Leader Meeting Minutes 9/12/17

North Reading Girl Scouts
Leader Meeting Minutes 9/12/17
Meeting started at 7:42 p.m.
In attendance: Debbie Nearing, North Reading’s SU Coordinator and Corresponding Secretary, and Leader of troop 73891; Anne Valade, Fall Product Coordinator, Jo Gibson, Hood School Coordinator, Cookie Manager, and Leader of Troop 69175 and 62548; Amy Kelly, SU Treasurer, and Leader of Troops 71901 and 62804; Denise Kung, Recording Secretary, Little School Coordinator, and Leader of Troop 62798; Amy Salomon 69175, Kristin Pemberton 69171, Vicki Labriola 69176, Cindy DeWolfe 85336, Karianne Bekier 62803, Kerri Antonuccio 62803, Lisa Coroa-Bockley 85121, Ruth Kennedy 73899 and Special Guest, the SU Coordinator from Reading Girl Scouts, Amy Ward.
Fall Sale - Anne Valade is the Fall Sale Products Coordinator. She had packets for everyone and handed them out. We sampled this year’s product offerings. New this year: organic vegetable seed planters, pickle flavored peanuts, salt and pepper cashews, new commemorative camping tin. Sale starts October 2nd. Will be delivered before Thanksgiving.
You can opt out of incentives (Cadettes and up) by a certain date (see packets). If you do, you earn 17-18% vs 15% profit for your troop on your sales.
Once the orders arrive, they are sorted by Anne and delivered to individual troops before Thanksgiving. Perfect for hostess gifts, gifts to teachers, bus drivers, coaches, etc. There are also community caring tins for those that want to donate $5 cans of peanuts to the food pantry.
How the sale works: Kids can set up accounts online to send emails to relatives and friends. Relatives CAN order online, but they have to pay the shipping (high). Kids earn patches for different activities such as online sales, community caring tins, etc. In addition, they can sell magazine subscriptions.
Why participation is important: in order to do any other kind of fundraising, you NEED to participate in both the fall sale and cookie sale. The town also gets incentives: $10 for each troop that participates with 100% of girls.
Bank account: you need to have a troop bank account set up for the fall sale monies
** Please send your troop’s fall sale coordinator email address, name and phone number to Anne Valade. She will start sending out information. **
Go to www.gsema.org and look under the Cookie tab for more information on the fall sale.
Ruth Kennedy spoke about the Girl Power party Sun Nov 5th from 1:30-3 in the Library Activity Room. Ruth’s senior high school troop is graduating this year. They really enjoyed the girl scout experience and would like to throw a party for younger girls at the Daisy/Brownie level. They are looking for Cadettes to help run craft stations. There will be dancing and yoga.
Early Bird registration patches were handed out to troop leaders.
Potential corn maze event for older girls (Marini Farm, Mann Orchards, or Connors Farm). You can also plan it as a troop activity. One leader mentioned there’s a Groupon for Connors Farm. Note: no hay rides are allowed for Girl Scouts (liability issue). Don’t forget to check that there is an insurance binder with GSEM with the organization where you attend with the girls.
Haunted Halloween party Sun Oct 22 2-4pm at the Moose, organized by Jo Gibson.
Deadline to sign up: Oct 10th. Jo is looking for volunteers to come early for setup and to supervise activities during the event. An idea was proposed where maybe we can walk through the back of the Moose after the party and cross over to the nursing home to do a costume parade. Do we need another permission form or waiver on the flyer to do this, Debbie asked? Debbie researching with GSEM.
Caroling event: Amy Salomon volunteered to organize a caroling event at a local nursing home or elder care facility, rather than caroling on the common. This will give the girls a chance to do community service and perform for an audience.
Encampment update: the event was a big success. We are looking for future encampment directors and volunteers to train for future events. Debbie is still looking for story trains (the rainy-day activity in the encampment packet).
Girls Scouts has created new badges at every level, including a Camping badge at each level. There is a webinar on Tuesday Nov 7th on the new camping badge (see the Ultimate Activity Guide and register on e-Biz to get the link).
Troops can combine and go on overnights together and share the responsibility to get First Aid and Lodge Camping trained. Look up the volunteer-to-girl ratios online for your level.
Debbie is looking for some older girl volunteers this Saturday to help run a table at the Apple Festival.
The Service Unit is looking for a recruitment specialist. There will be a Reading-North Reading recruitment event this Saturday to introduce new girls to scouting. There was information in the Monday email about the event.
If you are looking for new members, you will want to list your troop in the Opportunity Catalog so girls can find you.
Flying Stables in Chelmsford was wonderful for one of the Brownie troops. They had liability insurance (necessary for field trip). The girls visited the horses and each girl got to ride a horse and brush it. $25/girl.
Thank you to Kerri Antonuccio for stepping up as Service Unit Membership Promoter, Denise Kung for stepping up as Recording Secretary (taking minutes at each Leader meeting), Assistant Fall Product Coordinator to work with Anne to take over next year, and also the Little School Coordinator and Amber O’Driscoll for stepping up as Batch School Coordinator!
Meeting adjourned at 9:00 p.m.
Minutes taken by Denise Kung and edited by Debbie Nearing