|
|
Minutes of the Meeting Date: March 08, 2008 Time Started: 10:00am EST Time Adjourned: xx:xxam EST 1. Roll Call Participants: Andrew F. Ingley (Chairman, Treasurer) Christian Reagan (President) entered meeting at 10:31am Richard Ashbrook (Secretary) Randy Lebowitz (Chapter President) Todd Allen (Chapter VP of House & Alum) Andrea Zable (Director) Dan Vazquez (Director) Greg Morris (Director) Rob Strosberg (Director) | DRAFT
Unable to Attend: Damian Perry (Financial Advisor-non voting member) - Damian was out sick John Tesmer (Director)
|
2. Call to order and Determination of Quorum:
- 8 Voting members presentat 10:15 am with 1 voting member joining at 10:31 am; 1 Proxy available at the time of the meeting.
- Chairman of the Board Andrew Ingley called the meeting to order at 10:15 am EST
3. Reading of the minutes from previous meeting: Minutes from March 12, 2007
- Motion to waive minutes of meeting made by Richard and seconded by Greg, approved by unanimous consent.
- Motion to approve the minutes of the meeting from March 12, 2007 made by Richard and seconded by Andrea, approved by unanimous consent.
4. Financial review from Merrill Lynch as of March 7, 2008
- Cash/EMA Account $32,632
- Blackrock Global Allocation Fund A $19,455
- Blackrock Global Allocation Fund B$15,803
- Franklin Templeton (founding) $12,020
- MFS Research Fund $19,446
- Van Kampen Equity Income Fund $20,107
- Total $118,793
- Total value at the End of Jan $123,604 End of Feb $125,368
- Feb Deposited $2500 from Chapter Brothers and another donor of $50
- Have a big cash balance because it is in our bylaws to maintain a large cash balance and conservative investments.
5. Treasurer’s report - Taxes In June 2007, we filed 14 years of tax returns and made related payments of $17,016 and requested waiver of certain interest and penalties at the advice of a tax attorney. IRS distributed our tax returns to various people within the agency; none of whom knew what any of the others were doing. Eventually, IRS put our case to the field examination unit (we were audited). Ultimately, the IRS waived a total of about $5,000 in interest and fees, but did not waive a total of over $7,800 in interest and fees. In January this year we paid $218.16 of interest, in February we paid $4,829 of interest and fees. I expect that we will pay another $3,000 - $4,00 when the field examiners finish their work and make a final determination. Through this process, we requested reclassification as a ‘public charity’ from a ‘private foundation’. As the board may recall, as a private foundation we’re taxed on implied investment income from our cumulative undistributed income each year (an excise tax). As a public charity, there is no such tax. In order to become a public charity, we must have broad public support (funding) and support activities that benefit the public. In an effort to have public support, we asked the chapter to have students remit individual checks to the Foundation instead of receiving a single check from the chapter. - IRS has yet to make a formal decision, but based on conversations with a field examiner, I don’t believe they will grant us public charity status primarily because:
1) the examiner doesn’t feel that student contributions are ‘public support’ since it’s a limited group among the broader university
2) the examiner also feels our efforts don’t benefit the general public since we specifically support the chapter
- 2 weeks ago Andrew received a call from the exempt organizations division inquiring about our request to be classified as a public charity. The agent said that she makes the final determination as to public charity status, not field examiners, and that she didn’t know we were undergoing a field examination. Our response to her is due this Wednesday.
- In the meantime, for tax year 2007, we set aside $6,000 into an educational facility reserve to lessen the ‘private foundation’ excise tax burden. We have 5 years from the date of the set aside to spend this money on a facility. It’s unclear what happens if we don’t spend it by that time – likely we’ll get hit with an excise tax. As a point of reference, for the 14 years of tax returns filed, approximately 96% or $16,401 related to excise taxes. We will have to do a set aside every year. Rob aske if we can bring the set aside back, Andrew can't answer that right now, we still have five years.
- We need to Ask Cleve if we can change the set aside to use for other purposes.
- The interest is not that substantial, the penalties are the biggest burden, Andrew doesn't believe any additional interest and penalties are accumulating.
- We are characterized as a private foundation and subject to excise taxes which looks at how much income we have taken in and how much we have distributed then taxes us on 5% of our assets.
- We have requested public charity status in order to lessen the tax burden.
What to do from here?
– expand fundraising to alumni and businesses so that dependence on chapter is reduced.
– start thinking of ways to acquire a facility or land or something since funds are set aside for that purpose and we have a 60 month window to use the first set aside.
- Heartfelt thanks to Andrew for all his work to date.
6. Chapter Relations - Scholarship Committee Steve Smith, a former District Director and Alpha Phi Alum whom now lives in Thailand, participated as a scholarship committee member. Scholarship committee now consists of Andrea Zable, Dan Vazquez, and Steve Smith. This semester we had 12 applications submitted for the need based scholarship and 12 submitted for the merit based scholarship. There were a total of 21 brothers who applied. Three of the brothers applied for both the need and the merit based scholarships.
-What positions have they held in AKPSi or other organizations
-what were there accomplishments in those positions
-Employment history
-G.P.A.
-Honors
-Essay
-Income history
-Cash on hand
-Employment history
-Family contributions
-Essay
The Need Based Scholarship was Tory Lee. Andrea is currently researching what reporting is required by the IRS and putting together information and paperwork for reporting purposes Wants to come up with a more standardized form. A motion to institutionalize the scholarship program as a perminent part of our process is made by Christian and seconded by Greg. The award will continue as two $500 dollar awards every semester. Randy thinks the chapter likes the way things are going right now. The Scholarship committee will continue the process. The motion passess by unanimous consent. Christian would like to add a $500 dollar scholarship or more for something that goes to a high school student in the Gainesville area that goes toward someone seeking a degree in Business Administration.
7. Alumni Database
-All alumni who have joined the AKPsi National Online Member Community has been added to our database
-The database is going to be updated starting with the more recent alumni and working our way back
-The phase we are currently working on is updating the alumni contact information that we have in the GIN system of the chapter and bringing into our database. There are 888 alumni listed in the GIN system and about 2/3 have some kind of contact information listed. We have a lot of work to do to have a good working database.
-The GIN System login page can be found at https://www11.theginsystem.com/index.php -Andrea will be recruiting help to work on fundraising and database support for over the summer.
8. Fundraising - Currently Andrea is learning about what is required in regards to our fundraising efforts and how it needs to be reported according to the IRS
- Andrea is looking in to ways that we can expand into becoming a public charity
-Putting together a business seminar that we may be able to open to other fraternities and sororities on campus. -Some of the brothers who are in sororities and fraternities have mentioned that the brothers of AKPsi are the ones to go to for help in writing resumes and cover letters as well as how to act and dress at interviews and functions. -It seems that students like getting information from each other and some feel that the CRC is limited. -Andrea would like to recruit several brothers from the Chapter to help put together a program that we may be able to provide next fall to all students.
This would give brothers a way to reach out to the University and the local community in a way never before accomplished, and by sponsoring the project through the Foundation give another way to support Public status for us. Providing these types of seminars could be used as a fundraiser and be a reason to encourage companies and parents to donate money to the chapter thus further opening us up to the public. We could even expand the program to work with high school students and having the brothers teach the seminar. This would give the brothers experience in marketing, business development, accounting, advertising, public relations, and public speaking. - We could teach a seminar on how to dress for and how to interview for high school students looking to get there first job.
- Teaching seminars would give us the reason to have a facility which then could be used by the brotherhood for chapter meetings and such.
- Goal is to be able to start pushing a fundraising campaign beginning in April.
- A committee to do an outreach program as outlined above has been created with Andrew, Andrea, Greg, Randy & Christian.
- Rob was concerned about the original purpose of the purpose of the foundation. We should think about the long range purpose. Andrea believes that what we are doing goes toward the purpose of getting a facility. Christian does not think we have strayed from the path. We have been dealing with some short term tactical problems in order to get back on our original goal of having a facility.
9. New Business 10. Old Business and Announcements
11. Motion to adjourn by Richard and seconded by Christian. Motion passes by unanimous consent- meeting adjourned at 11:37pm
|
|
|