2010 Report: Advancement & Outreach Presented to Meeting for Business 5 December 2010
		Advancement & Outreach welcomes newcomers and visitors, promotes Meeting activities and builds community internally and externally. Committee members in 2010 included: Jillaine Smith and Jane Chalmers, co-clerks; Ruth Nielsen-Jones, recording clerk; Bernie Benson, web editor; and Ann Anderson, Ulrike Lichti, Donna Smith, Peter Vos, Brendan Weiss and David Whitford. Jane Coe participates, ex-officio, as newsletter and directory editor; and Marie France serves ex-officio as calendar editor. We extend our appreciation and thanks to Peter who is stepping off A&O this year. Being a Welcoming Community Helping everyone feel welcome and a part of our meeting community has been and continues to be both a major focus as well and a major challenge. We invite the entire meeting to help us with a renewed effort to build community, especially by joining us in greeting newcomers during coffee hour following Meeting for Worship. Much of our welcoming work is behind the scenes; we prepare newcomer packets and name tags; we send welcome notes; we promote Meeting events and activities. In 2010: We sent 50 welcome notes (history: 59 in 2009; 54 in 2008; 36 in 2007; 52 in 2006; 40 in 2005) 20 newcomers have taken next steps in terms of participation (history: 28 in 2009; 13 in 2008; 13 in 2007; 17 in 2006; 20 in 2005). Efforts to encourage newcomers include: We held two 'Getting-to-know-you' sessions following meeting for Worship to help those new or newish to the Meeting make their integration into the Meeting community smoother and more comfortable. We will continue to schedule them throughout the upcoming year. Frank Greve and Jane Chalmers hosted a successful 'zip code party' through which several members and attenders made new connections with each other and the Meeting. We hope to replicate the idea in 2011. Jane Coe and Ruth and Peter Nielsen-Jones have continued to host Experiment with Light sessions at their homes. In addition, we held a session concurrent with Meeting for Worship as a way to help newcomers learn more about silent meeting. We will schedule another such session in January. A&O also updates the Meeting directory, making sure we have touched base with each person in the directory. We were pleased that about 60% of households checked their names off on the draft directory displayed at Meeting during October. Telephone and e-mail follow-up with the remaining 40% is almost complete. The directory will go to the printer in January, when the new clerks of committees have been selected. There have been 15 Services Exchanges this year, with some helpful linking of requests and responses. We would do more if more requests were sent in, as a way of being more mutually supportive of one another. In partnership with the school, we now have new signage about which we are very pleased. We remain appreciative of the many ways others in Meeting welcome newcomers and build community; in particular, we note with admiration Susan Kaul's, Gail Thomas' and Bill Dietrich's leadership in organizing the 24-person Spiritual Formation group - another excellent way to build community. Building Community - Externally A&O also seeks to build relationships with communities close to our meeting: We place ads in Quaker Life, Washington Post, Friends Journal and the Yellow Pages; we continue to cooperate with William Penn House. We have given $100 Lee Stern Peace Awards in three Montgomery County public high schools (Walter Johnson, Bethesda-Chevy Chase, and Walt Whitman) since 2005. We were especially pleased this year to extend the number of schools to include four in Washington, DC, thanks to the American Friends Service Committee's DC Project on Human Rights in DC schools (Friendship Collegiate, Eastern, and Cardozo) and to Colman McCarthy's peace education classes (Wilson). We also attend the awards ceremonies (mostly in May and June) and want to thank the presenters: Dot Lin, Ross Capon, Jillaine Smith, Tom Walker, and Jane Coe. We would very much like the Meeting's support in increasing these very small awards. We changed the way we handle the Meeting's voicemail. The message now says messages left on the tape are not monitored, but in case of emergency we invite callers to call Jane Coe. This is because most messages were ads or hang ups - our message contains what most people want to know and our web site is attracting more newcomers. Building Community - Ramallah Friends School We continue to support Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker school on the West Bank. We raised over $6,000 this year, which, while consistent with the generally rising trend over the last decade, is significantly less than we raised in the last two years: 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 $3,360 $8,920 $4,031 $5,525 $5,388 $5,126 $5,343 $8,275 $8,762 $6,015 In 2008 and 2009, we experimented with having a $10,000 goal. We learned that when we set a goal, we raise more money. That said, $10,000 was a rather arbitrary figure. We decided to base future goals on the actual costs of scholarships: Class level Tuition Kindergarten $1,130 1st grade $1,900 2nd-6th grade $2,040 7-9th grade $2,510 10-12th grade $3,050 $6,000 translates to three lower school scholarships OR one each of a middle and high school scholarship. (Ramallah's total fundraising goal is $180,000.) Publications, Documentation & the BFM Web site Jane Coe edits the meeting's membership directory, monthly newsletter, weekly bulletin and the email services exchange. This year for the first time ever we sent the monthly bulletin to 400 households (up from 378 last year). Marie France is backup to Jane in newsletter editing and posts the monthly calendar. Marie and Jillaine provide proofreading. Bernie Benson is Web editor. We continue to see a steady increase in usage of the BFM web site: just over 45,400 page views (up from 39,900 last year) and almost 25,000 user sessions (same as last year). This year we added First Day School on-line registration and a site search function along with continuing the childcare signup section. Early feedback is positive; we plan to improve these features and expand committee use next year. We look forward to promoting the Library Committee's excellent work in putting the catalogue online. A&O welcomes comments and suggestions. We meet on the third Sunday of the month at 9:30 a.m., in the Teachers’ Lounge.