Proposal: Amendment to Bylaws regarding VP of Admin

The Executive Council is proposing a change to our Bylaws at our next General Meeting on 19th September.  Normally, our Bylaws would require two-week notice prior to this type of vote. However, as our elections are coming up soon, we felt it was important to raise this issue now, and we hope that our Members will agree to a quick vote in this instance. If you are not able to attend Saturday's meeting, you can vote by proxy (see below). If any members would like to more time to consider this proposal, we’d be happy to hear from you (just comment here, or drop us an email). If there are enough requests, we’ll postpone the vote until October’s meeting. We appreciate your consideration of this matter.

The Executive Council is proposing the following:

Removal of the office of VP of Admin from the guild’s Executive Council.

We are proposing that the office be removed at the time of the next elections. The office was initially created to divide the Presidential responsibilities between two volunteers who were sharing that office. Additionally, many of the VP of Admin responsibilities have been related to the guild as a start-up, and will be completed by the end of 2015. It has always been our intention to have a small Executive Council and eliminating the extra job title would be in keeping with that objective.

The existing passage in our Bylaws:

3.7. Officers:

    3.7.1 President

    3.7.2. Vice President of Programming

    3.7.3. Vice President of Projects

    3.7.4. Vice President of Administration

    3.7.5. Secretary

    3.7.6. Treasurer

And the proposed change:

3.7. Officers:

    3.7.1 President

    3.7.2. Vice President of Programming

    3.7.3. Vice President of Projects

    3.7.4. Secretary

    3.7.5. Treasurer

The vote will be held by a show of hands at the meeting on 19th September (postponement notwithstanding). Members who are not able to attend may nominate a proxy to vote for them at the meeting.  A majority vote will be sufficient to carry this proposed change.

If any members have any questions about the proposal or the vote, please feel free to raise them in our Members-Only Facebook group, or directly to the Executive Council by responding to this email.

Thanks!
Allison
VP of Admin

Logo competition: the finalists

When we launched our logo competition during the summer, we were absolutely delighted to receive thirteen beautiful submissions. We were delighted, but we weren't surprised - because we know how talented our members are.

The Executive Council had the tough job of voting to reduce the thirteen wonderful entries down to just two logos for our final vote. We are pleased to present to you our fabulous finalists:

logo finalist number one

logo finalist number two

The logo which receives the most votes will be used to represent the guild in the future - on our membership cards, website, t-shirts, mugs and totes and as a banner at all events.

We will have a vote at our 19th September meeting. If you are not able to attend the meeting, you can vote online - please drop us a line using the contact form on the website and we'll send you a link.

Happy voting!
Allison
VP of Administration

All About Activity Councils

When the current Executive Council (EC) starting putting together a plan for formalizing and growing our guild, one objective that we kept in mind was a desire to build a guild that was inclusive and active. We wanted all of our members to feel hands-on and to be able to contribute to our work. 

When we looked at other guilds, both traditional and modern, for inspiration, we found some guilds who were structured so that all members actively participated in guild projects by contributing to an Activity Council. This concept allows members to have a role in steering a part of the guild’s activities that interests them most, or in an area where they may have special skills to contribute. 

Planning our Blocks Of The Month lottery is one of the activities members can help with.

And so, we have decided to follow this concept within SFMQG.  The EC has identified 9 areas which encompass the majority of our activities and goals for the coming year. Each of these Councils will have a mentor from the EC.

A brief overview of the Councils :

• Block of the month lottery
• Choosing appropriate blocks, selecting fabric palettes, putting together fabric bundles, making sample blocks, writing tutorials and giving demos.
• Challenges & swaps
• Choosing projects and themes, creating samples, writing tutorials and giving demos, setting rules and deadlines.
• Community service
• Identifying charities for the guild to work with, selecting projects and leading them through to completion and delivery.
• Education & teaching
• Research, suggest and plan demonstrations and workshops, teaching or finding teachers, looking for community outreach possibilities (schools, libraries, festivals) for modern quilting skills.
• Special events
• Suggest and plan retreats, sewcials, mixers and other special events or meetings.
• Membership
• Enrolling and renewing memberships, coordinate member sign-ins at meetings, promote the guild and looks for ways to increase our membership.
• Historian
• Document the work of the guild by creating online resources like meetings archive, quilt archive, member gallery, and document archives.
• Meetings
• Organize meetings space, secure supplies required, prepare meetings spaces, coordinate refreshments.
• Quilt-a-long
• Suggest modern quilt projects to make together, coordinate demos, tutorials, instructions, prepare blog posts and emails for participants, lead discussions at meetings.

We are asking everyone to indicate a preference for at least one Activity Council when applying for membership in SFMQG.  Members are welcome to serve on as many Activity Councils as they have time for. Members can leave or join an Activity Council at any time, but we will aim to keep Activity Councils going for about a year before playing musical chairs and mixing things up a bit.

Bear in mind that different activities can require different commitments in terms of time and skills. However every Activity Council should be able to adjust to the capabilities and availability of its members. Activity Councils are about having fun and working together! The objective is to enjoy ourselves!

The EC officer responsible for mentoring an Activity Council will reach out to everyone who expresses an interest. Eventually a chairperson will be chosen for the Activity Council and that person will be the main link between the Activity Council and the EC when finalizing plans for all of these amazing activities. 

If you did not indicate your interests when you registered, you can still do so! There are a few ways to do this:

1. Find any of the recent newsletters from SFMQG and locate the “Update your preferences” link at the bottom of the page. This will open up your registration details and allow you to make selections (it’s the last section of the page).
2. Send an email to us, (or use the contact form to the right of this post) and an EC officer will get back to you!
3. Talk to the EC in the Members Facebook Group.

If you are not sure what to sign up for, or have any questions, the Facebook Group is a great place to start.

We are super excited about the activities we are going to be planning! Thanks to everyone for taking part.

Allison
VP of Administration

A new chapter for SFMQG

Many of you have been attending meetings with South Florida Modern since way back in 2011, when Nicole Kaplan, after relocating to Florida, took the initiative to organize a group for modern quilters, much like the one she helped to found in her former home in New York. For many years the group met on a monthly basis, and remained an informal group, with Nicole handling all of the organizational responsibilities. In early 2015, Nicole, expecting her second child, decided that it was time to hand the reins of the group over to other people, and she asked for volunteers to form a board and take the guild forward.

I was a member of that group of volunteers, and we got together to talk about what our shared vision for the guild was. We agreed that we wanted to introduce more activities, like workshops, sew days, challenges and swaps, lectures, exhibitions and charity work. We looked to other modern quilt guilds for inspiration, and found ourselves truly excited by the possibilities. As one of our first actions, we took a survey of our existing members. We polled everyone who had recently attended a meeting, as well as anyone who had ever signed up for our mailing list. We asked where our members were located, what their quilting skills were, what they were interested learning about quilting, what kind of activities they were interested in. We asked what they wanted from a modern quilt guild. And we asked how they felt about paying dues to assist in the guild’s growth.

We had a tremendous response, and we learned so much about our members in the process.

We then felt informed and able to take the necessary steps to formalize the guild. We knew that registering as a non-profit association would open a lot of possibilities for us: access to free/cheap space for meetings, workshops and exhibitions, the opportunity to assist the community via funds and volunteer work, access to government-sponsored and private grants and loans, reduced rates for services and postage, the ability to accept financial donations to further the guild’s work, tax exemption, limited liability, and increased credibility within our community. We felt that the best way for us to achieve a non-profit status was to apply under the umbrella of the national Modern Quilt Guild. By joining the MQG we would also be able to provide our members with the additional benefits that national guild membership offers, and give our guild the opportunity to work alongside and with many other local modern guilds around the world.

Formalizing as a guild, becoming part of the national MQG, and applying for non-profit status has required a lot of administrative work and preparation. We needed to create Bylaws, register with the IRS, open bank accounts, and fulfill the MQG requirements for starter guilds. We are pleased to say that most of this work is now complete.

As the officers of the fledging Executive Council, we talked a lot about what the guild’s purpose should be, and how we would like to see the guild organized. One aspect we really wanted to tackle was how to make our guild as open and accessible as possible. Through experience, many of us knew that serving on the Executive Council of a guild could be a daunting task. We wanted our members to be able to contribute to the guild actively and have an influence the guild’s work without making the year-long commitment of serving as an officer. We also wanted to make the job of serving as an officer of the guild as rewarding and manageable as possible for those members that do make that commitment. We decided to follow the example of the Austin MQG and form a number of activity councils which allow all of our members to participate in the guild’s organization by contributing to the aspects of our work that they are most passionate about.

I know that I speak for the rest of the Executive Council when I say we are so very excited about what lies ahead for us. We are massively inspired by the possibilities and the opportunities that are opening up for us. We believe that SFMQG will be a wonderful guild because we have wonderful members. We look forward to the journey ahead - to becoming stronger as a group, to the bonds of friendship, to our individual creative growth, to our education, to new members, to contributions to our local community and to the international community of modern quilters. It’s going to be a fantastically fun and ridiculously rewarding trip.

Here's to our future!

Apply for membership

Thank you!
Allison Schnackenberg
Vice President of Administration

Changes to the Board

Hello, South Florida Modern Quilt Guild Members! We have news for you! First, we have restructured the board as follows:

• Ivy, President
• ___, Treasurer
• Kate, Secretary
• Allison, VP of Administration
• Charlotte and Debby, VPs of Programming
• Patti, VP of Projects

Nicole is a founding board member, which is an honorary position.

Why have we restructured the board? We’re so glad you asked! To make a more streamlined compact board—in part because we are a compact guild We are a work in progress, like many of our sewing projects. Our structure can change as our size grows. It also opens up more opportunities for members to participate via committees—either by heading them or simply working on them. And committee leads report to board members. 

You may notice that, as noted above, we are looking for a TREASURER! If you have any bookkeeping experience at all and can donate some time—not a lot—to the position, we would love to have you! Please email us at southfloridamod@gmail.com. Thanks!

Also, and this is even BIGGER news, we’re going to hold elections! Since we merely volunteered ourselves into these positions, we are going to hold formal elections in September. Who knows? Maybe one of YOU would like to throw your hat in the ring? 

If not, have no fear: there will be several committees for you to choose from (to lead or participate in) so everyone gets a chance to contribute. They are as follows:

1. Challenges and Swaps
2. Block of the Month
3. Quilt-a-Long
4. Special Events
5. Community Service
6. Education
7. Historian
8. Meetings
9. Membership
10. Teaching

More information on how and when elections will be held, and how to sign up for committees, is right around the bend.

Lots of exciting stuff is happening in the next few months! Stay tuned! :)

A new Facebook group for members to connect on

One of the things that the new board has been working on is finding ways for our members to connect and stay in touch in between meetings.  

We have recently started a members-only group on Facebook. If you are not familiar with Facebook Groups, they are a great way to form an online community with shared interests. Everyone who joins a Group can post photos, links, and comments. It's a wonderful way to share the projects you are working on, or to ask for advice if you are stuck on something. Groups are also just a great way to chat about modern quilty goodness in all its forms.

If you have not already joined, hop on over to the South Florida Modern Quilters group now and ask to join!

If you are not an SFMQ member, please go to our Join The Guild page for more information.

We will continue to maintain our Facebook Page as well.  Pages are the public space for brands or organizations on Facebook, and they are great for reaching out to the wider community and attracting new members.  

For our members to talk amongst themselves, the new Group is really where we can have fun and let down our quilty hair.  Posts are visible only to our members!

We hope to see you all on Facebook in between meetings.

Happy stitching!