Garden Club of Windham
Minutes of the Board Meeting, Thursday, May 30, 2024
6:30 – 8:00 pm, VIA ZOOM
Call to order – 6:35 pm, Jay Osborne and Barbara Wright, co-chairs, presiding.
Attending – Faith Kenton, Jay Osborne, Dan Phipps, Debbie Stoloff, Barbara Wright.
Minutes of the Board meeting held on 4/25/2024 were posted on the Bulletin Board for review. Faith moved and Barbara seconded that they be approved. They were approved with two abstentions (Debbie and Dan).
Fundraising for the High Street Hillside Garden – Faith wishes to participate in a white elephant sale in Hampton, selling household items she no longer needs. She plans to post a sign at her table stating all proceeds will go toward maintenance of the Garden Club of Windham’s HSH. She will also accept donations. She will report the proceeds from the sale, and they will be deposited to the HSH class. Jay moved and Debbie seconded a motion to approve Faith’s participation. The vote was unanimous.
There was a brief discussion about when, exactly, the Board should vote to approve a plan involving fundraising. The new policies require a vote on any expenditure over $500 but say nothing about plans to raise funds. Faith also suggested that the threshold for Board approval of expenditures should be lower – say, $250 or $300. We agreed that these were questions requiring further discussion.
Proposed September plant sale – Because the HSH will require continued funding, Faith would like to hold a fall plant sale to benefit the garden. She will sell plants from the HSH and her own backyard; plants may also come from the Willi Brew Garden and Schilberg Butterfly Garden. The sale will not require donations from GC members, it will take place at Faith’s home, and she will handle all arrangements such as publicity, set-up, staffing, and signage. There was a consensus to support the plan; no vote was taken.
Garden Club Plant Sale – Attendees discussed various aspects of the plant sale on May 18-19. Among positives, there was agreement that the new location behind the Schilberg Butterfly Garden, facing Main Street, had many positives: it was central, highly visibility, offered plenty of space, there was ample parking, and theft was not a problem overnight from Saturday to Sunday. Sunday at the Food Coop was the most successful ever, bringing in an additional $500. There was a lot of walk-by traffic, leading to friendly interactions and plenty of opportunities to get the word out about the Garden Club. It was fortunate that Jean’s tables, chairs, and canopy were available.
Areas where there could be improvement were also discussed. There was no card reader available on Sunday, so people who wanted to pay for a plant or donate could not use a credit card. The website also needs a “Donate” button on the homepage. More volunteers and better signage would have helped, as would the chance to deliver plants and set up the day before.
Suggestions for next year included: holding the sale indoors so that rain is not a problem; delivering/storing plants more conveniently, e.g., at the Schilberg Butterfly Garden or behind Jillson House; recruiting a larger committee to oversee the sale; holding the sale both Saturday and Sunday at the Food Coop; purchasing our own canopy; and having a standard to-do list so that processes don’t have to be reinvented each year. The lack of a storage shed was also discussed.
Despite the weather, the plant sale generated $1020,17. This is less than in recent years but respectable, given the weather and other factors.
Signage – Faith recently discovered some Garden Club signs in her garage, put them out at GC gardens, and we all responded very positively. We agreed that we need to invest in more and better signs. Discussion centered on how we could combine the messages from the “Pollinator Pathway” and GC signs into a single, generic sign that could be put out at all our gardens. We agreed that it should include the P. O. Box number, website address, and QR code but not the name of the individual garden. We would like the quality of the material to be better than what was used for the pollinator signs, which crumbled and fell apart after a couple of winters. . Jay agreed to go to Signs Plus, look at proofs for earlier GC signage, and get estimates.
Other matters – Faith reminded us that Karrie Kirchner will be starting work as HSH garden tender in mid-June. Faith will be gone during July and August. She assured us that between Karrie, Yves, and volunteers, there was now no chance the garden would devolve to the condition it reached at the end of last summer.
Dan asked what watering would be necessary (requiring a request to PW and involving a bill from Windham Water Works); Faith said that would be up to Yves but if the weather was like last year, little or no watering would be necessary. Jay asked that Yves communicate with us; Faith said Karrie would include information from Yves in her biweekly reports, and Barbara Gibson, who is Karrie’s contact with the club in Faith’s absence, will pass information along via the GC email address: gardenclubofwindham@gmail.com.
Barbara announced that Margaret Breen at Shane Navratil LLC is in the process of filing our 990 statement with IRS; Jay requested her contact information.
Next Meeting – TBD
Adjournment – Debbie moved to adjourn, Dan seconded, and the meeting was adjourned at at 7:45 pm
Respectuclly submitted, Barbara Wright
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