RESCHEDULED from 2 February
PRESENT: Pam Proulx-Curry, Veronica Kupferman, Lisa Morin
Staff: M. Ashmore, K. Preecs
The meeting opened at 1:34 pm by teleconference
Minutes
1. Welcome & Agenda adjustments
No adjustments needed
2. Governor's Service Awards
Selection Committee -- needs candidates. Commissioners are encouraged to volunteer
KP shared her need for assistance in reviewing applications for the competitive Governor's Service Awards. Committee members volunteered to assist and PPC offered to make the request of other Commissioners at the upcoming business meeting for additional volunteers.
KP also shared the due dates and the various award types. nominations are due March 18. The group discussed the Adult & Youth Rolls of Honor as well as individual awards.
MA shared the content from the GSA web page and pulled up a copy of the nomination form. Members discussed ideas for increasing the number of nominations. LM suggested that smaller organizations might have challenges in getting multiple letters of support. Minor changes to language were suggested in the form. These included adding pull downs or text suggesting the types or categories or types of individuals who might be appropriate for submitting letters of support.
LM and PPC shared the idea of using the award ceremony to attract more nominations, making it more of a publicized event. MA shared some history of the award ceremonies and the participation being dependent on level of involvement from the various administrations over the years. The suggestion to reach out to the Governor's staff regarding options for a face to face ceremony was made and KP followed up immediately. VK raised the idea of using a mailing to promote the nominations and MA shared that this has been done in the past. KP noted that there was a cost for this, though it was done frequently in the past. MA noted that the primary vehicle for promotion was the Volunteer Fare newsletter which goes to more than 3000 recipients. VK noted the value of having a postcard or notice that could be held physically or put into a calendar.
Past awards no longer offered were discussed and KP noted that these are reviewed annually and could be added or revisited next year, but that it would be too late to make modifications this year.
LM also noted the value of connecting with legislators and providing information to them about the awards and helping them contact the awardees. She cautioned that it was important to make sure that the awardee is connected with the correct legislator, especially when organizations in one area have volunteers serving or living in different districts.
3. Data from Programs survey on offered Trainings
Reviewed prior to meeting -- access survey results here
MA shared observations and specific items from the survey results and clarified that the results included items programs were already offering, notice if they did not offer a topic, and whether the wished to offer a topic. The desire to offer was associated with not having the capacity or skills to offer rather than the topic being something they could provide or had hoped to provide but didn't.
He also shared that the intent was to suggest to programs that they might open their own trainings up to other programs' members. He requested suggestions for how to best use the information collected. In particular, how to go beyond simply sharing access points and whether to look at taking on certain trainings so they would be delivered by commission staff.
Group suggested a tiered approach, with the primary being to create a list of places that programs can access to get available trainings, to encourage collaboration among programs, to sometimes offer training directly to members or offer it through programs to members.
PPC & LM recommended, as an example, the opportunity to collaborate with local credit unions to offer some financial management and personal finance trainings.
The opted to continue the discussion at the next meeting because of limited time.
4. Maine Ready -- implementation: strategies for increasing participation/use
Tabled
5. Additional updates
None
Upcoming work and topics: Continued discussion of Maine Ready and Program Training Data
Meeting adjourned at 2:34pm