D2Care

Well, we have reached a major milestone in the creation of our organization. As most of you are aware, we began taking Charter Memberships on November 15, 2006. Hooray!!!!!!

So just a few more updates. We completed and approved the Bylaws on November 5, 06 at our second Board meeting. The paperwork for the 501(c)(3) tax exempt status is pending. We are only waiting for the signature page to the Bylaws to make its way around the US then we will mail everything in. I suspect that will be before the end of November. And rumor has it that it takes approximately 4-6 months for the IRS to verify approval. However, tax exempt status will be retroactive to the day we incorporated, June 24, 2006.

Our September Board meeting minutes are on the News Page. In keeping with our open door policy, we will continue to post minutes. However, only members of the organization may request a copy of the financial report. A full report will be available at the March or May Members meetings.

Our committees are working hard. The Marketing and Merchandise Committee has selected (with your help) a logo for our organization. This logo draft has gone back to the member that created it for some fine tuning. Once that is done, it will be posted everywhere.

The Membership Committee worked very hard with the Board to establish some membership guidelines and to help us define the role of the members within our organization.

The Web Committee has determined the categories for the website, and will soon be working hard to get those in place. I also believe Jennifer will be back working on the adoption pages so we can start posting dogs in need of homes.  I’m looking forward to that page.

The Funding Committee has reviewed an application from another organization for disbursement of funds. They will soon be finalizing and writing policy to go with the form. I believe the first goal is funding of emergency vet care for deaf dogs.

I would like to give a personal Thank You for your support in our endeavors. Although we still have a distance to go, we would not have been able to get this far without all of you.

Katrina
President, D2Care

These minutes were approved unanimously at the Board of Directors meeting November 5, 2006.The meeting was called to order by the President at 5:39 PM PDT with all members present.There were no previous meetings, so there were no previous minutes to be read.

Treasurers Report by Myra Ellis:The Treasurers Report is available to D2Care members on request.

Committee Reports

Web Committee by Jennifer Laus:The Web Committee is gathering input on the things people would like to see on the website. We are sorting them into groups of like items in order to create an outline of what will be on the site. With luck it will be comprehensive enough that new items will fit in easily. We have all but a handful of things sorted out, which we will probably be bringing to the Helping Deaf Dogs group for help.

Funding Committee by Jennifer Laus:We decided to start out with just funding “non-emergency” help requests, for non-routine things. We looked at a bunch of different applications, and now we’re trying to work out what questions to ask and how to evaluate them. And we’re looking at medical funding. We just need people to find time to talk about fund raising. We have no funds at this time.

Membership Committee by Rhonda Champion:Katrina agreed to help Rhonda while her other responsibilities were making it difficult to do much work on the committee.It was moved by Katrina and passed unanimously to write up proposals for both paper and electronic balloting and then get feedback from the membership committee, the D2Care board, and possibly the Helping Deaf Dogs groups.

Marketing and Merchandising report by Lori Skinner:The marketing and merchandising committee has been busy deciding what products to start out with. We have also been working on a logo for the group. We posted a poll on the deaf dogs list to see what products had the most interest. There were ten choice and we asked that people vote for 2 items. There were 93 votes with t-shirts and dog tags winning. We currently have 21 samples of logos on the Helping Deaf Dogs site. We are trying to set parameters as to what we think would best represent D2Care. These include pictures (dog or not), colors and fonts. We hope to have samples available for the Helping Deaf Dogs List in the next two weeks and have a poll set up shortly after.

Board involvement on the committees:It was moved by Katrina and passed unanimously to postpone discussion.

Bylaw review:Discussion was postponed by unanimous consent.

Discussion of the proposed budget for the 501(c)(3) application:(During this discussion Becca had to leave for work.)A synopsis of the discussion is available to D2Care members on request.

Minutes:A provisional copy of the minutes is to be posted to the D2Care_Board site for discussion and approval before the next meeting. Moved by Jim, approved unanimously.

A motion to adjourn was made by Jim, seconded and approved unanimously at 7:19 pm PDT.D2Care members may request a copy of the full minutes from a Director.