12/19/06 Staff Conference Call

 

Ashley: Facilitator

Sarah: Recorder

 
*Check-In’s

 
*Follow-up from last week:

*FJC Wellness Fund follow-up after the holidays

                        -put on January call agenda

 

*Work descriptions/priorities

                        -Think about during the holidays

           

*Holiday donation letter to affiliates

            -Madigan will start formulating with Ashley

 

*Travel budget/Other Reimbursements

-Sarah and Ash in England

            -Tickets were $340pp round-trip, purchased yesterday!!!

-Pre-approve amount for spending in England?

            -Per diem travel, food, etc. stipend

            -All expenses above and beyond normal every-day expenses

            -Make sure we’re consistent with policy for everyone

-Ashley and Sarah will bring proposal to next meeting

 

            -Reimbursements

                        -What’s the policy? What needs to be pre-approved?

                                    -Everything should be subject to same standard, policy

                                    -Cell phone bills

                                                -Should everyone be reimbursed for a portion?

-We talked about this in August-because we have small salaries, this might provide compensation.

-Retroactively reimburse everyone since August?

                                                            -Set an amount per month and reimburse

                                                            -Set for September 1st as date for

                                                -Monthly allowance with receipts/documentation

                       

**Decision: $40 per month, with receipts for everyone. Have FJC add to    salary check as reimbursement. We will send receipts to FJC.**

 

-Travel re-imbursement policy?

            -Reimburse for Metro-North travel

                       

-Buy pre-paid calling card to keep in office?

Online phone card we can all use? Ashley will investigate.

*NYU update

            -Students stressed out about end of semester, unable to think about next semester.

            -Sascha will put Madigan in touch with Liz.

            -Issue of having professional counselors required to be at meetings

                        -Challenge to what we consider “safe space”…

                        -Next semester, call meetings “discussion groups”, not “support meetings”

 

*Website- hiring someone

            -Volunteer seems to be a no-go, Jonah’s really busy…

            -$30-35/hr. for man in England to fix problems with search, etc.?

                        -Let’s do it.

                        -Ash and Will take a look and see exactly what we need done.

 

*”Navigating…” publishing offer by New Harbinger

-Last collective call mentioned piece of writing by person in Bay Area, saying that reader is pro-meds.

-Work with New Harbinger on publishing as an actual book?

-Re-work reader to reflect other voices, visions, new info about meds, less

emphasis on bipolar specifically.

-Create map of all the things we want to publish in 2007, bigger strategy.

            -We might want to look out for other publishers, too.

 

*Info account

            -2 strategies have been suggested

                        -switching to new account

                                    -“icaristas” as main email account

                                    -have auto-response telling emailers that we have switched

                                    -then, don’t order anything online with new account, use old one.

                                   

                        -spam filter service

                                    -creates an obstacle to emailing us

                                    -let’s not do this.

 

*Jed foundation

-Consider all of us meeting with them…

 

*Pay Pal donations?

            -Talk about this week, out of time…

 

*12/17/06 collective call processing

            -Talk about this week, out of time…

 

*Ann Arbor area folks interested in Icarus

            -Talk about this week, out of time…

Happy holidays!!