NCIFT MEETING MINUTES

Meeting Minutes February 2012

NCIFT  Executive Committee Meeting
Date:  Feburary 8, 2012 1PM
Location:  Sudwerk Resturant and Brewery, Davis, California

Participants: Carol Cooper,Chair;Earl Weak,Chair Elect;Elizabeth Cuff,Treasurer;Brad Olson,Nominating Committee;Dave Sholty &Marty Potnick,Golf Event Co-Chairs;Stacy Hawley,Suppliers Night Chair;Steve Nagorski,Employment Chair;Russ Nishikawa,Membership Chair;Kurt Smith,UCD NCIFT Student Representative;Carol Wesphal,Pam Vaillancourt,John Ashby and Sharon Kneebone,Director of Membership,National IFT.

Russ Nishikawa recorded notes for minutes to be provided to Scott MacAdams.

Meeting was called to order at 1:09 by Carol and the past three ExCom minutes were approved with slight changes noted and to be returned to Scott for correction and safekeeping.

Sharon Kneebone, Visit from National IFT

Sharon Kneebone explained her duties as the Director of Membership and the changing dynamics of National IFT and a pilot program undertaken to improve membership recruitment and retention.
The primary thrust of this new program  is to unify membership so that their section members will be required to be National members in order to be section members of IFT. She explained that IFT has realized that they need to provide a globally and locally relevant membership experience in order for
section members to value the extra costs of being members of IFT.  Sharon quantified the value of IFT sponsored surveys, webinars, and a myriad of other valuable activities as far exceeding the annual IFT membership dues. John recommended that IFT could cluster webinars around food safety, HAACP programs etc. with certification so people could improve their job skills and add things to their resumes. At present, Sharon and IFT are running this pilot programs at selected IFT sections to test their theory that sectional members once informed will agree that joining National is well worth the higher costs.

Webpage Design and Approval of Expenditure
Sharon indicates that National IFT has website layout  templates availiable to the Sections on their Leader Resource site. Stacey will provide this information to Marketing Designs and see if they are capable of using this resource to implement the website design at a much lower cost. A vote on selecting Sugarman or Marketing Designs as the web designer has been postponed for this reason and others like if advertising and the Hornblower should be parts of the future website.

Membership
Russ provide the breakdown of the present NCIFT membership roll as follows:

Section Members             348
Professional Members     189
Students                             99
Emeritus Members           46
Regional Associates         164
Total                                   846

This information was provided to Sharon Kneebone to assist her understand our section.

Employment
Steve indicated about 10 new job postings predominantly quality assurance in nature from companies like Otis McCallister-SF;Torani,Trident Seafoods(WA),Will’s Fresh Foods,Mazetta’s and research positions at Jenny Craig (Carlsbad,CA) and Farmer Bros.(Torrence ,CA). No new ingredient sales positions were posted at this time.

May 7th & 8th NCIFT Golf Networking Event and Suppliers’ Nite Expo
The Monday, May 7th golf event will be at Poppy Hills with a 1:00PM Shotgun Start. Final arrangements are being made by Dave and Marty.
Stacy reports that NCIFT Suppliers Night application will be going out tomorrow and will be announced thru Constant Contact. Payments can be made thru Imelda Vasquez at the NCIFT/Marketing Design office by check or credit card. Unfortunately, no PayPal capabilities have been set up yet.

Nominating Committee
Stacey indicates that a completed ballot for the NCIFT has been submitted to National for their email distribution to our members. Darren Cohune’s name was withdrawn for the Nominating Committee as he did not meet the National membership requirement in time for the ballot. Stacey and others reminded the Committee to support the candidacy of Bruce Feree and Susan England for their respective National IFT leadership positions.

Treasurer
Liz advised that NCIFT is in need of having their financials audited and that a peer review self-audit seemed the most economical way for this to be done. (I am uncertain what action was required by the committee.)

New Business

IFT Student Association Area Meeting Sponsorship
Kurt Smith,UCD Student Representative requested permission to address the Committee requesting funding in support of the IFTSA Area meeting being held on the Davis campus on March 10-11. A budget of $2,700 was proposed. It is traditional for NCIFT to support this important event which includes the regional College Bowl contest and has 70 participants from UCDavis,Fresno State,Oregon State and U of Washington/U of Idaho.

Carol offered that NCIFT use the awarded $500 for having the highest section attendance at last year’s National IFT meeting in New Orleans as part of the funding. An additional $1200 was prosposed, as it is as strong likelihood that Oregon State will provide reciprocal funds of $750. Carol proposed we provide UCD  Student Assocation with a total of $1700 and the motion was passed. In addition, various people volunteered to assist with goodie bags for the attendees.

Susan England,Pam Vaillancourt and Ellen Brady will be judging the College Bowl this year.

Linked In
Liz requested that the Committee’s advice on whether anyone should be able to join the NCIFT Linked In group. The consensus of the group’s opinion was to keep it open to national but not international inquiries.  Sharon Kneebone suggested the need for training on the use of social media as a means of communication around the section. No vote was taken.