Developing an operating manuel

Barbara had in the past year developed a blue print for the operation of the JW House.

In anticipating the opening of the JW House in less than a year, we met this week to formuate adding details to the operation plan.

Anne Marie, Vicky and myself worked for over two hours. We discussed the different topics that need to be considered.

Anne Marie started to make a Manuel type listing of all the topic we need to review.

We were all given homework to do for the coming week.

ACCOUNTING AND GRANT WRITING

Bina was gracious enough to take over the bookkeeping function. We had a meeting last night. Geert, Bina and myselves were there. We reorganized the bookkeeping protocol for the JW House. Bina gave me a few tips to keep up with the book entry. She will be taking over the categorizing of income and expense.

We are going to add an event account so that we can keep tract of income and expense for events that runs by the JW House.

It will be an improvement from what we were doing before in terms of book keeping.

I and Anne Marie met with a friend of hers who gave us some tips as to how to apply for grants. We discussed about the difficulty for a new non profit to compete for grant. We are still in the building phase. We do not have a concrete budget for programing. This will make it difficult for Foundations to evaluate us.
We were encouraged to keep trying which we sure will.

Jefferson Award

It was an inspiring and wonderful evening.

I and Vicky were invited by Mrs. Knapen to participate in the Jefferson Award ceremony. The first part of the ceremony was used to introduce a few selected winner of this year’s award. It was inspiring to hear and see in person what and how ordinary people do extraordinary things for the community.
The story I like most is the one on two young people who decided to help to feed the homeless. There is no business plan, no program plan and no master plan. They just one day decided to do it. One of the two said her high school coach told her that it is not without smart or without skill but it was without "will" that stop people from becoming a success. With "will", they are feeding the homeless in San Francisco.
I got a picture of this year’s winner with Barbara Rogers and Kate Kelly.

We got to talk with Kate Kelly for a moment. I am so impressed with Kate Kelly; she can remember all the people in the room. Of course she remember me, even though I was one the hundreds of people she met in the past few years. I am thinking, you must a major talent to be an anchor of a new show. Only a pretty face would not get you too far.
Here’s a picture of Kate with Anne Marie and Vicky.

We were so lucky to meet with old acquaintance from last year. Jim, Janet and their daughter Lindsey were there. They started a foundation that brings lunch bags for patient’s family while they are in the hospital. We had a wonderful talk and decided to try to start the lunch bag program at our hospital.
This is the picture of our group.

We chat on more things on our way home. It was a evening to remember.

New Year at the JW Friendship Garden

A beautiful day, January 1st 2007 at the JW's Friendship garden.

Now that the contractor's sign is standing side by side with the JW house sign, I know the house is going to be built this year.

Please note that the back ground is the new Santa Clara Kaiser Hospital which is going to open in August 2007.

Other pictures are posted at : http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/2300821