GWIS: Graduate Women in Science

Executive Director´s 2010 Annual Report
July 1, 2009-June 30, 2010

Executive Summary: We have made great strides this year towards our goal of modernization with our key organizational achievements in the areas of communication, finance, and governance.

1) Communications: Prior to this year, we communicated only by e-mail and an occasional phone call. This year we expanded our communication efforts by holding ten web conferences! These included quarterly meetings with the National Council (3), the Finance Committee (4), the Fellowship Coordinator and her Reviewers (2), and the big web conference of the year-the Grand Chapter meeting where we had 100% representation from all chapters and voted on our membership requirement changes. We learned a great deal about the web conferences; they can be successful with 40+ individuals participating but it takes an incredible amount of pre-conference efforts. Preparation for this web conference was labor intensive; all attendees had to be checked as paying members, chapters had to be notified 60 days in advance of the conference-for two weeks and had e-mails going back and forth between all the officers to prior to this meeting. But it was a successful and a historical meeting!

My recommendation is to expand the budget to $1500-2000 to include additional web conferences –perhaps to have a Grand Chapter meeting in January again and in June. The Chapters enjoyed participating and had only positive comments about it. This also gives the chapters a way to see how National functions and could bring more interest in participating as a National leader.

2) Finances
After three years of effort, we finally got our financial house in order-thanks to the herculean effort by Kathleen Bennett, our new National Treasurer. Our previous treasurer was in Canada, and her Canadian version of QuickBook would not transfer to the US version; therefore, Kathleen entered all transactions from our last audit (FY 2006-2007) and reconciled it with our Merrill Lynch statements. Our QuickBook database is now current! In addition, I worked with the Finance Committee to eventually choose an audit firm for us. Names were obtained from the Minnesota Charities Review Council and then we approached three groups; Olsen Thielen, Eide Bailly, and LarsonAllen for proposals.

This effort began in December and by April we had our proposals from them and had re-submitted additional follow-up questions generated in the 3rd Quarter Finance Committee´s web conference. Initially, Eide Bailly was eliminated due to the excessive cost, and then I renegotiated reduced prices with LarsonAllen to match Olsen Thielen, (who was the lowest.) While anyone of the three could have provided us with the services we needed, we choose LarsonAllen due to their national presence,; this is especially important if our treasurer position moves to another area of the US.

We needed to submit two forms: The Federal IRS 990 and the NY state CHAR500 form (where we are incorporated). These forms were completed and sent in by May 17th! Once again this was an incredible effort by LarsonAllen and Kathleen to complete this on time as the audit firm award was made April 28th! LarsonOlsen will now be doing the financial review for FY 2008-2009 and then will follow it up with FY 2009-2010 review.

In addition, we need to complete the new IRS Accountability Standards (Whistleblower Policy, Conflict of Interest Policy, and Document Retention Policy) by November when our 990 is due again. (Kathy Grako is working on ours). The purpose of the Accountability Standards is to strengthen nonprofits´ commitment to accountable practices and provide meaningful information to the donating public in order to advance more informed philanthropy. The IRS is requiring that non-profits in our situation submit the Accountability Standards with their annual 990, put them on their website for greater transparency and submit them to their page on GuideStar.

I have spent approximately 20 hours retrieving and posting our information on GuideStar, while waiting for the current 990 to be completed. GuideStar is “the” website where IRS 990´s and organizational information are posted (990´s are informational reviews for non-profits since we don´t pay taxes) and the organization´s audits. (Note: I am writing an impact statement among other items for GuideStar and have fellowship winners and dollar amounts from 1992, but have some holes in it. Therefore, if anyone has 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, and 2006 numbers, please contact me! ).

Interestingly, the three auditing firms checked us out on GuideStar before they decided to submit their proposals, even though we had outdated information on there!

Once our financial reviews are completed (FY 2008-2009 and FY 2009-2010), and the GuideStar information completed, then our financial house will be totally in order and up to date! Once again, it was a huge effort by many this year to reach these financial goals!

Our endowments are with Merrill Lynch and recently ML has been very attentive to us. The Finance Committee met by web conference on May 21st to meet the new folks on our account and we will meet the 2nd time on June 2nd to discuss our investment strategy. This is new-in the past years the Finance Committee and the Oversight Finance Committee have had limited interaction with ML, but this is changing with the Finance Committee´s increased engagement this year.

Recommendation: The Finance Oversight Committee should be rolled into the Finance Committee and the goals of the two committees combined together. The responsibility of each has always caused confusion between the two committees and the updating of the bylaws would provide the perfect opportunity to modify these two committees.

3) Governance: The National Council unanimously chose to have the Grand Chapter Meeting by web conference January 2010. This decision, which was not supported in Robert´s Rules., was made by “collaborative decision making”, We felt this decision was more equitable to have a web conference where all could attend, than a summer Grand Chapter meeting where only a few chapters would attend due to the cost of travel to the National Meeting. This first Grand Chapter meeting by web conference had 100% participation (all chapters and committee chairs with Executive officers were in attendance)! At this historic meeting, we voted by majority to change our membership requirements to be more inclusive by adding an “or”. 49 votes were placed; 40 in favor, 5 no´s , and 4 abstained. Below is the revised Membership bylaw.

Changes made to the by-laws approved by the National Council, June 20, 2009 and Grand Chapter, January 9, 2010.
ARTICLE II. MEMBERSHIP Section 1. Qualifications
Any woman who holds a baccalaureate or higher degree from an accredited institution of higher learning or equivalent degree from a foreign institution, who is or has been engaged in, or is registered for research in one of the mathematical, physical, biological or any discipline in which the scientific method is employed, or who supports the objectives of the Organization, shall be eligible for membership.

This then led us to modernize our bylaws this year; Jennifer Ingram has led this effort with everyones´ input; a few members question whether a web conference is acceptable since it is not stated in our bylaws. We will be modernizing our bylaws at the National Council in June to include web conferencing among other items. This is the first time they have been updated since 1972!

Recommendations: Let´s work very hard to pass the bylaw modernization at National Council and then put it on the agenda for another January Grand Chapter web conference meeting.

Following is a summary of additional activities from the Executive Director´s Office:

1) Communications:

GWIS News

I		This fall, our Corresponding Secretary, Kendra Hyland, reduced her time dedicated to the GWIS News due to arrival her new baby, Sophie. So I began to write and layout the GWIS News from October on. Kendra still provides the database of current members for the GWIS News e-mails by working with Kathleen Carlson. This added an additional 20 hours of effort to my schedule; consequently, I combined two months into one GWIS News.
II		A November 23-survey was sent to the GWIS members in an effort to get GWIS scientific discipline information, as well as, to see how easy the survey tool was to use. Only 18 members responded to the survey and so the discipline information for the organization was not complete, but the survey tool was easy to use.
III		I published GWIS News from Oct to April and have included our e-mail stats, as well as, our overall stats to determine how we are doing. (Attached to the Executive Director´s report.) We do much better than the industry average for associations, but can increase our open rate with implementing helpful suggestions from Constant Contact and Network for Good.
IV		Our subscription to Constant Contact is by the number of e-mails (or GWIS News sent out to e-mail addresses). Annual expenses ($672.00) with Constant Contact include: survey tool, image hosting, email archive, and 501-2500 e-mail contacts by subscription.
V		We have included the Omega newsletter in our budget now, as it´s a minimal cost and provides a great service to the Omega Chapter.
VI		28 copies of GWIS News are still being copied at Kinko´s and sent by snail mail to the more senior of our members who have no e-mail. I usually call the members 1-2x a year, just to stay in touch and see if they are getting their copies.

The Bulletin

I		I continue to ferret out lead stories through phone conversations with the more senior members; e.g. Rosaland Morris for Winter 2010, as well as, to provide a summary of the 2009 National Meeting for the Fall 2009 Bulletin.
II		As a member of the Editorial Board I continue to edit the drafts of the Bulletin and continue to house and to mail out Bulletins as requested by the chapters for specific activities or chapter meetings.
III		Melanie McEwen has done an excellent job with writing, designing, and applying content and I´m so glad to hear she is still enjoying it!

Chapter Communications

I		Bee Hanlon event - to present the GWIS National Honorary Award (Xi Chapter) to her (September 2009). I designed invitations and sent then out to 40+members of the University of Minnesota Veterinary School faculty and the Dean, plus UMN past faculty and friends. Invitations were completely branded (stationery, envelope, brochure, and business card) and introduced GWIS in a professional manner, explaining our award. In addition, Xi Chapter offered a free dinner to two young women in Vet Med who were interested in attended.
II		Grand Chapter Meeting (January 2010)-I sent e-mail letters to chapters numerous times throughout the year; in particular for the January Grand Chapter web conference meeting. This took no less than 30-40 e-mails to organize chapter proxies, chapter delegates, and viable members who could vote (dues paid) plus instructions and Rules of the Road for the conference.
III		New potential chapters (Spring 2010) I had numerous e-mail communications between potential new chapters-Sigma Delta (SD) and Mu Sigma Epsilon (MSU). Generally the National office is the first place of entry for new chapters and then they are passed off to the Chapter Establishment (Kathy Grako) and Membership Sec (Kathleen Carlson), but all future communication was shared with all positions.
IV		National Meeting Registration Form-(April-May 2010) I worked with Kristin Dreyer, WISE Student Coordinator, and Christina Ragan, President of Nu Chapter, to develop and then to program a registration form that met their needs. It took approximately 25-30 hours to implement the current in-line registration form, plus numerous phone conversations with Kristin. I enjoyed working with both of them and was able to help them decide what they needed with registrant categories and prices.

Senior Members: Senior members were called this year; in addition, I also, sent a recognition note card to all members (who were featured in the Bulletin) who had contributed more than 50 years of service. BTW: 62% of these women have donated to our funds in the past. Therefore, it´s important to continue these relationships!

External Communications: The Executive Director´s office was the initial contact for:

I		US Engineering and Science Festival-Oct 23 –Oct 24, 2010-GWIS will participate at the National level with assistance from Omicron Chapter members. They have provided their homes, plus additional assistance at our booth. National officers attending are Jennifer, Anne, and Dee. $250 registration has been paid, we are sponsors of the event, and have submitted our exhibit description (3/30) for National Park review.
II		C2ST-Chicago Council on Science and Technology Conference, April 17, 2010-This conference was deemed to be an event we should be included in for attracting members for Eta and making other contacts. Registration paid was $500. President-elect Jennifer Ingram flew out from Durham, NC to be at our booth, along with Dr. Elfriede Bednar from Chicago. The organizer of the event will probably become an Omega Lambda GWIS member after she moves to New Hampshire in August.
III		3rd Annual World Science Festival, June 2-6, 2010, in NYC. I have agreed to feature their ad in the GWIS News for May.
IV		International Women´s Day-I represented National GWIS at the University of Minnesota International Women´s Day with Xi Chapter.
V		AAAS-Executive Director´s office is the primary contact for all of AAAS activities. These include: Science and Human Rights Coalition, AAAS Section GWIS representatives, MySciNet, Leadership in Representing Science and Technology Policy
VI		NIH-2010 Council of Public Representation Roster (COPR)- Sent this to potential applicants within our leadership ranks.
VII		Numerous other groups who needed EIN# or other business items.

2) Membership:

Kathleen Carlson has done such a spectacular job as Membership Secretary this year-she responds to each new member and welcomes her into the organization.

In our second year, we have reached close to 60% of all dues paid on-line. This is up from 15% last year. Dues on-line payment is here to stay and therefore, in accessing our $3 surcharge to cover Acteva and Credit Card charges, we are coming up 3-5% short. This means we are subsidizing the additional charges for the dues on-line. We should re-access where we want to be with the charges.

All chapters can access the dues-on-line from the membership page of the National website; members only have to click on their chapter and be taken to Acteva site for payment.

Two meetings of the MN group were held to assist new officers. Those attending included: Membership Secretary, Corresponding Secretary, Past President, Treasurer, and Executive Director, to develop strategy for the year and to provide an environment for Q & A. These meetings were for mentoring support for the new officers and have been very successful.

Recommendation: It´s hard to remember when we raised our dues last, but I would recommend doing away with the $3 surcharge and just increasing the dues by $5. Our dues are very low and it would be reasonable to make this an agenda item for the January Grand Chapter web conference Meeting.

3) National Website:

Moved to new Server: Anxiety was high this year, as I learned in July, that Aplus.net, our web hosting company, was going to sell all their 14,000 websites to Hostopia. I had never been through s server move and didn‘t know what to expect. I continued to update the National website, but kept abreast of when the move was going to take place for us (which our date was so fluid that it just kept moving!) My main concern was the Fellowship Applications process with the January deadline. Initially, no one knew what was happening and when, nor was I getting reliable information. But by November and December after most of the websites had been move, I was getting more accurate information on our website. Ultimately our national website was moved in late January after the application deadline was past.-perhaps in part, due to my constant chatter to the managers about how important our January 15 deadline was!

Aftermath: We lost all the sub-domains in the move; e.g. three chapters (Tau, Xi, and Beta) but eventually, they were found in another folder and within 24 hours they were up and functioning again. Also, the leadership GWIS e-mail addresses were dropped off and did not forward to their standard e-mail. This was corrected as soon as I was made aware of it.

Routine updating began in July and August and included: $3 processing surcharge added to all the chapter dues, links to all existing chapter websites, officers´ pictures, bios, and fellowship winners and their pictures updated. Dues-on-line was now accessible through the membership and “Become a Member” pages. Chapters´ websites were the responsibility of the chapters to update, but if there was a problem, I was available to assist. Approximately 60 e-mails were generated to the graphic designer team during the move, as their service was not timely, nor accurate, and needed constant attention! We had one group in Kansas, who were laid off during the move and then “we” moved to a Canadian firm, where our graphic designer team is now. So it´s been a challenging year with the website!

Fellowship Applications:

I		All updates and corrections were done in collaboration with Julie Gros-Louis and completed early in the fall. Numerous problems did occurred, but the best tactic was to be on top of it as soon as possible and fix it…This year all applicants were mandated to do their application on-line, pay their fee on-line ($25) and to have their letters of recommendations sent on-line also.
II		Additional recommendations for next year will be forthcoming, following the fellowship committee meeting when they will decides what they would like see with the current available technology. In five short years, we have moved from a complete paper process to an e-technology process. In the past, the membership secretary would receive all the applications, process the money, and then send them on to the reviewers. Today the membership secretary doesn´t see any of the applications.
III		This year 7% of fellowship applicants were from countries other than the United States. These included: Chile (2), Sri Lanka, Australia (2), Ireland, Slovenia, China, India (2), UK, Canada (5) , Argentina, and Brazil.

Chapter websites

I		Several chapters have still not taken advantage of the opportunity to have a website done for them-(Omicron) and Rho Tau is doing a blog for their website.
II		The new company is not charging for sub-domains; therefore, we are not charged for any of the chapter websites. This frees up approximately $500/year now.

Recommendations: All chapters should have a website! In today´s world, you cannot be without a website, nor can you only have a social media site and expect it to provide all you need to do for your chapter. Ideally, you should have a website, with social media linked to it.

4) Fundraising

Fundraising is considered a broad-based effort to the members, past donors, and prospective sponsors (corporation and institutions). More importantly, according to the Chronicles of Philanthropy, donations statistics show that 85% of donations come from the members in the organization and not new donors. Therefore, a great deal of time and effort is spent calling, writing, and keeping in touch with the more senior members. In addition;

1)		87th Year History Publications were purchased as donations.
2)		Annual Fund Drive was completed in December 2009.
3)		Donation envelopes are in all Bulletins.
4)		Button for Donations-on-line is on the homepage.
5)		Letters are being sent to CEO´s who are Female scientists from the Forbes article.
6)		Letters are continually sent for sponsorships.
7)		Increase membership through social network strategy plan to be presented as new business (See Strategic Plan below)

We are positioned now in FY 2010-2011 to begin to solicit donations and sponsorships in a big way. We will have our financial house in order shortly and all our re-branding has been done making us look great! It´s taken two years, but we are now ready and need volunteers to help us!

5) Strategic Plan

In 2007, we completed our first Strategic Plan (2007-2012). We identified five major challenges and have completed most of the four of the five, but the fifth one is: to grow our operating funds to sustain non-fellowship programs- we need some help on.

Since 2007, the Treasurer had not kept separate the donations to our Travel and Leadership Funds and so we are at a disadvantage of not knowing how much has to been donated to each fund. Having two funds has probably created less donations per fund and if we focus on one only, perhaps we will have a better chance of increasing the Travel Fund for Junior Faculty.

Therefore, I recommend that we focus on the Travel Funds for Junior Faculty only and the strategy that will be to developed is to combine marketing efforts using all our resources; e.g. social networking, newsletters, etc.

A video can be made to support the cause (one of our junior faculty can talk about how travel funds are non-existent without grants) and it can be posted on YouTube. We then can Tweet about it, post a story on LinkedIn on the statistics on travel money for junior faculty and create questions on Facebook that would generate cross talk between “friends”. Then we can feature information or stories in the Bulletin and GWIS News on this topic. We could use a blogger also…but what this will do for us is to optimize our search engine listings, and create interest in the organization, besides focus on an issue for women in science. We will have a better opportunity to attract more potential members by combining all our resources and focusing on one issue.

Currently, LinkedIn and Facebook are running separate commentaries and working independently, as well as the video project. This would be a great way to bring every one talking about the same issue (e.g. group think!), but just in a different way! If you´d like to be part of our social media project, feel free to contact me at gwised@mac.com

Thanks for allowing me to serve another year. It really has been a great year!

Dee McManus
National Executive Director
FY 2009-2010