janice Imgrund of Winston-Salem, who joined at the Statesville meeting.

Five Tar Heel Branch board members attended (Shoemaker, Evans, Atoji, Pearre, and Abell). The meetings were sponsored by the AAUW NC officers (K. Atkinson, Van Order, McGuire, Abell, Richardson) with support from Mary Peterson — and all of these women are dual members of the Tar Heel Branch.

This report comes from my attendance at the Statesville meeting.

Public Policy Project

The bulk of the time was spent on the Public Policy Pilot Project that is proposed for branch action during 2011-2012. Branches are being encouraged to

Adopt one or more public policy issues to monitor on behalf of AAUW NC.
Identify a member of the branch to follow each of these issues and forward updates and alerts to a specific email address.
Encourage branch members and other allies in the community to subscribe to the alerts and updates.

Additional information:

A list of proposed state and federal issues was distributed and each branch was urged to choose at least two issues (one state, one federal) from the list.
A set of assumptions about the participants in the project was distributed.
At the request of the branch, AAUW NC will provide support and training on how to check on issues and find information on the issues.

Branch presidents are asked to send the

branch’s preferred list of issues,
names and email addresses of the “senders”
names and email addresses of those who want to receive the alerts and updates
any constraints about branch members’ participation

to pp-admin@aauwnc.org as soon as possible.

In late October, the coordinators of the project will be assigning issues to branches based on branch preferences, but hopefully avoiding much duplication. Then two email lists will be populated with subscribers:

pp-info@aauwnc.org for the “senders” to exchange information with one another and with the project coordinators
pp-alerts@aauwnc.org which will be an open list for those who want to receive the alerts from the “senders”

During the year, all involved in the project would be asked to make notes on the project to help with an evaluation of whether or not additional state resources should be allocated to it for 2012-2013.

The Tar Heel Branch may contribute to this in unique ways. Jenine Atoji and I will be supporting the project with the technical issues of creating and maintaining the email lists. It is understood that many of our members who joined as “at-large” members of the state may not have time to put into research on particular issues, but it is hoped we will have many members who agree to receive the information and take action as long as the messages are clear and focused.

NOTE: While some branches may choose to have just a few people receiving alerts and then forward the information out through their usual channels (reports at meetings, their newsletter), that will not work for us. If you are interested in this information, please do plan to subscribe directly.

Finances

The AAUW NC executive committee (acting as the board in this year where we’ve suspended the bylaws) approved the 2011-2012 budget. The important things to note are:

Again this year, it is a deficit budget. Our reserves are in good shape and we are planning to spend more than our income.
The amount in the budget for special projects, including branch mini-grants, has been doubled since last year’s budget, and is now $5000. Some of that will be spent for the Public Policy project, but branches are encouraged to review the mini-grant application and ask for state support when appropriate.

Juvenile Literature Award

There was some discussion of the AAUW Juvenile Literature Award which the NC Literary and Historical Society has administered for AAUW NC since 1953. As documented on the UNC Library page about the NC Literary Awards, this is part of a series of several awards. There was a discussion about the benefit of the award and an idea to encourage all the branches to purchase copies of the winning book for their local libraries received more support than adding a cash award to the winning author.

The consensus was to continue support for the event. That entails contacting the winning author and arranging to host the author at the Literary and Historical Society awards ceremony, as well as arranging for a cup to present it. It was noted that Elizabeth Laney, a member of the branch and the Lit/Hist Society, has been one of the judges for years.

This year’s award ceremony will be Friday, Nov. 18 at the Sheraton in downtown Raleigh as part of the Annual Meeting of the Lit/Hist Society. The awards potion of the program is 1:30 – 2:00 and part of the afternoon session which is free and open to the public. If you’d like to attend, please contact Karla or Lill for details on who will be representing AAUW NC, particularly if you’d like to join the author for lunch or take materials to share about AAUW. (Full program, registration.)

E-newsletter and Tar Heel News Update

There was a lively discussion of how to get state information out to all the members. While email would seem to be a logical way to communicate, issues about going “email only” included

Only about 20% of the members signed up for the new e-newsletter, and fewer than 50% of those opened our first issue.
Several people mentioned that though email would seem to make sense, realistically they are more apt to read the news if it shows up in USMail.

So the Tar Heel News will continue to be sent through the mail, but there was consensus that we should come up with a way for members to opt-out of the paper newsletter. It has been posted online since 2003, and some are fine with reading the electronic version.

Annual Meeting

There was a consensus to continue with last year’s format of a simpler annual meeting near the center of the state.

Nominating Committee

There was a reminder that by a vote last spring we suspended the bylaws and our current structure is quite different from the one described there. It is still too soon to know how it is working, but it was noted that the nominating committee will need some guidance in what offices will be filled for 2012-2013.

Welcome to Western Carolina University

Nancy Shoemaker — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 23:06:25 +0000

With the support of Laura Wright, AAUW college/university representative for Western Carolina University, the branch is doing a virtual recruiting event on the campus. It will run from October 3 to October 15.

Link to discounts page removed.

Debt Ceiling Discounts

Nancy Shoemaker — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:48:27 +0000

A primary purpose of the AAUW Tar Heel Branch is to connect members to AAUW NC and AAUW — to provide a community for those who might not be members or who would join only the national organization.

With that in mind, we devote a large portion of our budget to membership discounts — funded both by discounts AAUW provides in connection with recruiting new members and by contributions to the branch. In our first two years, those discounts were used for new members. This year the board approved using some of the discounts for renewals as well. The following message was sent to primary members who had not renewed as of September 1. The board will evaluate this program and announce whether it will continue before the renewal notices are sent for 2012-2013.

Announcing Debt Ceiling Discounts

We realize that the economic situation has affected many of our members, and we also know that now, perhaps more than ever, an AAUW membership can be a lifeline to advocacy and other information that will affect women’s economic future. Therefore, the branch wants to do what it can to ensure that our members stay connected to AAUW.

If renewing at the full $65 will hit your personal debt ceiling, the branch will accept less than full dues for 2011-2012. If you can, we recommend that you pay at least $40 so that the branch can continue its other programs, but we will accept as little as $20 and get you renewed through 6/30/2012. For any students for whom $17 is too much, we recommend $10 and will accept $5.

To renew under this plan, please make your check payable to “AAUW Tar Heel Branch” and send it with a note referencing “Debt Ceiling Discount” to

Lyndee Champion Ivey (adddress deleted; see contacts)

NOTE: Renewing under this plan means that you do find your AAUW membership valuable and worth the usual amount, but that amount just isn’t realistic for you this year. If AAUW just isn’t for you, we wish you well and understand your decision to drop your membership.

Tell us about your friends

Nancy Shoemaker — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:59:46 +0000

We’ve all got friends who may be good candidates for joining the AAUW community (whether as members or as allies in some other way).

If you found this form and would like to use if to ask for more information, that’s great. Just let us know if there was someone in particular who led you to ask about AAUW. If you’re ready to join, you can find the details on our Join Now page.

AAUW’s “Shape the Future” membership campaigns are based on collecting contact info for guests and referrals. Since we’re a virtual branch, we’re going to offer our members the opportunity to send in names online, and then the branch will followup with membership information which will likely include the discounts that we offer at “live” events. But for this to work we need some names!

[contact-form]

AAUW Raleigh/Wake County Branch

aauwtarheel — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 03:34:41 +0000

The AAUW Raleigh/Wake County Branch will hold a revitalization meeting Tuesday, August 16 6 PM – 7:30 PM Center for Community Leadership/Room #104 in the Junior League Building 711 Hillsborough St., Raleigh. FREE PARKING in back of building off St. Mary’s and Morgan Streets. Please enter the building from the entrance facing Morgan St. At the meeting, the branch will elect 2011-2012 officers and hear from those who attended the AAUW Convention in DC. Tar Heel branch member Joan Robertson is one of those who has volunteered to lead the branch in the next year. If you’d like more information, please contact info@rwc.aauwnc.org.

Do you carry Membership Forms?

Nancy Shoemaker — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 16:49:52 +0000

The Tar Heel Branch membership form has been updated to have our new treasurer’s address and to add a line to give the name of the person who recruited the new member. (There’s a national honor roll of recruiters — fill in your name to get added to that list and entered into drawings for Member-get-a-Member prizes.)

Please do carry forms with you and when issues of equity for women and girls come up in conversation, find a way to tell people about what AAUW is doing.

The new 2011-2012 membership brochures are now available from the national office. They are better than the branch brochure for introducing AAUW to people who aren’t familiar with it at all and for explaining the benefits of joining AAUW at the national level. So stock your purse/briefcase/backpack with these materials:

Branch brochure (if you’d like multiple copies for a special event, please contact info@tarheel.aauwnc.org)
National brochure (order up to 25 copies for free at aauw.org > Member Center > Forms > Supply Order Form) [Link may change in late August. Follow that path from the AAUW member center to find the new form.]
Branch insert for national brochure to tell people how to add AAUW NC and the branch to their national membership.

Watch for new ways that the branch is going to recognize its best recruiters, and start thinking about who among your friends and colleagues could benefit from an AAUW membership!

Notes from July 26 Board Meeting

Nancy Shoemaker — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:15:59 +0000

The AAUW Tar Heel Branch board met via conference call on July 26.

Here are the notes from that discussion: AAUW Tar Heel Branch Board – Notes 7/11/26

Thanks to Mari Pino for being the scribe.

If you note any errors or omissions, please post here or to the Action list. As is our policy because we have no regular meeting schedule, if there are no corrections these notes will stand “approved”.

Agenda distributed 7/25:

AGENDA

11:55 – 12:10 – meet and greet, adjustments to the agenda

Appointment of someone to take minutes. [No need to record discussion, just attendance and any actions.]

12:10 – 12:20 – Finances

FY 11 Report – http://bit.ly/rjV34p

FY 12 Budget – attached

Transfer from Nancy to Lyndee

12:20 – 12:30 – Communication

Website, Email lists, Facebook group

Reaching our “offline” members

How’s it working?

Transfer from Nancy to Jenine

12:30 – 12:40 – Public Policy

AAUW NC efforts and our participation in September meetings

Other ways to engage our members?

12:40 – 12:50 – Program

Ideas to support local gatherings?

Any interest in NC Governors Conference for Women?

12:50 – 1:00 – Wrapup, suggestions for time of next meeting.

If we have time:

Membership

Status of renewals

Ideas for recruiting new members

Comments on new member guide

Michelle is the contact for national info and had a late breaking work contact.

Fundraising

Good news on the Jan-June numbers: http://bit.ly/nQRY7j

Grace has agreed to take leadership in this area, but has a conflict on Tuesday.

FYI:

Branch bylaws: http://aauwtarheel.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/aauw-thb-bylaws-2010-spring2.pdf

Branch policies: http://aauwtarheel.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/policies_of_the_aauw_tar_heel_branch-voct2010.pdf

(At some point we’ll review those to see if changes are needed, but for now, please do be sure you know how to find them. In particular, our process for approving expenses that exceed budget guidelines may need some thought.)