[Bookstoprisoners] Book sale update

[Susan Porter Bruce]

Since I'm just back in town and did very little to help with this  
sale, I'll start by saying the obvious:  Thanks, many thanks to  
Sandra. She knew that book sales could be a burnout and still she  
took this on.

We survive as a group by all this volunteering. Rather amazing how we  
pull it off, but at times it can be too much, and each of us jumps  
forward or pulls back as we can. But it's true that as we grow it  
would help to have someone designated as a slightly-paid coordinator.  
The risk is that we will all think that this slightly-paid person can  
take care of everything. But I hope that we'll remember that concern.  
So I would jump in and say that contributing $100 to insure 3 months  
would be fine for Chip and me. It's understood that we can't pay  
someone without a regular stream of revenue, but I would suggest  
giving it a try.

I am also not averse to naming as Director an obvious Director. A  
consensus model still works well, given all the personalities  
involved, but I think it would help. There can always be a coup, or a  
lot of argument to keep things moving along for our constituents. No  
one reminds us better about our constituents than our current sort-of- 
acting director, and I am always willing to defer to her, or argue  
with her as needed.

I think the plan about saving books is fine. I was going to suggest a  
culling tomorrow of the 45% best, but that might be hard and take too  
much time. When I'm there I'll recycle anything i think should be  
tossed.

Susan
On Nov 12, 2006, at 7:16 PM, Sandra Ahten wrote:

> Well, we are winding down. We made $1980 between the booksale and  
> Romp Stomp Slam Jam. We will have the give-away "by donation"  
> tomorrow.... so we could make a little more. This amount has  
> deducted from it: $80 for food and copy expense for RSSJ, $87 for  
> IMC, and about $120 for laminate signs (that we will re-use). It  
> also has deducted from it the 10% ($219) that we agreed to pay for  
> the booksale coordinator.
>
> As the booksale coordinator, I am however donating that amount back  
> to the BtP with the hopes that it will be used to help fund the BtP  
> Volunteer Coordinator position. So that bring the total to $2199.
>
>
> Workers today decided that the responsible and logical thing to do  
> with the remaining books is to save the leftovers for a future  
> sale. There are just too many high quality books to re-cycle. We  
> discussed donating them to various organizations, but decided that,  
> it made more sense to just keep them as seed for the next sale. Now  
> that the sale is at the IMC and is more of a fine tuned machine  
> (smile) we might be able to have them more often.
>
> Lincoln's Challenge will be there tomorrow at noon to start packing  
> books. They will need supervision to get them neatly packed and the  
> boxes labeled. If you can help, please come by. Deb, Jane and I  
> will be there. Susan and Jamie are working the give-away from 8-noon.
>
> I am still convinced that we (more than ever) need a BtP Volunteer  
> Coordinator. I probably have about 8-10 hours worth of book-keeping  
> work to do to get reports to you that will show our accounting ...  
> so that we can make a decision on it. But I would like to ask that  
> you be thinking about this approach....
>
> If we could find 12 people to donate $100 each toward the $1200  
> needed to hire someone for 3 months, we could just get moving on  
> this. I am willing to donate $100 and find one or two others. Would  
> you do the same?
>
> I would also like to have there be a job of "coordinator" or  
> "director" be spelled out and defined.I am, very possibly, willing  
> to be that person on a volunteer basis. I would like to have the  
> BtP Volunteer Coordinator report to the Director (whether it be me  
> or someone else). I am however unwilling to keep working sort-of-as- 
> the-acting-director. I  alway feel like I need to get permission/ 
> consensus on everything....or else feel guilty becuase I don't.  
> This is not effecient and is uncomfortable for me. So we are going  
> to need to formalize this arrangement.
>
>
> Peace,
>
> Sandra
>
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***********************
Susan P. Bruce
1501 N Coler Avenue
Urbana, IL 61801
217-384-2002
217-840-9120 (portable)


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