Quarterly Earth Team Volunteer Coordinators' Meeting Minutes - January 17, 2008

The Earth Team (ET) Volunteer Coordinators meeting was held by teleconference on January 17, 2008.

Attendees were as follows:

• Jan Klaus, State ET Coordinator
• Volunteer Coordinators
  • Loretta Cecil (Area 1)
  • Charles Atkinson (Area 2)
  • Karen Hatfield (Area 3)
  • Tami Yost (State Office [SO])
• Grace McGrath (Committee Liaison)

The meeting was called to order at 10:07 a.m.

State ET Coordinator Report

• Welcomed participants.
• Reviewed minutes from last meeting.
• Minutes from the 4th quarter meeting have not been posted yet, but will be very soon.
• Still working on apprentice checklist.
• Re-sent everyone the record-keeping example.
• Announced that the some of the state ET winners have been presented with their awards and plans have been made to present the other awards in the near future.
• ET keepsakes cannot be ordered right now, so we will have to work with the keepsakes that we have on hand.
• New business from old business: Discussed the impact management units were having on the areas; coordinators feel overwhelmed.
•  Kansas ended the year sixth in the nation in the total number of volunteer hours recorded.

• Hours for Kansas will be reviewed and a graph based on the new area alignment will be prepared.
• The assistant state conservationists for field operations (ASTC-FO) agreed to set a goal for the district conservationists (DCs) performance work plans (PWPs) of 60 hours and two volunteers for Fiscal Year (FY) 2008. The resource conservation and development (RC&D) coordinators will remain at 100 hours and five volunteers. The number is not as important as the hours. Most offices have a group application, "Friends of Conservation," that they report a majority of their hours under.
• Apprentices will be two per area for FY 2008. The ASTC-FO may have this in their PWP. Jane is working on it.
• Bonnie Allely will serve as the Acting National Volunteer Coordinator beginning January 22, 2008, through March 7, 2008, while the current National Volunteer Coordinator is on a detail assignment.
• There will be a second quarter National ET Teleconference for state and area coordinators on Tuesday, February 26. Two calls will be held (one at 10:00 a.m. and the other at 1:00 p.m.). You may join either call. There will be notes sent out following the teleconference.
• FY 2008, value of volunteer time (VVT) rate, will be $18.77. The VVT is based on the average hourly earnings of all production non-supervisory workers on non-farm payrolls (as determined by the Bureau of Statistics).
• Apprentice Program Report: Area 1, Hays Area Office (AO) - This young man is interested in learning the ropes from the engineers.
• State and National Awards - A bulletin will be issued this week.
  • Edgar Hick's award will be presented during a conference of the Kansas Black Farmers Association and the Solomon Valley RC&D on January 31, 2008. Darla Juhl, RC&D Coordinator will present this award.
  • The group award was presented at a meeting of the Kansas Natural Resource Foundation. Five of the six conservation districts (CDs) were at this meeting and were presented their awards. This same group won the national award and two of the district employees will be attending the National Leadership Meeting in Reno, Nevada, to accept their award. The Kansas Natural Resource Foundation will receive a barometer that is engraved.
  • The employee award for Charles has been mailed to the Hutchinson AO and will be presented during an upcoming DC meeting.
  • The volunteer coordinator award was mailed to Bill Gilliam in an attempt to get it presented to Lonnie before he retired.
  • The field award, received by the Hays Field Office (FO), will be presented at an upcoming DC meeting in February.
  • The National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD)/Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) award, received by the Haskell County CD, was presented by the state conservationist (STC) at the Kansas Association of Conservation Districts (KACD) Convention.
  • The RC&D/NRCS award, received by Sunflower RC&D, has been mailed to the Hutchinson AO to be presented at an upcoming DC meeting. The Sunflower RC&D also won the national award and their council president, who is also from Greensburg, will be attending the National Leadership Forum in Reno, Nevada, and will present the award at that time. They will also present the award to Roger Masenthin and the other council members that are present at the Southwest States RC&D meeting in St. Louis in March.
  • The District Manager of the Year was awarded to Jane Zook from the Pawnee County CD (as we had voted on) and was presented by Jim Krueger at the KACD Convention during the district employee breakout session.
• Reviewed new Kansas bulletin on reporting hours. Coordinators should remind offices that this is the time of year when there should be volunteer hours for preparation of annual meetings, poster contest selections, mailings, etc.
• Reviewed the article, "May I Sign this Individual/Group Up as a Member of the Earth Team?" from the Volunteer Voice.

Area Reports

Area 1 - Loretta Cecil

• Sent two e-mails to Area I DCs and the district managers regarding:
  • Entering hours
  • Reading and retaining a copy of Bulletin KS360-8-8
  • Articles for their conservation editions
• Wrote two ET articles for Meade and Clark County Conservation Editions.
• Helped senior center volunteer, Julius Williams, shred Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) files at our AO. Took pictures and submitted to Sheila.
• Presented Julius with a cap.
• Helped Julie at the Lakin FO select a keepsake award for her volunteer award nominated-teacher. She was presented with a stadium blanket.

Area 2 - Charles Atkinson

• Assisted area personnel in setting up the group "Friends of Conservation."
• Reminded staff to report hours.
• Worked on getting volunteer handbooks to the new offices in the areas that do not have them.

At last report, Jamie Johnson is due to return to duty sometime in February.

Area 3 - Karen Hatfield

• In January I prepared and distributed area e-mails to DCs, RC&D coordinators, and district managers advising them of the status of Area 3's volunteer reporting for the first quarter of FY 2008. The e-mails included graphs showing a comparison of all areas and all offices within Area 3.
• Informed DCs and RC&D coordinators of the recently-issued bulletin KS360-8-8 outlining what activities qualify to be reported as volunteer hours, and encouraged them to keep current in their reporting.
• Three offices in Area 3 have indicated possible interest in the Apprentice Program. I will follow up with them on their status.

State Office - Tami Yost

• The SO will do a "needs" analysis for the sections and try to increase the use of volunteers.

Discussion on Area Reports

• It was suggested that we have a direct link on the Kansas Web site to the national database so that it will be easier for people when entering hours.
• Question was asked about who should be recording hours: Each office is responsible for recording hours unless there is not a NRCS employee present in that office.

Old Business

Action Item: All coordinators need to make sure they have access to the SharePoint Web site and sign up for the automatic e-mail notifications.

New Business

• CD news articles
  • Loretta sent this in as a suggestion. Jan will work with Mary Shaffer to list the FY 2007 apprentice article again for FY 2008 and then in FY 2009 we can come up with another good article for posting.
  • Question was asked if we could drop the Web site and only do the conservation edition Web site.
  • Discussed areas roles on the articles.

Action Item: We need an article for 2008 added to the ET Volunteer Web page. Charles will be submitting the next article.

• Loretta asked about a specific code for showing our time in the Web-based Total Cost Accounting System (WebTCAS) for hours spent working on ET-related activities. At this time, the civil rights chairperson and the special emphasis program managers (SEPMs) code their time to "Benefits All Programs - Administrative Support" when they are working on their collateral duties.

Action Item: Grace will follow up with Jim Krueger to determine if ET coordinators should charge time to benefits all programs.

• Database Update: Jan discussed this with Bonnie. We will continue to report in the database and Jan will prepare a manual report showing the number of hours and the number of volunteers for each area until the new database is up and running.
• State Business Plan
  • No action items are currently due
  • Task to review NACD/NRCS award was completed
  • Updated business plan to remove state conservationist
  • Review of the office volunteer hours
  • Make sure there are enough keepsakes in the areas prior to Volunteer Appreciation Week
  • Follow up with Sheila on pictures for ET displays
  • Decision was made to leave the certificate of appreciation from the STC
• Kansas is still shown as five areas plus the SO and Plant Materials Center (PMC) for now
  • The National Office will not ask for our areas to be realigned under the current database since we will be moving to a new one. Any reports pulled from the current database will be based on the five areas.
  • Hopefully Jan will find out more information during the February teleconference.
  • The option of keeping a manual record of hours on paper was discussed, but the decision was made to continue with the current process.
  • Jan will manually create graphs to show the hours by area so that everyone knows their status.
  • Jan will be submitting a quarterly report to Grace for the Management Team (MT) meeting.
• Grace would like to see a bulletin from the STC that includes the following items:
  • The need for success stories and photographs
  • Reminder to offices to count volunteer hours for CD annual meeting activities
  • Use of the needs assessment

Grace commended Jan for a great job with the teleconference.

Jan will look at agenda items prior to next meeting and determine if we will meet or have another teleconference.

The next meeting/teleconference will be held April 17, 2008.

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Last Modified: 04/02/2008