Minutes
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July 19, 2007 Minutes LitvakSIG Board
Meeting Present: Gene Alpert, Judy Baston, Eden Joachim, David Hoffman, Howard Margol, Mike Posnick, Aaron Roetenberg, Olga Zabludoff. Absent: Rose Leher Cohen. A quorum was present. Before the formal meeting began, Lawrence Hamilton introduced himself as doing pro bono legal work for the LitvakSIG. Larry is a partner in Mayer , Brown , Rowe & Maw LLP - one of the largest law firms in the world with more than 1400 lawyers in seven US and six European cities. Larry explained that various specialists in his large law firm are providing pro bono services to the LitvakSIG. Since they also provide these services to JewishGen, he explained that they could not represent either organization if they represented a conflict of interest. Larry's firm has generously provided a lot of legal advice during the past year, and he has agreed to serve as a member of the Bylaws Committee. Before the meeting began, Larry left. Howard Margol, President called meeting to order at 12:00 noon MDT. 1. Election of Officers - Howard Margol was nominated and elected President to fill the final year of his term; Eden Joachim was nominated and elected Treasurer; David Hoffman, was nominated and elected Secretary, all elections were unanimous. We agreed to use the AccuConference System, based on the recommendation of JGS; it will be slightly more expensive but has additional features such as recording the meeting which can be downloaded to take accurate minutes and listened to by Board members who had to miss a meeting. 2. Bringing Vitalija Gircyte and Galina Baranova to the Chicago Conference next summer. Galina is enthusiastic about coming; Vitalija is also enthusiastic but her attendance depends on health problems in her family. Howard has explored joint sponsorship with the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago, which has a large Lithuanian-American population. For various reasons, it was decided that the SIG should not pursue this idea. Howard thinks that the Conference will pay for two nights. In the past there has been competition among SIG members to take the Archivists to all meals and this would probably be the same for the Chicago conference and therefore not be an expense. It is likely that local LitvakSIG members' families would be interested in hosting them for the other conference nights, possibly more. We discussed Archivists earning money with individual consultations to be shared between the SIG and the Archives and possibly IAJGS. We also intend to give them honoraria. We expect that they will give talks and speak at SIG luncheon. We will look for other sponsors (IAJGS conference and others.) One idea is to advertise an evening program to the large Chicago Lithuanian-American community with an admission charge to use to defer expenses. A committee consisting of Howard, David and Eden will formalize a plan for the Board's consideration. 3. Eden reported that the Vilna District had been authorized to require $200 minimum donations by the previous Board as an experimental project. Olga said that the discussion had included Board Members, District and Project Coordinators and took place in a chat room over a two-week period. She offered to send a copy of the text to the current Board for reference. Olga was appointed chair of a subcommittee, along with Judy Baston, Eden Joachim, and Mike Posnick, to review our Contributions and Fundraising Policies and make recommendations at the November meeting for Board decisions. There are several issues to be addressed: Should we have a standard or flexible requirement for donor contributions to qualify for records? If flexible, should this be based on the differences between Towns or Districts (number of potential donors, number of records to be translated, size of Town or District) similar to the JRI-Poland system? Should the previously established $100 contribution for records be modified and if so, how? It was agreed that any discussion of VRT projects should include input from Aaron Roetenberg and Joel Ratner, who coordinate the two VRT projects. There was a consensus at the meeting that District Coordinators should cease promising unlimited records in the future, pending a final decision of the Board. Judy suggested that this be modified to include “those records which are already being ordered and being translated.” Eden moved that all fundraising messages for District projects will not promise unlimited records in the interim and the motion passed. 4. A motion was made to pay Richard Hoffman $101.57 for transporting T-Shirts to the 2006 NY Conference. The motion passed. 5. There was a discussion of Suwalki records acquisition . Before translation of new records an attempt will be made to locate previously translated records. An attempt will be made to avoid duplication of work that has already been done. 6. Gene gave a membership report: he was pleased that so many people who had not paid dues since 2002 had chosen to rejoin the LitvakSIG. Regarding new ideas he suggested:
7. David asked what we pay to JG for being hosted. Aaron said that it is based on membership at 50¢ a member, so with only 250 -300 members it has been less than $125-$150 per year. It was suggested that in appreciation for their hosting services we should donate more than this. David moved that we increase this payment/donation to $500 this year. This was amended to be worded, as “The LitvakSIG will make a donation for 2007 to JewishGen consisting of an amount based on membership plus an additional donation to their general fund bringing our total contribution up to $500.” The amended motion passed unanimously. 8. Aaron reported that there had been $1300 in donations made during the Conference and five to ten new memberships. Aaron suggested several perks to be offered to Members on our www.LitvakSIG.com website such as lists of records or looking up records. 10. The next Board meeting will take account of time differences: California: 10 a.m. The meeting was adjourned at 4:00 p.m. MDT Respectfully submitted, David Hoffman
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