Science Iowa agenda
November 15, 2022
4 p.m.
Call to order
Present: president Dan Chibnall, treasurer Ruth Henderson, secretary Tom O’Donnell, director Maurine Neiman, member Tim Coble.
Approve the minutes of the October 18, 2022, meeting. See:
Ruth moves to approve. Dan seconds. Unanimously approved.
Treasurer’s report – Ruth Henderson
See attached. Also on file here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WdfITtdI1v1zQ7BWjkKwAfuUDf5FNSek/view?usp=sharing
No changes from the previous month. We have $120 in business savings and $2,414.81 in checking. We will have an expenditure of about $500 to reserve the Raccoon River Park for the Science Festival Trail. No other changes.
Ruth said we must order checks, but the bank will only mail them to the Carroll Avenue address in Ames. There was discussion about whether to change our official address. Ruth says we may need to do more research on that. Tom says we could have a post office box, but Dan says that means we must have it centrally located and officers could change locations.
Tom will investigate what is involved changing the address for the IRS and Iowa Secretary of State. Ruth will look into what address we used for the tax return. (It was the Carroll Avenue address.)
Ruth will order the checks and have them go to Kaitlin at the Ames address. Ruth will contact her to arrange pickup or delivery.
Dan moves to accept the report. Tom seconds. Report accepted.
New business
Events coming up for Science Iowa participation – Ruth Henderson
We missed the event at the Izaak Walton league, which we learned about too late. Meanwhile, the Iowa Environmental Council will have its environmental lobby day at the capitol in February or March. Ruth is willing to attend that. She said it’s good to participate and network with people and she likes doing those. We should watch for events that we can participate in even if we’re not formally invited.
Writing proposals for donations: Information that we want to include – Ruth Henderson
Ruth noted that at the last meeting we discussed organizations and businesses that we could contact to seek funds and grants. If we’re doing this, we should be consistent in our message. Ruth suggested creating a document to pull from, including aspects of our mission statement and past activities.
Dan said we should have template language on a Google document and a draft of a letter we can copy and paste. He started one and we’ll all contribute to it. He also created a document for companies and organizations that are possible targets for grants. He put the documents in Slack for access.
Old business:
2023 Science Festival Trail: application, payment and length of event – Ruth Henderson
Ruth asked whether we want to keep the event from 1 to 4 p.m. Most said that was fine. She also asked if we want to pursue Julie Meachen from Des Moines University as a possible speaker. Dan said we should define what we want her to do, whether it’s merely to speak, to meet people, or provide a hands-on activity.
We discussed having more than one speaker, perhaps one each hour. We will consider the idea and compile a list of possible speakers.
2022 candidate survey – Tom O’Donnell
Tom offered a written report. It was the best year for the survey, but we still received only a handful of responses. The article in the Des Moines Register drove traffic to the site. Dan noted that we got a lot of social media interaction with campaigns and candidates. Tom said he will meet with the other main organizations to do a postmortem and plan for 2024.
Dan thanked Tom for getting materials together, assembling social media posts and opinion pieces. Tom said he wants to get other Science Iowa folks involved in planning. He’ll start again in late 2023.
Member topics for discussion
Tim Coble said he wants to continue receiving the meeting emails and participating when he can.