Strategy, Goals and Budget

DAW FY 2024-2025 Strategy Meeting Results

The 2024-25 branch board began the year with a strategy meeting on July 12. We started with a reminder that with our efforts for AAUW we are giving a gift to women and girls, to our local and extended community, and to ourselves.

We decided to adopt AAUW California’s theme for 2024-25 of “Standing Together for Equity” to inspire our strategic objectives and goals for the year. Our DAW T-shirts (with “Equity for All” printed on the back) fit right in!

With this direction, our branch activities for the coming year will be guided by four key strategic concepts:

    • Advocacy
      • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
      • School District Board meetings and support of public education
      • Voting initiatives
    • Education for our members and the public
      • As a unifying theme, we’ll tie potential programs on climate crisis, civil discourse, AI, and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals to the importance of Public Education.
    • Focused philanthropy
      • Continuing support for our mission-based projects: Local Scholarships, Tech Trek and possibly add National Conference for College Women Student Leaders (NCCWSL).
      • Fundraising is key to this effort; determine how the annual Garden Tour fits with other potential fundraising opportunities, and pursue more robust outreach to branch sponsors.
    • Fostering community
      • Continue our monthly Third Thursday Programs.
         A working calendar is posted on our website; click here to see it. There may be some date changes as we finalize shared meetings with other organizations.
      • Partner with the League of Women Voters other local AAUW branches for some of our programs. This will lessen the organizational load while helping extend our community.
      • Hold occasional “Salons” for informal group discussions and socializing.

For the 2024-2025 Budget – click here

DAW FY 21 Strategy Meeting Results                                                                

Your Elected and Appointed Board met (17 strong) for a four-hour Zoom session on  August 21st, 2020, to envision and create an engaging and purposeful road map for our branch activities this year. The energy was high and the meeting time passed amazingly quickly! We were guided by several inputs:

• Our member survey results stressing the importance of keeping our social connections strong while expanding our influence in advancing our mission
• Our national priorities and FY21 focus areas of equity for women of color, voter access, and economic equity for all.
• Meeting the external challenges of socially distant activities and addressing the newly in-focus issues of racism.

Funding Our Core Projects

We first reinforced our need to support our core projects of Tech Trek, Local Scholarship and AAUW FUND. We are able to fully fund all of these projects in FY21. We will support our Tech Trek 2021 campers with the funds raised for the cancelled 2020 camps. Our June 2021 Local scholars are generously funded by the proceeds of our recent Garden walk. This year we will kick off our AAUW FUND campaign with our membership brunch FUND speaker and continue our traditional solicitation drive through the Fall. We will not hold the Holiday Home Tour this year as social distancing requirements would not allow it and we believe it is time for our branch to find other less work-intensive fundraising activities. We will take this year to explore other fundraising opportunities to fund our Tech Trek campers, including investigating the possibility of a combination of corporate support and a smaller fall fundraiser.

Building On Our Branch Connections

One big take-away from the member survey results is the importance of the connections we share with our fellow members based on our common interests and dedication to our mission. We are challenged by our current environment of social distancing so an important part of our plan is to use virtual ways to work on our projects and also to socialize.

We have a dynamic slate of educational programs planned that will be provided virtually so that we may, in fact, have more attendance than our in-person events. Beginning in October, we will hold a Zoom Wine, Cheese and Chat Board Update the 3rd Thursday of each month from 5:30-6:30 where we can share our Board News and we can all share our thoughts. We will also offer technical support to our interest groups and neighborhood groups to help them adapt to the virtual world.

Teresa Cheung, our webmaster, has taken the opportunity this summer to update and modernize our website so that you can rely on it for up-to-date news of branch programs, initiatives and opportunities. We will add more social media to our communications this year to raise our profile with potential members and community organizations.

Advocating for Equity with Focus on Women of Color

Our new communication tools prepare us to more effectively advocate to local officials and other influencers in our community who can support our FY21 mission focus on equity for women of color, voter access, and economic equity for all. We started the year with our Voter Access postcard writing project and are re-activating our Public Policy Committee to organize other public policy education and advocacy activities for our branch. Many of you expressed interest in becoming more vocal in advocating for our mission goals so please take this opportunity to contact Asha Bajaj to join her Public Policy Committee.

Also in focus this year is addressing racism in our community. We will begin with an educational program dedicated to help us identify areas we may need to address within ourselves and our group. Our Public Policy Committee is assessing other opportunities to expand on our efforts to insure equity for women of color.

Putting It All Together

Our overall plan to advance our mission is summarized in the graphic below. Our next steps are to finalize the activities and budget and identify activity champions to support this plan, which we will post on the website after our September 16th board meeting. You will receive an email ballot at the end of September asking for your approval of the budget to support the plan.

Summary of Mission-Based Actions FY21 – Preliminary Aug, 2020

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Prior Year Goals and Budgets

 

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Operating Budget: