The Board and Associates
Sierra Club Board Meeting: May 17, 2014 San Francisco
At this meeting we tackled quite a few items of a consequential nature that will have an enormous impact on the structure of our Club and our ability and capability to function effectively and efficiently and have an impact on the future of our planet on which we all depend for life itself.
There are many important activities occurring that are transitioning our Club to an effective 21st Century entity capable of accomplishing the enormous challenges we face.
And while the climate news continues to be very worrisome, our capabilities and victories are also growing significantly. And I am genuinely proud of and encouraged and excited by our accomplishments and the work of our incredibly motivated, talented and capable staff and volunteers and what together we are achieving.
1. Mike Brune gave an Executive Director’s report that highlighted several items:
– Due to the budget decisions that we made and implemented last fall and investment gains and positive fundraising results, we are on a much sounder financial footing. If current trends continue, and it’s early in the year still, we could end the year ahead of our goals for building both
our C3 and C4 reserves.
-While many of us were disappointed early on with Obama’s environmental accomplishments and initiatives, his new car and proposed carbon standards and hopefully, his rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline, shows that he is placing the Climate in the top tier of priorities upon which he hopes to create his legacy. And these foundational accomplishments are preparing the U.S. to be a leader at the Paris Climate Summit next year in Paris.
2. We received the Fracking Task Force report based on the CCL request and recognized and thanked the Task Force for all the excellent work they did. After a vigorous discussion we asked that more work be done to develop a proposal that would provide us with options that we could circulate to the grassroots volunteer organization for comment before voting on a final position. The next report is due by our June call. It seemed to me that the predominant sentiment was to have a clear statement that the Club was opposed to Fracking but allowed the individual Chapters to determine individually how to support the Club policy in their own areas.
3. We received the Climate Task Force Report and thanked the Task Force members for their excellent and timely work. There was universal agreement that there were a substantial amount of useful recommendations that were likely to be adopted. That said, there was a great deal of input from many sources that needs to be considered and where appropriate, incorporated. We’re getting there but more work will be done over the summer and and continuing until we can have a final product sometime by mid 2015. The biggest issue we discussed is whether or not to
establish a goal of a fossil free U.S. energy sector by 2030.
4. We continue to stay focused on our DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) Initiative. We had a small group session to continue raising everyone’s consciousness and commitment. I will readily admit that all the work we are doing is impacting me personally as I continue to up my game and discover ways that I can get involved and not only make an individual contribution but motivate others to do likewise.
We also discussed ways to insure that our budget reflected our commitment to this endeavor and that we “walk the talk.”
I encourage each you to think about how you too can get involved in moving the Club to a Stage 5 Organization. Much of our discussion hinged upon how we can push this initiative out to the farthest flung reaches of the Club and motivate everyone to become actively committed
to the objectives.
5. We seated our new and reelected Directors:
New Directors: Dean Wallraff from Los Angeles
Michael Dorsey now based in New Haven, Connecticut and NYC and a former director.
Loren Blackford from New York City was elected for the first time after being appointed to fill a vacated spot.
Reelected: Aaron Mair from New York State
Jessica Helm now from Boston.
This Year’s Officers are:
President: David Scott
Vice President Conservation: Spencer Black
Secretary: Lane Boldman
Treasurer: Loren Blackford
Fifth Officer:Susana Reyes
Congratulations to all!
6. We unanimously approved the following resolutions to retiring Directors Larry Fahn and Rob Wilder.
Fahn Resolution
#B8(b) Rob Wilder Appreciation
We also approved the following recognition to Sue De La Rosa who is retiring after 30 years of exemplary service to the Club and our mutual aspirations.
B17 – TRIBUTE TO SUE DE LA ROSA (2)
7. We were updated on the status of the CORE, addUP (formerly MOLE) and addUP.com roll outs. addUP.com is 80% up and running and on budget. addUP is now working and content is being loaded and coming in under budget. Phase I of CORE too is now rolled out.
We discussed how to develop presentations and training on all of these new and exciting projects.
8. The Executive Committee was charged with developing a plan to develop proposals to address our electoral process in order to increase voter turnout to avoid a constitution crisis of under the minimum 5% turnout AND to reduce costs and organizational burden.
9. Several discussions occurred during various agenda items about how to develop more volunteer leaders and how to provide them with more resources for their personal development in order to invigorate and strengthen our grassroots volunteers.
10. If you’ve read this far and want a little more copy and paste the following into your browser for President Dave Scott’s blog on the meeting.
http://sierraclub.typepad.com/change/2014/05/highlights-from-the-may-board-meeting.html
