Sara Ogger (Mon)

Back in the office after quite the trip to Rochester and Geneseo, and after a weekend looking after the boys while my husband was still traveling. Most of today was devoted to thanking the board members, the program partners (grantees, people who book Speakers in the Humanities or run our other signature programs like Meaning of Service), the hosts, and the attendees of the reception. These are good opportunities to reinforce the relationships, whether existing or brand new, that we have with our supporters in that region.

Drew, my assistant who works a great deal on communications, and I did a number of rounds of edits on his first draft of the eNews we want to send out tomorrow, including deciding which new people should go on the list. We needed certain photos, snappy titles, and a good set of links for each of three stories. We used to have at least 5 stories per eNewsletter but then learned that according to studies only the first three items are ever looked at…so now we try to do them with greater frequency and a standard three items.

Erika, the program officer here whose work centers on children and families, took a ton of photos during the tour on her most excellent camera, and Drew spent part of the day selecting a set for our Flickr page and newsletter. We will add professional photos from the reception there, once the professional in question gets them to us–but Erika’s are priceless for instant gratification.

Some of the decisions at Friday’s meeting included scheduling committee meetings and, as that can be difficult to do over the summer while so many members are traveling, we are trying to do those now for the rest of the summer. In particular, we’d like to redesign our logo and website, and our Chair appointed a committee to do that. In the meantime I’ll be gathering some bids for a designer.

I also prepared for a conference call tomorrow that I can describe more fully then…! And readied my trip info for Thursday’s public appearance in Niagara Falls.

Not all staff members were back in the office yet so we didn’t do a full debriefing about the trip and the various events, but we try to do that within a week or two while all is fresh in one’s memory. We really look at what worked and didn’t work!