Welcome on board!

July 30th, 2012 by Kristin

We did it! We held the first Annual General Meeting since our group had reformed last December. A big THANK YOU to our amazing volunteers Adrian, Alan, Bernice, Christopher, Darren, Kristin, Paul and Yulia who picked up the pieces and brought our group back to life! In the past seven months they invested a couple hundred hours to connect with members, establish the outings program, attend outreach events, recruit volunteers, collaborate with other groups and plan the next steps.

And now… *drumroll please* …welcome our new executive board that was elected at the AGM:

Cheryl – Communications Coordinator
Christopher – Vice-Chair, Events Coordinator
Darren – Outings Coordinator
Kristin – Chair, Volunteer Coordinator
Maria – Treasurer
Yulia – Events Co-Coordinator

2011 Activities Report

Our major challenge in 2011 was a lack of volunteers. In 2010, the former exec team dissolved entirely for various personal reasons. Our group was reduced to two active volunteers in the roles of Treasurer and Outings Coordinator. In December three more people stepped up and formed the outings team.The goal was to hold a regular monthly outing to build continuity and attract new members. Our outings shall be combined with current campaigns if applicable.
We held monthly meetings from January to March on two campaigns, Save Alberta’s Parks Now and RePower Alberta. Reached 44 people in total. Discontinued the monthly meetings in April due to a lack of volunteers to organize them.
Organized 7 outings over the course of the year; six of them were active outings in the Rocky Mountains (thereof one overnight stay), one was the annual Pathway and River Cleanup hosted by the City of Calgary. In total we reached 36 people with our outings program. We had no outings in the months of April, July, August, October—December due to lack of volunteer time.
Throughout the year we tweaked our communication channels. We registered as a meetup.com group and increased our member numbers there to 51 with no promotion. Most of these members are new to Sierra Club and its programs. In December we moved all our mailing lists to MailChimp and merged them into one newsletter list. Some addresses were outdated; the cleaned-up list had 750+ members.

2011 Finance Report

We closed the year with a deficit of ~$3,500
Our revenue adds up to ~$1,000; mostly rent from the national office for their subleased space
Our newly elected treasurer Maria will reconcile the numbers over summer so we have a clearer picture of our financial situation. From there it will be easier to plan the next steps we can take.

All in all, 2011 was not our best year. The great news is that 2012 has already been better than last year and next year’s AGM will be awesome