Oneness Project Trustee Council
April 2001
Narrative
Thurs nite
Min for last meeting not in a state of approval.
Treas report – handout.
Whidbey island not included. Tent cost $6000 approx. Some transactions not included. Needs fixing. Will be reviewed tomorrow by group.
Old Business:
Wayne: Email protocol was officially made the mode of communication. Works well when one person is the hub. When replying to an email, just hit reply to originator, not reply to all. Then original sender receives and takes out the important bits and puts it back together with suggestions and sends it out again.
N: PW had a form that would go out every two weeks to all within categories.
W: Committee chairs could be responsible for their committees receiving emails. Then someone, like admin asst., could send it out to all TC. One person mediates one subject.
N: need to research PW’s way of doing this. Have new admin asst do this?
*W will do this with EKM May 8th during Caravan. Then he will teach admin asst. And presentation to TC around June 1st. .
*N: will continue research on legality of donations to an indevidual, "Wali Ali Honorarium". By May 1. Will call Charles Terry.
Operating Style.
Munir: use Robert’s rules of proceedure. All action will be consensus decision. Topic, discussion, take action (vote by consensus). Passed.
Land caretaking letter for land in Ashland. Robert G. called landlord. Current caretaker is no longer living there. Only Robert has seen it.
Jeryy: need plot maps before going to see it.
LA: feasability of this land. Very thin parcel. Not near a major airport.
Lynn: interested in co-caretaking this land. Kahlil possibly interested.
Robert: turn-key, off the grid parcel.
N: allocate money to make a video.
L: what are the land owner’s expectations from us for taking over caretaking this land.
N: need video before writing a letter.
L: $1000 contingency funds in Land Search budget. Rent a video camera, tape and start the 1st good step.
*Robert and Jerry will get together and talk about it.
Committee Reports
Grants: Peter
Committee Recommendations and Dance Leader Training Reports (Nuria administer)
20 grants,= $9705. 13 for Mexico training including 4 S. Americans. Whidbey Island DLT =1 @$640. Portland 101 Fndtn =5.
Some of this is matched more than 50%.
Edinburgh Festival request from Fatah Sanders and Sa’adi. Recommend $2000 grant. Passed.
Dance Dome at Southwest Sufi Camp request from David Kent. $5000. Passed.
L: questions cost of platform flooring as underestimated.
Lynn: suggest they build platform 1st and then we will give them the $5000.
Grant states they have funders interested in supporting platform.
N: they have good history of fund raising.
L: include our concerns in the letter of approval. We wonder if the funds in your budget are adequate for the platform.
Inland Northwest Sufi Camp. Childrens Program. $1000. Passed.
Dances will be used extensively in program. We request a S2 page written report on how they integrate dances into the program curriculum established last year.
L: stipulate that this is start-up money and their group develops a fund-raising program through sliding scales and donations.
Morroco Pilgrimage. Ellen Fitz-Hall. $1001. Denied.
L and N: Our policy is that we agreed not to fund requests that are specifically any "ism", especially not "Sufism". This is not specifically "dance related".
Tony: we would take "merit awards" on a case by case basis. But we do not have a merit award program in place.
A Merit Award of $1001 voted to Ellen Kafi-Mariam Fitz-Hall to use however she wishes.
NANDUP East Region Organizing Council. $2100. Passed.
NANDUP Regional Development Meeting. Up to $6500. Passed. One abstention (Lee Amin).
EKM felt this was an opportunity to bring people together. We will provide $1000 and expect you to match $1000 to get a top notch organizational development specialist to develop an agenda for the meeting, determine objectives, determine right attendees and get the input of people who will not be at the meeting. When that is done we would release the $5000 to make the meeting happen. Tack on $500 to hire a CPA to bring the accounting system of the N.American region into order. Attempts to personally audit the NA/PW books have been ineffective. They need to hone down what the objectives are and figure out how to get there. Contingent upon the completion of planning efforts that indicate a reasonable outcome.
In December we will revisit the source of these funds. Right now the money comes out of Grants. In December we might suggest that they repay us out of their tithe.
Dance Musician Support. $1469. Talia Marcus.
Proposal does not address our funding goals. Unless a proposal is coming to us from an event manager from a retreat, we do not know if that musician will be an integral part of that activity. We are willing to make a matching grant to support musicians at events. Grants Cmmttee will draft some language to asssist musicians of high caliber to apply to us for this. This particular part of our guide-lines will be well-circulated.
N: specific and well-thoughtout language also for dance leaders, childcare, musicians. Enlarge the language around events.
Munir: the opportunity to use more musicians in the dances world-wide is certainly something we can fund. If we are able to match funds committed to those these, we are making our dollars go farther.
M: I believe in the power of music as a transformative energy.
Approved: $16,600.
Friday
Events: WA/Oregon Caravan a rousing success. Communities. Thank younotes sent. Evaluations sent. Devi DeJardin, we wanted to dothis years ago! Thank you. Distances were far apart. Cyan and Alfredo came to Portland after Eugene. Everyone was glad to see that we were dingthe same things. Peter passed out a lot of grants outreach info. We made no money. Workshops were small. If we repeat, we will hve better. $3800 cost the trip. The TC needs to consider if this is worthwhile to keep doing. Next year we will come closer to breakeven before honorariums.
California is busy. People are not willing to drive somewhere to go toan event. People are busy in their lives. Probably not going to make as much moneyas last year. Might cost us $3000with planetix.
Peter: Evaluation question: Is this beneficial to your dance community? In Eugene, 75 people came. Normally 35 come. We gave people a good dose of dancing. It was even more than I expected. We accomplished something. This kind of thing is useful. The circles reflected the leadership,, they all reflected different attunements. Wayne and Zareen did a great job organizing it.
N: Dance events and the feeling is what brought us together initially. Hard to organize it, but worth it. There is a cycle to things. We ought to wait one year then repeat.
Wayne: especially in Oregon most of the circles operated with a minimum of musicians. One guitar or drum. Ishaq said: the orchestra has arrived! The overwhelming intensity of the music and the dance moving together.
Zareen: caravan stafff. Bring new staff onto Caravan. It takes a certain caliber of person. They have to be able to fit it into their lives. The music behind them, and versatile enough to walk into all these dif circles. Part planned, part on the fly. You just don’t know what you’ll meet, youhave to be able to read people. You almost have to goon a Caravan for awhile before you would know how to do it. The crew has to be in the same car. How to cultivate caravan staff. We are going to be very discriminating about it.
Budget $8100 for 2 Caravans. Anticipated revenue of $1100. We endorse these figures and thank caravan for doing a wonderful job. Motioned and passed.
N: dancing on Maui at the Sufi camp was very successful. They had a great time. More dancing will be happening on the different Islands. Calgary was successful. These were not oOneness supported events. Dance Leader Training in Hawaii, well attended and well done.
Re Oneness Brochure? Z: we don’t promote OP, we promote PeaceWorks.
Public Relations packet of what we are about. Web site works well. "Bring the Caravan to your town". A business card for leaders.
Rosina: will promote something for Caravan in Hawaii in January or July. January is suggessted.
Z: Breitenbush was a highlight. Jomshod had community ideas. Z will share later.
N: Rusisia. 5-7 people applying for Russia scholarships. Vasudeva filled 2 merit scholarships. One teacher coming from Findhorn, Mark Havel (Sufi and dance leader from east coast). An American from Argentina coming to both Solstice and DLT after. Susan Sheeley. Goni, Z’eva.
**Use events at Lava and Wilderness as a dance production training events. Honor the people who are put on events. Use Wilderness budget from last year as a template. Devi DeJardin suggested soliciting all the Reg Nets in America for this. Get more people to apprentice learning how to self-produceevents. Codify how an event happens. Put together a packet from OP about how one organizes an event. Graph of where I start. How to get from point A to the end of the retreat. Lee Amin and Zareen will talk and get intouch with Nuria.
Childrens Program:
Lyn and Robert: researched buying a Pacific Domes to bring to events. A 16 ft. dome would be nice. Need a heater. $2600 for a basic. 2000 sq ft. Set up in an hour once you learn it. 2 hrs with a crew of 3-4 people. Tony saw one go up at Rainbow. Good for Wilderness camp? Not insulated.
Why not use livingroom of Lava Trailer for kids? Not close enough to dance building. An RV in the parking lot?
Rent an RV down at Pocatello and park it in lot.
An old schoolbus?
**Empower Nuria to do something.
Budget of $1500 for childrens program requested. Passed.
Land Search:
**N: writing a letter with Halim to Whidbey Institute. Preliminary communication about expansion project on their 100 acres. Need more residential space. Maybe there is synergy with OP. N met with a person on their Board (Charles Terry). Their corporate culture is more intellectual than ours. OP needs to write a letter that we are officially interested. How to form a partnership with Whidbey Institute, OP, and Island County Board of Development. To build a facility big enough to dance and residential space. Needs for parallel programming. Could be beneficial for both of us.
Lee: met with Susan Anderson, a realitor on Whidbey. Regulations on Whidbey, started the process of seaching. Must find a piece of land on a main arterial road that will not impact the area. You can have 40 beds in a Country Inn setting.
Tony: asks for a contingency budget of $1000 for land search. Passed.
Communications:
Z: OP website up. Easy to navigate. Need more pictures. Billed $500. Z recommends training admin asst to keep updating the site. Budget to pay Z for the training will come out of office expenses.
Robert: newsletter completed. Publishing dates and numbers of issues per year need to be decided.
$600 to print. $120 for scanning. $500 stipend to Robert. Charging $15/hr. Took about 50 hours (including coming up to speed on desk top publishing). Direct from computer to photocopy machine. Offset would look better. Robert would like to edit and layout next issue. Then pass on the final layout/printing. Discussion on this proposal will continue.
Estimate postage $.55 each. Equals $1.50 per copy to make it. Printed 850 copies.
L: personal contact with someone on the phone creates a direct response more often than emails.
R: wants more dance circle reports.
**dates for next issue. Recommend October 15. Sept 10th deadline for next issue.
**write up a feedback sheet about the Newsletter and the Event to give to everyone at Lava. Narayan will do. Put his address on it of OP on feedback sheet.
Z: recommends a newsletter more often and a little simpler. We are still not clear on "What is ONEness?"
Library:
Tony. Kay has the libraries available. Cost about $200/set. Ashland, Bozeman and Helena have requested a library each. Includes a binder with a notebook and a case with the cassettes. Library cards to check out the material and track it.
** Request library budget for 2001 have a budget of $2000 for 10 sets. Passed.
Z: The Index and dance book cover approved by Sa’adi.
Wayne: Diane Anthony Abon hired as an administrative assistant.
Board development. Find people who can sit in on the meetings and offer us their feedback. Long term project of board training for 2-3 years of development. Need to find and interview these people and see what they can do for us. The Board Development team will meet in Boisie on June 15. Robert, Jerry, Linda, Lynn and Wayne will meet, set criteria and plan of action. Will give a presentation at Lava meeting. Suggest TC members be available for a conference call that weekend for feedback.
Proposed budget for human resources committee contingency budget of $2000 for personell development for future needs.
Board Development for $3500 to find and retain services of a coach or trainer. Approved $5500.
Discussion and review of last night’s meeting. Wayne and Jerry: Grants Committee work was repeated by the TC in the evening. Discussions digressed into committee work, like wording of guidelines. We did not stay focused and on track.
Peter: we’re stilll at the beginning of this kind of process. Bringing the board up to sppeed on our thinking is important. Hopefully there will be less need for the specifics at later dates. The Grants committee conccurs with the change in how to handle the Morrocco request. Our self-organizing is resulting in more responsibility and self reliance on everyones part. A facilitator sometimes promotes everyone’s ability to check out because "someone" is handling the meeting. We are at the stage of coming together as a team.
Narayan: We are organizationally gelling and forming up. Checks and balances are very important in this grants process. It is a major thing we are doing to further our vision. It’s the work of us working ourselves as "the ONEness Project."
Tony: We took approx. 3 hours to approve what the grants cmtt had taken 3.5 hours to process. A lot of it was worthwhile. He disagrees on the long discussion of $1000 for the Sufi camp children’s camp. We have $120,000 available for grants. We spent over a half hour discussing this as to whether it is a mistake. We don’t have to get into this level of detail.
N: this was precidence around supporting a Sufi camp activity that cannot support itself.
L: I thought there were a lot of gray areas in these. The dome at SSC was a bit manipulative.
Lynn: That took a lot of time. Why did we have to go thru the whole thing again. Lee brought up very good points. Maybe Lee should be on the grants committee.
Lee: throwing money at something doesn’t always cure things. A number of points need insight. I feel that I get a lot of flack for bringing up points when I question something. Jerry and Tony give me looks of disapproval. Maybe I shouldn’t be on the TC.
Peter: in the grants committee, we are always aware of the range of conservative to liberal view of the TC. Will this fly with the TC?
L: retroactive, capitol projects and morrocco trip were outside of the guidelines.
Peter: we are encouraging people to apply to us. We can have a more inclusive view of our guidelines.
N: the newness of the program, politics, relationships etc. need to be taken into consideration.
Lee: nepotism and opinion of personality in awards.
Peter: tenure of the applicant needs to be considered. We turned down an application of a cmmtt member.
Z: great meeting. Everybody popcorned in. Somebody always called us back to track. I felt we came to some amazing conclusions all by ourselves. We were acting like adults, actually do smthing on our own. This is important stuff. We are setting precidence. I started considering renewing my term. If we could conduct ourselves like that, we would get better and better at it as time goes on. I would be very pleased.
Linda: I thought it was good too. It’s the growing pains of a commmittee of following guidelines that have been set up. Requires gettting confidence of the TC’s. The things that were brought up were the same things at both grants and tc meeting. TC is legally responsible for decisions. What consensus of the group is will be clearer as time goes on.
Z: we did some mature things just by 2 people voting something down. On another thing, Lee had an objection and abstained rather than just stopping it.
Lee: Peter, you did a great job on this and you prefaced things with the flags.
N: recommend Lee and Jerry talk together about trust. Jerry: I’m the catcher.
N: the makeup of the committee is important that it accurately represents the makeup of the trustee council.
P: we tightened down as needed.
Tony: we will have more requests than money at some point.
**Tony: Right now the grants cmt can make the recommendations and one negative voice of TC can defeat it. Maybe it should take 2 negative voices.
N: ok if we add Presidential veto is also approved.
Z: if we changed this now and wrote it in stone, I would be comfortable. Let’s revisit it if there is a problem. We are still evolving.
Lynn: I’m not sure. Seems like a good idea to try.
Z: it’s a mature thing to do. Presidential veto should be there also.
If Narayan is the only dissenting vote, it goes down. TC’s can then engage in further discussion to present issues in another way.
Passed.
Research and Development:
Lynn: sent out packet of what is a Board. Materials from Intentional Communities Conference and other workshops they had taken upon themselves. Do people want us to continue doing research and development or fold it into Board Dev/Human Resource and Personelle. Dynamic Dialog work is another new possiblity. The non-violent communications came out of a recommendation from Diana Christian.
N: being current and accountable is something we are working on. Apply future research to this group.
Lynn: I don’t want to do something the board doesn’t feel is valuable.
W: let’s work closely together on this.
Music:
N: new CD’s out. New CD of Crossing the Veil and new artwork/remix of Friends of the Friend. We don’t really have a marketing program.
Talia: Now that we have product, I can send them to possible distributors. Contacts were made last year to prime this action.
Robert: look at huge investment and huge amout of product. Plan to pay for services to a distributor. A marketing plan with a distributor is needed. Is this a project that needs funding and help.
Lee: most of them get marketed internally in dance circles. Wholesale the CD to indeviduals who take them back to their groups. Most of the last CD’s went into the void. We need a tracking system to know where they went.
N: create a promotional letter to go along with samples.
L: are we going to pay Jellaladin for the ones we give away? Referred to committee.
Z: shopping cart on the website for the CD’s. Admin asst can take over this process. Price on web is $15 put excludes shipping. Note: $5.00 each will break us even at some time.
Tony: budget. $7000 for these 2000 CDs. $4000 next CD $2000 misc. Total $13,000. Passed.
Finance:
Tony: presents draft budget for 2001. Some changes will be made based on what we have done today.
Proposed budget $1000 to hire a consultant to keep our IRS status. Passed.
Tony: Should the Financial cmmtt review all committee budgets and make recommendations whether to amend these budgets and present results to TC’s for recommendations. Passed.
Wayne is gathering committee descriptions. Goal, mission, what they see their job is to do.
New Business
Rainbow Festival. Tony. No energy in Spokane. Check in with Seattle and Portland. Proposed budget $1000 for food and such. Passed. Events committee will proceed.
Use tent. Need reasonable plan for using tent and leadership. Jerry and Tony willing to assist but not lead. Roger, Wayne, Lee, Tony & Jerry could be trusted with the tent. Ishaq is a good candidate.
Z: need support staff to be in tent full time and set it up. Recommends paying someone to supervise tent.
OP gave good bribes to drive into site: medical supplies and food given to Rainbow staff each time we drove in.
**Lee will call Portland and Seattle for initial interest.
Board Members Re-Election:
Narayan, Lee and Tony re-elected.
Zareen resigned
Linda Lindsay elected onto TC to replace Zareen.
Ruhaniat Minutes errors:
Talia is not a OP TC.
OP is not a foundation
OP is not decided if we are funding their CD project.
Lee will write letter to Ruhaniat.
Admin Asst will be trained as the scribe for the minutes of the next OP TC meeting.
Narayan and Shabda meeting at Maui Camp.
Shabda is now the Pir-o-Murshid of the Ruhaniat Society. Personally and organizationally a good meeting. He had no requests from OP. We are very focused on The Dance and not on Sufism. N asked him to take Moineddin’s place on our advisary committee. He agreed, but not sure how time-responsive he could be because of all his new responsibilities. Via Murshid Samual Lewis, The Ruhaniat has the charge of keeping the Dances. PW was then charged with the material with Ruhaniat as the overseer of the whole package. If OP fails, our assets go to PW. If PW fails, they go to the Ruhaniat.
Passed. Shabda will replace Moineddin on our advisary council.
Lyn: co-creative agreements and conflict resolutions. Packett of Information.
Global Family. Rings of Empowerment book. To facilitate harmony, peace and understanding in any group. We can use this as a framework for how we communicate with each other. Asks the TC to read these agreements and say if they are willing to adopt them for our group. She will email next two sheets of info.
TC will make their best attempts to read this and respond by June 15th.
Munir: EKM talked with Radha Buko this morning. The book is a binder with 200 pages. Cost $25 each. Suggests OP buys 50 copies for all MTG members (Mentors and Apprentice Mentors), and $300 for shipping. MTG can come up with the money to front the rest of the printing. They are printing 200 copies. We could insert a page in front, this notebood is a gift to you from the ONEness Project. This meets all 6 goals of the OP.
Passed with one abstension (Lee Amin). Is a gift from the OP. Money comes out of the General Fund.
Narayan will call Radha.
Asking Events Committee to establish a policy on using the tent. Issues: rent it out with strict guidelines on wear and tear. Takes administration and personelle that we don’t really have. Good PR for us. Or keep it only to ourselves.
Tony: case by case basis.
Lee: need one trained person to go with tent.
Lyn: Liability concerns. Need a waiver. What are your guidelines?
N: needs real responsibility and liability concerns. We could charge a reduced rate to cover crew and wear and tear.
Z: case by case process. Do we have people we can trust?
Jerry: I’m interested in seeing the tent used more. I will become a responsible person for putting it up.
Linda: need to return it in the condition they received it. Deposit. Rental agreement.
Head guy, pay his travel and time, liability issues. If taken down wet, it has to be unrolled and dried at another location.
Sent to committee.
Talia:
Contact Wahaba re dance bk cover.
Video taping last session of 101 Foundational Event. What is it going to be used for? Obtrusive to participants. Maybe we could take on a project to do this professionally at a later date. Munir suggests we ask Devi to contact all the people who are going to be there for permission in advance.
Bernie will team up with Talia for a regional dance book and tape of cooked new favorites.
Approved new project by PW Pubs from Sa’adi.
Discussion begun to set next meeting for the TC. Maybe early June is a better time than Easter Lava.
Meeting adjourned at 3pm. All agenda items were covered.!!