Officer Minutes and Agenda

RIMS

Officers Planning Meeting

Edge Restaurant

Coralville, Iowa

July 22, 2009

Present: Pat Thompson(deputy –Secretary), Tom Ohrt(deputy-President), Hal Larson(deputy-RIMS Delegate, Webmaster, External Affairs (Gov’t)), Kathryn Kurth(deputy-Treasurer), Mary Griffin(Affiliate-Advisor-Membership), Stephanie Romagnoli(deputy-VP Programming), Jon Raftis(student/intern/GIS President-Advisor)

Tom Ohrt, President opened with a new Vision for the Greater Quad Cities RIMS Chapter and that is to “Engage our current members.”     We have 75 members but only the same 15  are at meetings.  The challenge is to get them (the members) involved. Of the 75 surveys we sent out 4 came back and one was from a non member.  Whatever we can do we need to do it to bring people to the meetings. We will try changing the day of the week that we have our meetings on, to see if that entices more members to come

The treasurer’s report was next on the Agenda.  First Tom offered some general guidelines;

1.      As the monthly numbers are presented Tom asked that a comparison be offered of the Year to Date numbers compared with the Budget.

2.      Don’t know how this was done in the past but we need to invoice for missed meetings.  If you say you are going to attend then you need to pay for a missed meeting.

3.      Meeting Revenue is not in agreement with our records of meetings so we need to check our records to see how the revenue was posted.

4.      We need to file for taxes.  Kathryn has been in touch with the IRS and we cannot file yet.  We are still not registered as a non-profit and we need to do that.  But according to the IRS there is not a problem because we do not have enough income.

Current balances are as follows given by Kathryn Kurth:

Checking: $736.30

Savings: $5,004.43

CD: $21,195.86

Several questions came up about the report that were general in nature and can be addressed in our monthly meetings.  What kind of interest are we getting on our CDs?  We had overdrafts on the checking account because it was not connected to the savings with overdraft protection like it should have been.  Discussion was about the budget and the assignment by category – this may be resolved by the reporting by category each month.  Expense and revenue records may have had some allocation issues; the Treasurer will check the records.    There was zero revenue for some meetings reported in October, January, and April.  This may be only because the information was not properly captured or missed as the report was prepared because of the poor change over between Treasurers.

Programming was next delivered by Stephanie Romagnoli.

Again interaction between the Board and speaker left me uncertain of how topics were generated.  It was presented that a Program Schedule for 2009-2010 needs to be developed and put on the website and put on there in August.  Stephanie was asked if our Diamond Sponsors, CorVel, Holmes Murphy, and Zurich had responded with their choice of dates and topics for a meeting.  Holmes Murphy is the only one that had decided on November for the month and the topic of “MOD estimation”.   We really need the rest of the sponsor input by August 15.

Other topics discussed by the board include Legislative position of the Health Care Plan, Mediation, Cyber Liability, Swine Flu, Case Law Review, some sort of Round Table Discussion, and Internship by our Students.  Pat was asked to check on the internship that was set up by HNI.

We needed to decide on kickoff to get things started.  It was decided that we needed to involve the students early for this.  Date was set at September14 a Monday for a meeting with the students, free to them with pizza and pop provided.  Time was to be 3 to 5 PM with a Q & A sort of agenda where RIMS members describe there job and then let the students come and question them.

Tom asked that we report back to him by August 1st on what we can do to get people to a meeting.

The Seminar & Golf outing which was held in May did not attract a lot of attendance for the speaker portion of the meeting. .  The $1,950 speaker fee was not an effective use of our funds for the number of members who attended.  Tom suggested that next year we have a golf outing with a charitable theme and no speaker with our contribution possibly going to support of the UI Risk Management Program.

It is suggested that Stephanie develop a committee for programming.

Membership Report – Jennifer Meadows was absent- answered by Patrick Thompson.

The Associate members who have not yet paid their dues, have been sent a reminder e-mail.  Eight Associates of the Chapter have paid their annual dues already.

Jennifer has posted her picture in the website and listed new members to the Chapter.

E-mails have been sent new members - Tom asked that;

1.  New members are reviewed by the President for an approval process.

2.  New members should be sent a welcome letter not just an e-mail.

Tom also asked that the checks for the Associates be mailed directly to Jennifer from now on.

Jennifer asked about calling other successful chapters.  Who does she speak to?  Call Jill Levi in New York RIMS and she can give you the contacts.

Jennifer will need to change the contact name for CorVel, contact Stephanie Romagnoli for name and number.  Also Kevin Lanphier has a possible replacement, Shannon Ford.  Also the name of Bass and Babb has changed to Health Systems International.  Please make those corrections.

It was suggested Jennifer arrange a committee to assist performing Membership duties.

Secretaries Report was given by Patrick Thompson with some opening suggestions by Tom Ohrt.

Tom appointed Pat the keeper of the Chapter Camera and get the web sight updated with Pictures of our members having fun at the meetings.

The Secretary has access to a number of interesting things to put into a Newsletter and should develop a committee to put these things together and prepare a Quarterly Newsletter.  For input from the student body contact Jon Raftis, President of GIS.

It was decided to get testimonials of members to add to the web sight or to put into a pamphlet to get to prospective members.

Corporate Member Profiles should be updated quarterly and it was suggested PMX Industries should be next to include in the web sight.

Secretary’s minutes should be posted on the website monthly along with a summary of the last meeting.  The summary should include who the speaker was and the topic they spoke on.

Finally, you are the communication of the Chapter and the Chapter’s historian we need to have your documentation.

Legislative Affairs Report was given by Hal Larson.  When asked about current affairs he sighted in Iowa the recent escape of the insurance industry of several expensive pieces of legislation.  He offered “Employee Choice of Provider”, and the move to take all injuries to “Body of a Whole”.  These things are going to reappear, and we need to be watchful

Student Mentoring is with the generous support of Viana and the students of GIS.

The Golf Outing financials showed a net loss of $487 to the Chapter, because not enough members attended the speaker portion of the meeting to offset the speaker price of $1,950.

Presidents Report was given by Tom Ohrt.

Our goal is to receive $12,000 from our Chapter Sponsorship. We need to change our “Associates of the Chapter” to a Bronze Sponsorship type of membership. This is because RIMS does not recognize Associate Members. We will offer some givebacks in the way of free meeting attendance to keep their actual dues close to $150 because we will need to charge them $250 to be a Bronze Sponsor. We are not to even have them as committee members; however we can use them as “advisors”.  It will just be a change of title but we need to adjust this around for the future   Tom has agreed to take responsibility for administering the “free” dinners he plans to offer to Associates changing to Sponsors. Associates changing to Bronze Sponsors will be optional for 2009-2010, but will be mandatory for 2010-2011. 

Please take a look at the suggested Sponsor Program changes and offer input by Aug 15.  

Chapter Logo – Tom suggested we have like other chapters a logo that we use on our web sight and letterhead.  .  It was suggested that we have a contest for GIS students to develop the Logo. We will provide compensation for their efforts.  Jon Raftis will coordinate.  Tom will provide examples of logos from other chapters, a copy of our letterhead and some background information about our Chapter to Jon so that he can provide to the students who are interested in designing a logo.

Tom suggested that we change our letterhead, and he will work on coming up with a new format.

Chapter Brochure needs to be updated and this should be taken on.  Tom and Hal discussed getting together on this.

Chapter Survey results with only 4 responses tell us very little about what they want. In addition concern was raised about the level of participation.

Constitution and By Laws show inconsistencies between ourselves and the Society.  We must bring ourselves to their standard or risk expulsion.  Changing the way we handle Associates of the Chapter is one item.  They can no longer be called members, the charge to the brokers and agents will have to be for Sponsorship and then the “members” will have to be called “advisors”.

Committee members must be Deputies and “Associates” can only be Advisors.

The other thing in the By Laws is that structure must be in the Board.  There should be only one VP that will take over for the President in the case of the Presidents absence.  So we need to have an election to determine who will be next in line to the presidency and Hal suggested that person be trained to take over.  The same with each of our jobs, we should have a person to assume the job if we are unable to be there.  That person needs to be picked out and trained.

High School Program now getting young involved early. It is suggested we move to that with a type of job fair setting- letting the students know what is out there.

Chapter should purchase a projection screen for the Chapter so we don’t have to pay to rent one or hunt one down for every meeting.  Tom has been borrowing one from Rockwell for prior meetings.

Chapter Recognition Program has changed and Tom suggests we pick one and attack it early.

The remainder of the night was spent going over the intricacies of the Budget.  The Budget has been submitted by the Treasurer and should be approved with the minutes.

Respectfully submitted,

Patrick Thompson

Secretary