LFCC – CFC of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley
December 11, 2012
Meeting Notes
Attendees:
Lisa Makosewski, FEB Leni Uddyback-Fortson, Labor Wilhelmina Stevenson, MSPB
Ray Smith, PCFO Maria Recchia, IRS Lee Webster, NARA Erin Nangle, OPM
Ray shared that Donna Bridges Smith from the Post Office SouthEast P&DC is acting as a Loaned Executive for the Post Offices, which will enable the CFC to have a presence and advocate in the Post Offices, which has not been the case for the past several years. This is very encouraging news.
Results from the campaign so far look like we are about on par with last year’s campaign. With paper pledges, CFC Nexus, and Employee Express, there are three routes where the money is coming in, so it takes a little more maneuvering to get a picture of progress to date. id=mce_marker.203 Million has been pledged so far, which is id=mce_marker,000 less than this time last year. We are currently at 45% of our goal. That figure includes $330,000 that was pledged electronically via CFC Nexus or Employee Express.
Ms. Chu C. Falling Star of the Post Office has been making a concerted effort to raise visibility and participation in the CFC at the Post Office. We truly appreciate the leadership she has brought to getting the Post Offices involved in the CFC again. Diane Price from the Reading Post Office has been running the campaign in her Post Office. Diane’s dedication to reach every employee and give them the opportunity to donate through the CFC is an inspiration.
The official campaign closing date is December 15, this Saturday. We requested an extension to January 15, 2013 from OPM, but have not received an answer to our letter of November 30. Without that extension, we will need to close out the campaign at the end of the week. CFC Nexus and Employee Express will both shut down on December 15, so while we will still accept pledges, only paper pledging will be available after Saturday and the campaign will be wrapping up.
There was not as much participation in the Days of Sharing associated with the CFC this year. Everyone agreed that the Days of Sharing needed better promotion in getting the word to employees of the opportunity to participate. Information is sometimes sent to the CFC Coordinators, but they do not necessarily pass the information on, which limits the number of people who are aware of the opportunity. Some additional ideas included having varied types of volunteer efforts, such as both indoor and outdoor activities (this year’s days were all outdoor, other years have been all indoor), and reaching out to the YGL chapter to use the Days of Sharing as the YGL community outreach project for the quarter. Another idea was sponsoring Days of Sharing earlier in the year or earlier in the campaign. One of the big issues associated with the Days of Sharing is allowing employees time off to participate—some agencies grant administrative leave, while others require employees to take annual leave. An idea was to sponsor an event on a weekend to avoid this issue.
Late campaign agency heads courtesy calls were discussed, and the LFCC members agreed to reach out to some targeted agencies to see how the campaign is going and to see if there is anything the LFCC can do to help the agency campaign. This will all be done via telephone call and is intended to be a courtesy call/offer of assistance, not a challenge or berating of the agency head over campaign results. Calls should be completed by Friday if possible, by Monday if not.
Although we have not received any official notification yet, we should expect to receive a letter from the LFCC of the South Jersey CFC that they will merge with us. The merger will also mean that our campaign will most likely jump from raising $2.75 M per year to raising $3.6 M. Ray is already working on consolidating their list of charities with ours so they will all receive notice of the availability of applications for 2013. Many are already included, so it should not mean a significant increase in workload for application review.
Dates for the 2013 campaign were discussed. The 2013 applications will be available on January 28 and will be due on March 8. Application review will take place from March 18 – 29 in the Federal Building, Room 3456.
Discussion of CFC awards and recognition and post campaign interviews was postponed until the January meeting.
The next meeting of the LFCC is scheduled for Tuesday, January 15, at 1 PM, tentatively scheduled for the Dix Building, 9th and Chestnut Streets. Lee will check on whether the NARA conference room is available for our use. Call in information will be sent under separate cover. Please note the location change.