Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State
Executive Board Meeting
March 5, 2025
Held on Zoom
ATTENDANCE
Present were: President Tana Hasart, Exec VP Cathi Lamoreux, Treasurer Gilbert Plascencia, Secretary John Strong, State Program Lead Jennifer Marquis, Debbie Benbow, Erin Hoover, Kitty Lunden-Ness.
OPENING
President Tana opened the meeting at 4:00 pm. She reported that three counties are working on a template for MOAs between foundations and WSU. Focus to begin with is to determine those elements that are absolutely required by WSU. The plan is to include an update to each county’s MOA during our recertification process.
NWFGF
Debbie reported that many good comments have been received about our booth at the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival, and from volunteers who worked there.
For 2026, we plan to use many of the same materials, and to make them available to local chapters to use at events such as fairs, farmer markets, etc.
Tana will contact the show organizer to request the same location and fee structure for next year.
Gilbert advised that we endeavor to develop good, positive responses to local chapters about the value of our participation in the NWFGF, to ensure continued sponsorships from them.
Tana briefly described a contact at the show from another vendor who invited us to join the organization: “One Percent For the Planet.” She will get more information about them, and bring it to the board for consideration.
AEC
Cathi announced there are three counties that have agreed to host a Shared Learning Experience as part of the upcoming conference. The decision was made to leave the planning for lunch and facilities up to the local counties. If they wish to charge an additional fee to cover those costs, they should arrange to collect that, rather than have us include it in registration.
Registration opens on June 1st. RFPs for speakers are due this week, and the program committee will meet next week to review them.
Looking toward 2026, there are already two new volunteers on this year’s planning team who have asked to be part of the planning for next year!
There continues to be a concern about the cost of future AECs because of rising costs and economic outlook. It seems unlikely that an in-person conference will be possible in the near future.
POLICY & PROCEDURES MANUAL
Cathi reported that it is nearly complete. Appendices will be put online, and linked from the manual.
BOARD HANDBOOK
Tana shared the draft of our new handbook, and reported that it was designed using federal and state guidelines for non-profit boards. The viewpoint of a new board member was also considered in the design.
She intended that the draft would be sent out to the full board within a week, for review. Discussion led us to decide to wait until it is finalized, but to use the first sections of it in live training, as part of our upcoming full board meeting. Tana would like comments about the draft be sent to her within the next two weeks.
CAMPAIGN UPDATE
Jennifer reported that she and Tana met recently with CAHNRS leadership and key development staff about the status of the program’s endowment campaign. Previous discussions about the need to change the Gift Use Agreement, given the changes in university budgeting and other considerations, have led to some new conditions.
The legal department has chosen to accept the CAHNRS recommendation to deem the endowment’s five year time limit as completed. The wording “endowed chair” has been removed. And the endowment is considered “capped” at $50K. This enables the program to begin using the annual spendable income for program needs.
In consideration of donor comments, WSU Development has agreed to “code” donations to this endowment to prevent follow-up appeals to donors for other non-MG funding efforts. Since the focus is now clearly program support rather than funding for an individual, development is also setting up to appeal to potential major donors based on societal goals, rather than for a person.
We must work to carefully craft our messaging along these new lines.
UFW
John reported that the Unifying Foundation Website efforts have had good results as the new year unfolded. Three new chapters are either online or soon will be: Clallam went live in the past week or so; Jefferson will come on board in the next month; and Snohomish will be completing their work to go live some time this summer. These additions bring the UFW family of websites to eleven: nine foundation chapters, the AEC site, and the Evergreen Thumb site.
Looking forward, Lewis County has expressed interest. We are considering how we might approach the next five largest chapters (by county population) to encourage them to come on board. (They are: Thurston, Kitsap, Skagit, Cowlitz, and Grant-Adams.)
COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
Debbie chaired a meeting last week, where the new SharePoint site for the team was reviewed. They hope to be fully up and running by May with scheduling of topics across all venues. Each month the theme will be one of the nine priorities.
A restore of the MailChimp audiences is nearly complete.
Jennifer commented that the WSU Insider is planning a series of articles about the Master Gardener Program, to be run in the Spring, Summer and Fall editions.
CLOSING
As we ran late into the evening, Tana asked that we think about revising our strategic plan, using a model of the impacts of our work, by goal. We will continue discussion at our next meeting.
Erin shared an impact poster detailing numbers and results for 2024 from the Evergreen Thumb Podcasts.
ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 6:15 p.m