Hello Pioneers

May 1, 2012

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the Washington Chapter 30 of Pioneers! If you are new to Pioneers and are checking out this website for the first time and have any questions about Pioneers and the community service we do please contact me. I will be happy to help you. We are a very active Chapter with lots of projects going on at any one time. If you’d like to join Pioneers or get involved with one of our projects please feel free to email me at Jennifer.L.Moore@CenturyLink.com.

Yours in Pioneering
Jennifer
Jennifer.L.Moore@CenturyLink.com

CenturyLink Pioneers Regional Call Notes

January 15, 2013

Thanks so much to Sherry Daughtry for facilitating this month's region call.

Fundraising Project Idea

A Flamingo fundraising project idea was discussed. Chapter presidents will take the information back to their chapters for discussion.

National Scholarship

A question was raised about the national scholarship. This was previously discussed on the December 2011 call and sent out in the call notes. The excerpt from those notes is as follows:

"Scholarships

There were a number of difficult decisions that had to be made by the board this year during the budget process. One of those decisions was to discontinue the scholarship program. As a result, any language on the national website regarding scholarships has been taken down. As stated, this was a very difficult decision and not one that the board took lightly."

Due to continuing challenges with the budget, there has been no discussion of resurrecting the national scholarship program.

Liberty Mutual Winner

It was reported that no one received notice of who won. J. Kelly noted that she had made an inquiry to have someone speak to her group, but received no response. In the email from Pioneers on 8/17/12, it was stated that the winner would be notified by 10/16/12.

Web site

A question was raised as to whether we have a Web master for the region web site. I [Janie] am the current editor of the site. No access for anyone else has been removed. However, in light of the confusion and availability of volunteers to be editors, we are considering a new plan for the chapter pages moving forward. We are currently developing a template to send to each chapter president on which you will be able to include the information that shows on the chapter page of the region site.

A question was also raised regarding the header pictures on the site. When we discussed this previously, the decision was made that we would work with the web site vendor to change out the old pictures with new ones received from the chapters, but as yet we have not received any.

Easter Egg Hunts

It was raised that we need to compile a list of beeping Easter egg hunt dates. If you would like to send those to me, (I have already sent her WA information) I will be happy to compile them and send out a comprehensive list. Utah will have a hunt on March 23rd.

Anyone who needs beeping eggs can contact Bob Kurtz at beepball@qwestpioneers.org. Soon, Bob will be sending the remaining eggs to the e-Store vendor for sale through the site. Because of mailing restrictions, 9 volt batteries will not be included.

CenturyLink Support

A concern was raised around company support. Kristy LaCroix was on the call and addressed the concern by relating that the company is very supportive of the Pioneers and provides a great deal of resources to our chapters.

In addition to Telecom Pioneers, there are a number of volunteer groups that employees may join such as Employee Resource Groups, Community Relations Teams and Independent Telecom Pioneers of America Chapters. CenturyLink is respectful and supportive of all of these groups. However, no other volunteer group in the company receives the financial and staff resources that are afforded the Telecom Pioneers. The company continues to reimburse for newsletters, provide in-kind space and access to buildings, and most recently has agreed to cover the cost of PAC fees in 2013 for all of the chapters. In addition, CenturyLink covers postage fees for Pioneers headquarters, travel costs for a representative of the members to attend board meetings and annual fees for the e-Store and region Web site.

Quarterly Project

A comment was made regarding a quarterly project for the chapters. There was no mention of a quarterly project identified by the region during the transition in 2011. However, there were a number of suggestions made by those on the call, such as egg hunts, school supply drives, military, Christmas stocking, and adopt a family projects. It was announced that CenturyLink will holds its nationwide food drive June 3 - 7 and Pioneers are once again invited to participate.

Region Office

With the exception of membership form processing, all of the functions of the region office were moved to Monroe in 2011. Since the forms ultimately had to come here to Monroe for processing by our payroll department, we're going to have them directed here as well. It will help streamline that process and free up the volunteer, who's also a chapter president, to focus on her work with the chapter.

Thanks,
Jennifer

CenturyLink Pioneers

December Region Call Notes
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
10:00 am

Telecom Pioneers Board Leadership During the Telecom Pioneers Board Meeting in Denver on December 11th and 12th, nominations for the 2013 board chair and vice chair were made. The board elected Michael Sears of the Canadian Pioneers as chair and Ann Smalley of the AT&T Pioneers will hold the position of vice chair.  

2013 Pioneers Budget The majority of the meeting was spent examining the budget. Budget talks at the meeting began with a deficit of more than $600,000.  

Membership dues, royalties and direct mail revenues have steadily declined over the past several years while expenses have increased.  

The Balanced Budget Committee has been working diligently on developing solutions to address the deficit. We'd like to thank Sherry Daughtry, board member, who was a member of that committee and has spent hours helping to work through the deficit issue. It was not an easy job.  

After a great deal of very difficult discussion around possible solutions, the board agreed to the following: o Increase revenue by charging chapters a PAC fee. This will amount to $165,000 across all chapters. The amount of the fee would be based on your transactions for 2012 and would be computed using a fee of $7.50 for each transaction processed by the PAC excluding those for deposits.  

The fee would be due in March and would be prorated based on 2012 activity, so if a chapter had 34 transactions in 2012 that were payments, their fee would be computed as $255. If they had 497 transactions, their fee would be computed as $3,727.50.  

Note: If a voucher has 3 items listed on it and 3 checks are cut, they are counted as 3 separate transactions.  

Eliminate royalty distributions to chapters - $124,000 These are the royalties that come from affinity partners such as Liberty Mutual, American National Insurance, Hertz, etc.  

  Reduce fundraising distribution for chapters from 70% to 50%  

  In addition, there will be a fee imposed on bank accounts that are not Wells Fargo accounts.  

Having so many of these extraneous accounts has driven the cost of required audit to an unacceptable limit.  

These also must all be reconciled, which causes increased work for the PAC.  

This fee will likely be $500 per year on each account; however, neither the fee nor the deadline for this has been officially set. As soon as we have that information, we will notify everyone.  

This was a very difficult decision and the board made every attempt to reduce or cut expenses in the budget prior to moving to this type of solution.  

Salaries will be held flat once again.
o CenturyLink will continue to pay for headquarters postage (approximately $15,000).
o Board members will begin to pay a $200 board fee in January to offset the costs of board meetings. ($3,000)
o More managed services, such as equipment maintenance and IT services, will be brought in house (approximately $10,000).
o Any provision for staff training and development has been removed (approximately $5,000).
o All travel for staff has been removed, including travel for the Executive Director to attend any affiliate annual meetings, so if you would like for Charlene to attend any meetings, the chapter will need to pay for her travel expenses (approximately $1,200).
o Some expenses could not be reduced because of contractual obligations, but those can be looked at as contracts expire.  

The board will begin working on strategic planning in early 2013. If you have thoughts or ideas, please let Sherry Daughtry know. She does a wonderful job of speaking for the membership at the board table and will value your input greatly. Feel free to copy me (Janie) on any input or ideas, as well.  

Important Notice Regarding 2013 PAC Fee
We know that the PAC fee is an unplanned cost and as a Company we'd like to help buffer that by covering the fees for our chapters in 2013.  

o This is not something that's occurring across the organization, so if you talk with fellow Pioneers in other chapters that are not CenturyLink Pioneers, you likely will not hear that option, so please be sensitive to that fact.  

Going Forward
We'd also like to explore an option where the region can contribute more to programs and projects that are impacting our communities. We'll be following up with you on that after the holidays with a special call and maybe a subcommittee if needed.