The front of the line of the 800+ Honduran residents
we served at our pop-up clinic in our 2013 brigade

Meeting on 2/19/2014.  Members present: Jamie, Noah, Dr. Schultheis, Trang, Elizabeth, Marcella

Hello everyone,

I have some unfortunate news to start us off: we will not be hosting a face-painting booth at Sunday Streets in March.  It turns out that the rules of the event prohibit any fundraising.  We could host a booth to raise awareness about our club, but at this point in the year we should instead focus on fundraising efforts.  If anyone has ideas on where we could host a booth with a suggested donation collection, please send us an email.

A big shout out goes to Marcella for volunteering to create a club poster for us that we can set up at our tabling and fundraising events.  This poster will have photos and some text information about the club and will hopefully be visually stimulating for prospective members and donors.

This coming Wednesday 2/26 we will host a table at the Foothill Community Resource Fair in the campus quad.  This will be from noon-1pm, AKA College Hour.  Thank you so much to Grace for volunteering to make candy gift baggies that we can hand out during the event.

There was some talk of hosting a St. Patrick's Day-themed event on campus.  As per Foothill's rules, we cannot sell anything on campus that we have made ourselves, so we were thinking of selling green packaged items like green Otter Pops, green M&Ms, green apple caramel pops (I can just picture see the dental hygiene staff cringe), and possibly face paint a shamrock on fellow students.  We were also thinking that we could have a bowl of green grapes and offer a prize to anyone who donates to the club in exchange for guessing how many grapes there are.  The guesser closest to the actual number of grapes gets a gift basket, and the furthest away from the actual number gets the grapes!  If anyone would like to take on this event, please let us know.  The ideas are all in place, we only need one or two coordinators to tie all the pieces together.

Another fundraising idea we had during the meeting is to set up a raffle night, or a "crapple" night.  We all know what a raffle is, right?  Well, Crapple is like a raffle but the participants run the risk (or great opportunity) of winning an item from our flea market or a new prize, like a gift basket or gift card.  I already have a gift basket that has been donated to us from Philz Coffee.

*We implore each member to email one store, market, or other company asking them if they participate in events or donations with local nonprofits.  All it took for me was one email to Philz using their contact info on their website, and their community outreach department offered us some cool swag for whatever purpose we please.  Other markets that you can contact can be Cost Plus World Market, Whole Foods,Trader Joe's, Fraiche frozen yogurt, Sprinkles Cupcakes, or the myriad of restaurants spanning from Palo Alto to San Jose.  You could also ask around from local places that offer services like spa services, chiropractic care, dance lessons, etc*

We can use these donations from each place to create gift baskets that can be raffled off during an event, TBD.  Remember, Global Brigades, inc is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, so any donations given are tax deductible. Here is a copy of the tax receipt.  Our tax ID is Global Brigades, Inc (EIN 37-1551109)

Also, back in November I started a group fundraising page on ThredUp.com.  ThredUp is an online consignment store for women's and children's clothing.  You send your gently used, brand-name clothing to them and they purchase the ones they can re-sell.  I sent in a bag of clothes that I gathered from our flea market collection and earned us $133.40!  If you would like to see if you can earn money for the club by selling your brand name clothing, check out their purchasing requirements.  If you are successful in making a sale, you can have your earnings donated to our club.

As several of you have already figured out, there is an open Doodle Poll to determine when is the best day to host our mandatory meeting at the end of this quarter.  Please follow the link in the column on the right under "Meetings".  You have until March 7th to respond to this poll.  The mandatory meeting will go over crucial information such as what to expect on the brigade, required vaccinations, schedule of depositing funds to your Empowered account, state of medicine, state of fundraising, and any other pertinent information that comes up.  This is also a good time to ask all the questions you have about what to expect on the brigade.  Even if you are still only considering going on the brigade, you must attend this meeting.

That brings me to the next important reminder: 

~  The $250 deposit is due at the end of April.  ~

We need this commitment from everyone who is going on the brigade because we use that money to secure our airplane tickets to Honduras.  If you do not have the $250 in your Empowered account by the end of April, you will not have a seat reserved on our flight to Honduras.

Next Wednesday's meeting will be a shorter one because the co-presidents and Dr. Schultheis need that time to go over club funds and accounting records.

If you have any fundraising ideas, please contact us so we can get the ball rolling on that!  For every on campus event we host, we must get OBD's approval the Tuesday before the event is scheduled to take place.

Please forward all questions to our gmail account.

Happy Sunday!