Wounded Nature—Working Veterans Board Meeting
Saturday, August 4, 2012, 9:00 AM
at
Bush Law Group, PC
3 Broad Street, 4th Floor
Charleston, SC 29401
Present:
Kimberly Bush
Richard Bush
Carolyn Darrow, by phone
Matt Lipkin, by phone
Stacy Pearsall
Rudy Socha
Jeff Stevenson
Kevin Sullivan, by phone
Lou Winoski
Absent:
Jenny Bush
Jeremy Cage
John Dillard
Lee Kelley
David Neblett
Jared Slovan
The meeting was opened by Rudy Socha. A Rondee conference call was set up for those unable to attend. Charleston, SC is the home port of Wounded Nature—Working Veterans.
Main agenda items:
Board Seat Renewals and Term Extensions
Boat Sponsorship Status
January Fundraiser
Finances
General Discussion
Board Seat Renewals and Term Extensions
Jeff Stevenson and Matt Lipkin were both up for renewal and were approved unanimously. The Board also approved an increase of officer terms to two (2) years, noting that Jeff may not be able to step up to President on that schedule due to work responsibilities.
Rudy is also talking to Doug Kelley, Business Leader for Production at Boeing, about taking a position on the Board.
Boat Sponsorships
We need $1.5 million per boat sponsorship.
The CEO of Subway (an Army vet) has shown some interest in boat sponsorship beginning with local promotion of our events and local (Charleston area) store participation transferring to nationwide participation.
The Board Chairman of Chesapeake Energy is a former Marine and has an interest in boat sponsorship.
Rudy is talking with both of these men to try to secure a sponsorship.
January 2013 Fundraiser
The WN-WV fundraiser will be January 26, 2013. The website, http://woundednature.org/attend-our-party/ will carry all pertinent information.
Kim has secured The Omar Temple Hall for the event. Barefoot is supplying the wine and champagne for the party, Bacardi is supplying the rum and rum drink demonstrations, and Sweetwater Brewery will supply the beer. Barefoot will also tag their retail sales bottles in the Southeast to announce the party and promote ticket sales.
The attendance goal is 800 with a ticket price of $100.
We do need donations of auction items large and small for both the silent and live auctions to be held during the party.
Finances
We continue to be open to any and all various paths of sponsorship as we push to fund the first boat. Once the first boat is funded, it should be easier to secure sponsors for the remaining boats.
Rudy and Jeff are investigating some grants form Google.
Rudy continues to reach out to corporate sponsors.
General Discussion
We continue to use student interns for social networking and as a means to collect public donations. Local volunteers could provide increased exposure for us by donating their time, not dollars.
Stars & Stripes is a female veteran-owned marketing firm in San Diego. They have expressed an interest in finding a CEO for a high tech company to solicit donations for a west coast boat.
Pin-ups for Patriots are calendars distributed to military personnel serving overseas. They may have some of their pin-ups attend the party.
We would like to place our logo and a link to the WN-WV site on as many corporate sites as possible. Kevin will investigate placing the logo on the Green Mountain coffee site.
We will try to continue to increase the number of non-board member volunteers that could be retirees, military spouses, or students. Our current interns are from The Citadel and from the College of Charleston.
We will hold a short Board meeting by phone on October 6, at 9am to provide everyone with an update on the boats and party. The next full Board meeting will be held the morning of January 26, 2013, since everyone will be in town for our fundraiser.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:40 AM.
Respectfully submitted,
Carolyn Darrow
