Highlights of the 11/26/19 WILPF Board Meeting

By Eileen Kurkoski
WILPF US Secretary
December 10, 2019

At their November 26 meeting, the national board appointed a program chair, discussed collaborating with “An Economy of Our Own,” received CSW and international updates, and discussed several financial/budget issues.

1. Program Chair: The Board voted unanimously to appoint Joan Goddard Program Chair, starting immediately. Her appointment is for the two months until she takes office in that position at the late January Board meeting, as a result of the anticipated (unopposed) election results. The exciting new challenge for her position is the implementation of Program 2.0, agreed upon by the Board, the Program Committees, and the overwhelmingly favorable response in the survey of WILPF members. Program 2.0 seeks to make WILF US program work more strategic, cohesive, and effective.
    
2. Minutes: The Board approved the September 24 WILPF Board minutes.
    
3. WILPF Collaboration with “An Economy of Our Own”: Marybeth Gardam is recommending WILPF enter into a formal collaboration with this organization. “An Economy of Our Own” is planning three conferences for 2020 to attract women who are interested in working on a new economy with a feminist perspective. The organization and the conferences will also promote solutions practiced by some women around the country but which are not getting enough attention. Others in the group include authors, Ellen Hodgson Brown (Web of Debt), David C. Korten (When Corporations Rule the World), and Rickey Gard Diamond (Screwnomics). The Board approved proceeding on the collaboration procedure and looks forward to more details.
    
4. Commission on the Status of Women Update: WILPF International has invited women from the Middle East and Afghanistan to be involved in some kind of WILPF International CSW program. Mary Hanson Harrison has submitted a request for a CSW presentation on food, and Darien De Lu has worked with others to submit a request for a CSW panel on the 1995 Peace Train to Beijing, a WILPF International initiative in which she and over 200 other riders took part.
    

   For our own WILPF US CSW Programs – the Practicum and Local to Global (L2G) –  we unanimously agreed to create an ad hoc CSW Programs Committee to support the Coordinators/Faculty of our CSW Programs, as they directed us to do, and to seek Practicum program participants at universities located where we have branches, and to generally help promote the programs. Three board members volunteered to be on the committee: Jan Corderman, Treasurer, Mary Hanson-Harrison, Past President, and Eileen Kurkoski, Secretary; Eileen will focus on getting grants for WILPF US program. More volunteers are needed! (Contact president@WILPFUS.org for more information.) Note: The L2G application deadline is December 20, 2019.

5. International Update: WILPF US is signing on to a statement from some of the Americas Region sections against the extreme violence and threats in connection with the coup d’états in Bolivia.
    
6. Financial and Budget Discussions: The Board discussed the following topics related to our budget.

• Providing more support for issue committees and branches. In the subsequent executive session, the Board voted to approve limited additional support, using current staff.
• Modifying the WILPF US subsidy for Local to Global participants’ travel expenses. The Finance Committee will present a proposal at the January board meeting.
• Obtaining bids to develop a new (or better) website. In May 2019 the Board had approved moving forward on a new website.
• Maintaining WILPF US’s social media (esp. Facebook) presence by paying a social media worker vs relying on a volunteer-only social media presence. Darien De Lu presented a number of statistics about our FB posts over the past five months. She used these statistics to show how having staff post “news” items related to topics our issue committees are addressing led to substantially increased numbers of “people reached” (as well as “engaged”) for other (not as popular) posts about specific WILPF US actions and topics. (In the subsequent executive session, the Board voted to approve limited social media work, using current staff.)
• Having a series of calls to promote and train for a member recruitment campaign and rewarding members who bring in new members by providing WILPF sashes, books on hand, and WILPF T-shirts.  (The Board approved awarding sashes and on-hand books.)
• Changing our travel reimbursement protocols for Board-related (and some other) travel, to raise the mileage payment (using a car) from the current $.14/mi., and to clarify the hotel cost limitation for a “reasonable” hotel, shared room. (The Board generally approved some additional reimbursement. The Finance Committee will present a proposal at the January board meeting.)

7. Executive Session: After the open Board meeting the Board discussed in executive session what kinds of work should be done by particular staff members. Also the Board approved the Nominating Committee membership appointment by Laura Dewey, Acting Chair of the Nominating Committee, of an active volunteer, Martha Collins of Milwaukee.