Okay, I'm going to try to summarize our meeting yesterday:

In attendance: Missy, Heather, Laura, Jenn Norton, Jason H, Ren, Kim

We have raised $15,780 from 136 donors. 63 are friends, 58 alums
(of which 40 are Geography alums), 10 are parents, 3 corporate
(including 1 matching), 1 alum/parent, and 1 faculty.

We agreed to continue fundraising, and Kim asked us to look at the
list of donors to see if there are any people we know (i.e. parents,
family, etc.) who we would not want to be contacted again. Jenn
Norton is coordinating this list.

At this point we need to tell Kim how much to place in the endowed
account so it can begin earning interest and how much to "keep out"
to use for thank yous, a plaque, and the award given in the Spring
of '07, since the endowed account won't raise enough interest to
give out until a year from now. We are proposing to tell Kim to put
$14,000 in the endowed account and keep out $1,780. We can always
put more into the endowed account but cannot ever take out of it.

Kim suggested, and we liked the idea, of a Fall mini-newsletter to
donors to update them on the fund. It's nice to get something that
tells you what your money is going for. The Geneseo Foundation can
print and mail this, all we need to do is supply the copy. We
agreed to keep this separate from the thank you notes we will be
mailing, just to make things easier.

We agreed to continue fundraising and set a goal for next year of
reaching the $20,000-$25,000 mark (I was unclear on where we
settled). Ultimately, within the next 5 years, we set a goal of
reaching $50,000.

We can give out 5% annually; Kim is looking into whether we can give
out 4% annually and use 1% to put back into the principle, so even
if we reach a point where we no longer do fund raising, the pot
continues to grow.

Ren suggested, and we all reached consensus on, that we use the Lisa
Kuligowski Memorial Award to fund a class rather than give the money
to a single student. GEOG 375 - Field Experience is a required
class for all Geography majors. It's a 1 credit class given every
semester in which the faculty choses a location (generally within a
day's drive) and the 10-12 students in the class research geography
topics about this location. Recent trips have been to the coal
country of northeastern Pennsylvania; when I took the class we went
to Kingston, Ottawa, and Montreal.

Since this is now a required class, the Department can't really ask
the students to pay for it, so the Department pays for
transportation and lodging, generally $1200-$1600 per semester.
Ren's idea, and we all really liked it, was that the Fund would be
used to underwrite this class. At least initially we can only give
about $500 per year, but if we reach our $50,000 goal, we will be
able to give out $2000-$2500 per year. Ren would change the name of
the course to recognize Lisa. We are going to suggest: GEOG 375 -
LMK Memorial Field Experience. We all really liked the concept of
Lisa's memory being able to touch each and every Geography graduate
at Geneseo (since they all have to take this class), not just one
graduating senior.

The students have to write up their findings from this course and
many do poster sessions. Ren thought we could have an end-of-the-
school-year reception when students present their research and
family and friends of Lisa can attend.

Also, we would like to have a plaque describing Lisa and this award
in the Cartography Lab in Fraser.

We need to tell Kim how to divide the money by Sept 1. All the
other details should be finalized by Sept 15, so please post
comments, concerns, questions here. The 5 of us who attended the
meeting all agreed on this plan, we hope all 10 of us can agree as
well.

Next steps:

Draft language for fall mini-newsletter - Jason H, anyone who is
interested

Look into plaque pricing, prepare list of donors for next year -
Jenn Norton

Finalize and print thank yous - Missy, Jen Nitka Perri

Website updates - Jason H, Missy

I think that's everything....all in all we felt the meeting was very
positive, Kim had wonderful things to say about us all, and we're
all so impressed to have reached $15,000... now lets shoot for
$50,000