Attending: Chris Hoess, Anna Hull, Tracy Raymond, David Ross, Harold Sweetman, Bill
Wittaker, Henry Whitesell in person; Bob Gray via phone 2:00pm at Lincoln University.

A) Key Dates

1. Our next board meeting is scheduled for Sunday, May 15, 2:00-4:00 at Lincoln University, Room 235
Conference Dial-in number: (716) 748-0224 (potential toll call)
Host Access Code: 445962*
Participant Access Code: 445962#

2. Hikes, Talks, Work Days and Other Commitments

Saturday, April 16, Upper Chrome Work Day, 9am -- Kent leads
May 6, Oxford First Friday
Saturday, May 7, NCP Work Day, 9am – David leads
Saturday, May 14, Themed Hike (birds) – Goat Hill,
Saturday, May 28, New Texas, 9am – Chris leads
Friday, June 03, GH Work Day, 9 am – Anna and Henry lead
Friday, June 10, Deloitte Work Day at GH – Molly leads
Saturday, June 11, Themed Hike (TBD) – Chrome
Saturday, June 25, Lower Chrome Work Day, 9am – Bob leads
July 1, Oxford First Friday
August 5, Oxford First Friday

B) Action Items Going Forward

Agenda Items Tabled to May

Review 2014 goals in preparation for 2016 goals discussion.
NCP Shed Project.
Update on March 22 TNC stream restoration visit to Lower Chrome.
Brief report on successful Goat Hill mowing.
Brief reports on Chris Hoess, March 20, Oxford Public Library/Ware Talk, 2pm and cancelled
April 9, Themed Hike (spring ephemerals) at NCP.
Finding Eagle Scout partners.

Molly Anderson

April 6 workday report for Lower Chrome.
Schedule Lower Chrome mowing.

Mike Bertram

Participate as able in the mapping discussions with West Chester University.
Point person for our history initiatives

Bob Gray

Point person for strategic planning initiatives.

Chris Hoess

Will attend April 13 WCU GIS class.
Will obtain additional chain and two locks for TNC shed.
Will work with Tracy to maintain contact database.
Will lead May 28 work day at New Texas
Will lead July 2016 fame flower walk at Goat Hill

Anna Hull

Will work with Kent to get equipment to Lower Chrome for April 16 workday.
Lead NCP shed discussion in May
Co-leads June 3 work day there at Goat Hill.
Point person for science and education initiatives.

Liz Johnson

Will provide mowing BMP guidelines/talking point handout we can use with mowing
volunteers.

Tracy Raymond

Will attend April 13 WCU GIS class.
Will circulate Chrome brochure text for Board review and obtain Elk Township taxexempt
number.
Will work with Chris to maintain contact database.
Point person for membership and outreach initiatives.

David Ross

Will check with Molly about Lower Chrome workday and mowing.
Will attend April 13 WCU GIS class.
Will work with Kent to get equipment to Lower Chrome for April 16 workday.
Point person for administrative initiatives.

Kent Wagner

April 16 workday at Lower Chrome
Point person for recreational uses and trail planning initiatives.

Henry Whitesel

Will send thank you note to Harold Sweetman.
Will work with Kent to get equipment to Lower Chrome for April 16 workday.
Will get Tracy Elk Township check for Chrome brochures.
Will work with Molly on exploring alternative routes to get stone to TNC shed.
Will follow up on Scout projects.
Co-leads June 3 work day at Goat Hill.
Point person for conservation/maintenance planning

C) Agenda Items Considered

Welcome, Meeting Minutes and Agenda

Approved March meeting minutes and today’s agenda.

Fundraising – Harold Sweetman

• Approaching funders
We expressed our gratitude to Harold for giving us guidance from his 30-year experiences as executive director of Jenkins Arboretum.
Henry will send thank you note.
During that period Jenkins went from no endowment, no staff to 7 full time employees, 6 part time and on track for a $20 million endowment by 2020
Started by accumulating contact information who visited and felt a sense of connection to the Arboretum.
Think of the process of gathering support as “friend raising” more than fundraising
People give to people not causes; they give to you because you care deeply about something.
Need to convey a sense of that there is an urgent need for the money you seek. The case for support must be clearly stated, perhaps through an expanded mission statement.
Social events are thank-you parties; not fundraisers. The idea is to just have fun and establish those social ties.
Engaging with the community of potential donors is a slow dance of engagement and evangelism for what you care about.
5% of donors will give 90% of what comes in; 1-2 donors give half your money.
From a fundraising standpoint, a large membership pool is more about creating the social structure from which connections with large donors may be forthcoming.

For example, in a $3 million campaign Jenkins raised $15,000 from members; the rest from a few large donors.
Harold’s charitable giving pie
1-2% is corporations
foundations 5%
90-95% is from individuals

Most donors want to fund what they can see, taste or feel. Have a wish list of concrete needs.
Commit to getting thank you notes out within 2 days of receipt – with tax donation forms to follow.
Apply for grants is 90-95% research to generate the right ask at the right time for the right project from the right funder at the right amount.
Use Form 990 and other public filings to determine who is giving to whom and for how much.
Use informal contacts to discern openness to what you want to fund; ask for a letter of intent, asking for permission to apply.
A well-structured board is important – demonstrating competent leadership and buy-in.

For example, buy-in by the Jenkins Board is demonstrated by
Membership
Year end gift
Attend annual party
Campaign gift

FSLSB should review its assets and challenges and devise 1, 3 and 5 year plans that include strategies and concrete needs. Use events and communications to keep members and potential donors engaged.

• Potential Summer Event

Postpone to summer 2017 as a thank you for donors and members

Next Meeting Date

Agreed on Sunday, May 15, 2:00-4:00 at Lincoln University, Room 235

Mapping with West Chester University (David)

• Date for visit
• Maps – data to include/exclude
• How to mesh their goals with ours
• Botanical data

Chris, Tracy, Bill and David will attend with Rachel Ralls joining remotely.

We plan on a general discussion with the students of our needs and desires, learning from them
what is feasible to set up.
Core goal is a geodatabase server with both a public component and a zone that is password
protected (e.g., for rare plant protection). Ease of data exchange and data updates with partners
and public sources. Areas for prototyping, working on short-term projects.

List from FSLSB Board Meeting
1) Tracking historical changes in vegetative cover of the Barrens from historical photos.
2) Expanding the Restoration Unit layer for Nottingham County Park, incorporating groundtruthed
serpentine sites
3) Linking site-tracker database to serpentine sites at Goat Hill, Upper and Lower Chrome,
NCP and New Texas
4) Layers for other biota (birds, endangered species).
5) The Barrens in context – links to other land uses and municipal centers.
6) Support for other WCU class projects.

Chris Hoess GIS map layers List

1. Property ownership (can this be brought in from ChescoViews)?
2. Restoration units and sites. Restoration units are large areas delimited by firebreaks, roads, trails, streams, etc. Sites are individual grasslands or other areas of interest requiring maintenance within a given maintenance unit. It would be nice to impose a uniform reference and naming system for all of our sites. In the long run, I would like to see extensive metadata attached to these sites and units, so that we're logging maintenance activity carried out at each site, date last surveyed, recommended maintenance activity (perhaps cross-correlated with rare species and so on). This would be a major project and to some extent depends on our ability to develop a description of best maintenance practices, but it would also be a big asset in helping us prioritize maintenance and restoration work.
3. Hydrology. Streams and other bodies of water, wetland delineation. This could be extracted from the National Hydrology Dataset and perhaps refined by ground truthing.
Would like to be able to track water quality: where would this data come from and how could we keep it synchronized?
4. Trails, roads, and parking (official and unofficial).
5. Other miscellaneous physical features: powerline, fences, deer exclosure at Goat Hill,
hunting stands, signage.
6. Current vegetative cover. This should be based on the standard vegetative communities outlined in Roger Latham's various restoration reports. A good class project later would be using ArcGIS to estimate historic landcover based on historic aerial photos.
7. Rare species. This layer would need to be password-protected. We probably need to think more about whether we want to track just rare species or observed plant and animal species of interest in general (rare or not). It might also be good to track potential habitat (the way DCNR does in their database) for a few species of interest, like whippoorwills and rough green snakes.
8. Geology. We could start with the PA DCNR shapefile, which (for our purposes) defines the serpentine-nonserpentine contact. Classes and researchers in the future could use Smith & Barnes' work and field work to refine the geologic mapping. Does anyone else have fine-scale geologic data?
9. Soil. Supposedly Rocky Gleason supplied Bob with paper copies of some soil maps, which could be digitized. This could also make for an interesting and long-running project: my recollection of the research done at Unionville Barrens is that soils could be heterogeneous over very short distances, so a lot of sampling is necessary to develop a correlation with vegetative cover.
10. Mine and quarry remnants: pits, adits, trenches, tailings piles, etc.
11. Other historical data: foundations of the old shacks at Goat Hill, the old well, etc. This might make an interesting cross-disciplinary project for the future.
12. Research sites. A layer to help us keep track of where outside researchers are working to avoid conflicts.
Events/Outreach/Stewardship Days – past and future

• Mowing update

At Goat Hill: Success, will report in May.
At Lower Chrome: We believe enough progress has been made for Bob Folk to mow the serpentine sites; but that mowing needs to happen ASAP. David will contact Molly for April 6 report, update on how to proceed on the joined sites 9 and 14 and to see if Bob can move now.
Upper Chrome: April 16 workday will include preparation for mowing in northeast corner.
Pal hopes to arrange a time for Chris Fowler to mow that area in next 2 weeks. Pal is aware of need to protect research units marked with with green flags. Henry will ask Pal to let Anna know when Pal and Chris plan to go out. Anna will send a note to the Board to see who else might be able to attend as helpers/safety monitors. We agreed that this mowing is happening under the auspices of Elk Township, not FSLSB/PPFF.

• TNC Shed, rocks and locks

Waiting on a run of dry weather for arrival of rocks.
Chris will obtain chain and locks for doors.
Exploring temporary options for keeping equipment high and dry.
Henry is exploring with Molly alternative routes to the shed for delivery of rocks.

• Reports from talks and First Friday

April First Friday: Partnership with NCP worked well. Good foot traffic. An additional 11 emails for the (non-work day) email list.
Authorized Chris to reimburse Tracy for a total of $265.54 in outreach-related expenses approved during March Board meeting.
Henry to get Tracy Elk Township check for Chrome brochures; Tracy to circulate text for Board review and obtain Elk Township tax-exempt number.
Tabled discussion of Chris’s March 20 talk and cancelled April 9 walk to May meeting.

• Upcoming events

May First Friday theme is cinco de mayo. Looking for volunteers to work with Tracy.
Tracy – Birds May 14

• Chrome 4/16 (Kent leads)

Approved Kent’s suggested task list, with emphasis on preparing north east corner for mowing.
Will work on getting equipment to Upper Chrome parking lot.

• NCP – change to May 6 (David leads)

Kept date on Saturday, May 7

Grant Update (Anna)

• Equipment purchases

Bought the Billy Goat and the two brush whackers. Anna will work with Camerons to get the right conversion kits installed on the latter.

• PPE – not yet ordered

We authorized Anna to proceed with the list circulated with the agenda with the following adjustments.
Substitute 2 nylon size 36 chaps for the heavy duty cotton
Substitute 9-ply chain saw chaps (available from Camerons)
Make adjustments to gloves/DEET to stay within budget.
Communication

• Email list update

Current

• Volunteer recruitment and follow-up

Tracy will send thank you note whenever a new volunteer attends one of our work days.
Other Business, Think about Vision! Adjournment
Adjourned at 5:05 pm with thanks to Anna for hosting