Wednesday, May 7, 2008

rant n rave

I went to guild today but I didn't get much done. I got the Butterfly Kisses BOM cut at least and I got the backing measured, cut and ironed for the John Deere quilt. I'll sew it together tomorrow.

The main thing I did today was submit the funding request to the board of directors at the rec that sponsers our guild. I'm the president of the guild this year so I had to do the actual appearance before the board. We had to have a special meeting last saturday to get our request together since one member insisted at our last regular meeting that "we'll have plenty of time to do that at our next meeting." Our scheduled time before the board was 40 minutes *before* the meeting. Several people were really irritated about having to have a special meeting. I typed the request up and emailed it to the members for suggestions and proof reading. I got a call from the member that insisted we would have plenty of time to get the request done at this meeting telling me that I had done it all wrong and had to remove all the financial stuff, blah, blah, blah. I told her that I was shown what the board wanted from the various clubs and organizations they fund and followed the same template. She informed me I was lied to and that's not how they do it and blah, blah, blah.

The same person droned on and on during the meeting about what another very large guild does when they put on a quilt show. People were actually turning and rolling their eyes at me!! We don't care that big city guild has a 50 member commitee to put on their quilt show. That's not really helpful information. How much is the venue going to cost? What are the advertising rates for the large and smaller area newspapers? How much is it going to cost to rent the quilt stands? Those are the things we really needed to know!!

After the meeting another member pointed out that the reciept that was submitted by that person had personal items on it and shouldn't have been approved and paid since the rule is all guild items must be on a reciept by itself. And not only that but she had charged most of the shipping and sales tax to the guild instead of apportioning it to each item and paying her share. The treasurer pulled out a couple of her other reciepts and discovered that we're paying a fair share of her shipping and sales tax every time she orders stuff for the guild. I'll bet she doesn't order supplies and equipment for the guild again!!

The guild has had some growing pains and has lost and gained members. For a long time I thought the problems were with some of the members that have dropped out. Madam Problem hasn't been to meetings for several months until last month. All of the meetings she missed were actually productive and we moved forward on several things. The last two meetings we haven't made any progress on any thing and Madam Problem seems to have irritated and pissed off a fair number of members. It appears since I am president it has fallen to me to tell Madam Problem to knock it off and get in line with every one else.

Well. I feel better now.

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