Chair’s Report for AGM

 

As we navigate our way out of the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, CMM has had an exciting past year. Last May we were at the discussion stage of actually having offerings and envisioning what our programs would look like, how to coordinate with teachers, and where to deliver these resources. Fast forward to now and we have held our first course, retreat, and new sangha! This was made possible by our work with the incredibly resourceful and insightful Business Coach, Virginia Hastings, at our Strategic Planning sessions in September and October of last year. 

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We gathered our visions, accomplishments to date, and our resources and challenges and Virginia helped us distill these into realistic goals and action items. Of these items, we prioritized the website, membership, grant applications, board recruitment, and a new Sangha in Bracebridge. Other important items were social media presence, charitable status, and programs. The website was immediately drafted, approved, and launched by the end of 2021. It has proved to be successful and invaluable in attracting new members, volunteers, and over 50 registrants for the new Sangha in Bracebridge.

 

Membership is growing steadily [If not as quickly as we targeted for]. We now have 18 active founding members and 7 new general members. General membership is a new category that we call Friends of CMM. At only $25/year this base of support will quickly grow and become part of our life blood. More importantly, we now have a Membership Committee and a Membership Committee Chair, Liz Freund. Liz has been a founding member since 2019 and has proved to be a supportive, invaluable, and enthusiastic volunteer relieving the directors of database management and ensuring the importance of our members is not overlooked.

 

Next we prepared our first grant application for the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Resilient Communities Fund. If awarded, these funds were to be used for a project manager to administrate our new programs. We also have two new volunteers and our new board member Joan Ricard forming a Grant Committee to research grant opportunities and apply for grants that match our needs and projects. AJ Specht writes grants professionally and we are grateful to have her skillset applied to future effective grant applications. We were not awarded the funds to hire a project manager, but our small and mighty Board of Directors was nonetheless able to administrate and deliver the first of our programs. Certified Mindfulness Teacher, Jiana Cutting offered an Introduction to Mindfulness Course. Newly authorized CMM teachers, Sarah Carlin-Ball and Nancy Atkinson-Tiessen offered an online retreat. And we have coordinated the Sangha in Bracebridge that is scheduled to begin meeting in person this coming Monday having met over zoom since January. It is a real joy to be able to offer mindfulness training, support, and resources. Feedback from the practitioners who participated in these offerings confirm that we are meeting a real need in the community. I offer many thanks and a deep bow to the teachers and Sangha leaders who have begun our engagement with the community, to our Board of Directors for their dedication and hard work, and to our volunteers who make these offerings possible.

 

To be able to offer various programs, we needed to determine who would teach and how to work with these teachers. In 2021, we established an Advisory Council for the purpose of vetting teachers and to help ensure that CMM adheres to its vision, mission, and values. Bill Knight, Karen Davis, and Sam Thompson make up this Council and represent the interests of community members engaged in mindfulness. To date, the Council has approved four teachers for CMM. We have the capacity now to continue programming and there are plans to offer at least two more courses this year and hopefully another retreat or two.

 

We have evolving financial systems to keep up with the increase in activity – processing new memberships, renewals, program fees, Dana to sangha leaders, and incurred expenses is detailed and convoluted work. More thanks and another deep bow to our treasurer, Jiana Cutting, for her invaluable work and dedication. We are grateful to our former bookkeeper, Jody Hebert, and to our new bookkeeper, Rick Van Der Lay.

 

Other items worth mention are regularly undertaken by CMM’s working Board of Directors. Coordinating space and insurance for our various activities, researching and establishing the necessary equipment for operating hybrid programming, coordinating Sangha leaders, running our second annual Virtual Film Festival, completing training such as for accessibility and LGBTQ2S Safer Spaces Training and other education so that we can be a fair and equitable organization, our regular newsletters with features and updates, and acquiring and learning new software for our operations such as Donor Perfect, Zoom account, and online QuickBooks. 

 

In the coming year, we will utilize our new capacities toward Board recruitment – CMM would benefit greatly from a Vice Chair and more members at large to ensure the diversity of our Board. To review, our new capacities include a greater base of support with our increasing membership, a hub through which to drive activity in our website, grant writers seeking financial support, and financial processing capability and a teacher base that allows us to run programs. Our overall capacity will be greatly increased if we are awarded grants toward hiring a social media marketing person and a project manager.

 

It is quite amazing to me that we have built these new capacities in the short span of a year and largely due to the initiative of strategic planning, implementing those plans, and trusting the grander movement of life. Mindfulness trainings offer folks reduced stress, greater memory capacity and cognitive function, more harmonious relationships, and better coping skills. These are just a few of the benefits we often list – and they are quite true. Yet mindfulness also allows us to see that grander movement of life and to trust that movement within ourselves. Quakers, similarly, talk about the Way and Parker Palmer once asked a Quaker woman if she could see Way opening in front of her. She replied no and his heart sank. Then she said ​​”But a lot of Way has closed behind me, and that's had the same guiding effect.” I think any one of us here with a long mindfulness practice can see how the way of life has opened for us. And as I recall the responses of practitioners we’ve engaged with in the past year whether in a course, retreat, or Sangha, or in mindful discussion after a film, it feels to me like we are in the way of life that is opening.

 

In closing I will express gratitude for everyone involved with CMM in whatever capacity great or small. None of this would happen without all of you.

 

Sarah Carlin-Ball

Chairperson

April 2022