Saturday, February 27, 2010

FOWL Takes a Giant Step Forward

At the meeting last Sunday the Steering Committee in charge of 're-booting' the organization made decisive progress on a number of fronts. A New FOWL Board of Directors and Officers were chosen.
  • Ray Stewart - President
  • Shirley Tomosillo - Secretary
  • Marge Diamond - Treasurer
  • John Pais
  • Mike Wagner
  • Daryl Davis
  • Helen Kopp
  • Kathleen Bradley
This is an excellent core of Wetland Stewards with a long history of contributing to FOWL. Among these board members we have a great pool of diverse talents. Their enthusiasm is delightfully strong. They are digging right in to do the work of the organization. Follow up on membership and tabling will continue on March 7th at the Presidential Offices (Rays' house) at 2pm.
There is still plenty of room for more members to step up and pitch in. We have immediate need for graphics/visual arts talents as we prepare materials for the Earthfest 2010 tabling at the Zoo and other locations. Let me know if you can help.
Membership
Based on the poll results from 31 respondents to the simple survey, membership contributions have been adjusted. Basic membership level is now $20 with a student/senior level of $10. The 'Lifetime' membership is discontinued. All those who have contributed at the lifetime level will continue to enjoy that status. With our new membership committee headed by Mike Wagner, we will be taking steps to assure timely updates of membership status and develop a routine process for keeping annual memberships coming in.

Non-profit status
The federal 501(c)3 application process will soon be streamlined with an online application. The cost will be greatly reduced. When this is rolled out in 2010, we will be moving forward with the non-profit application.
By-laws
A standard set of by-laws were introduced for the boards consideration. Several modifications were recommended. These will be the subject of upcoming board meetings with the goal of adopting them before the June 19th picnic/annual meeting/fundraiser.

Mascot
In other swift and decisive action, based on the results of our Simple Survey, FOWL has adopted the Spotted Salamander as its mascot.

Congratulations Ambystoma maculatum.
 

posted by Ray @ 12:13 PM   1 Comments

1 Comments:

At 5:51 PM , Blogger Sandy Deja said...

Hi,

I just wanted to respond to your decision to wait for the IRS "Cyber Assistant," the less expensive, on-line 501(c)(3) application.

Here is an exchange between an IRS representative and an attendee at a conference held in Baltimore in early February, 2010:

Attendee: When do you expect it to be available?

IRS: The Cyber Assistant tool? It is being tested right now and I know that they ran into glitches with it and until those glitches get worked out, it’s not going to be available and I don’t know when that is.

Attendee: Sometime this year, maybe?

IRS: I don’t know when the glitches are going to be perfected.

So, it's not clear whether the on-line 501(c)(3) application will, in fact, be ready "soon."

This page of my website: http://501c3book.org/Cyber_1023.html has a list of factors to consider when trying to decide if you should wait.

Best of luck when you do apply!

Sandy Deja

 

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