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HomeMy WebLinkAbout~Master - ASSET Admin Meeting July 31, 2024Minutes ASSET Administrative Team July 31, 2024 @ 12:15pm United Way of Story County @ 315 Clark Ave, Ames, IA 50010 In Attendance: Ashley Thompson, Linda Hagedorn, Sandra King, Jenny Schill (Admin Assistant), Mindi Hereen, Erik Rolwes, Ron Smith (virtual), Becky Harker (virtual), Deb Schildroth Guest: Debra Kumar (Prairie Flower Children’s Center) Meeting called to order at 12:17pm by Hagedorn. The meeting is being chaired by Hagedorn as Harker is virtual today. King moved to approve July 3, 2024 minutes with changes; seconded by Thompson. Motion passed unanimously. Treasurer’s Report Smith reported the current balance is $3,048. Smith had some questions about receiving two checks for $1,000, one from United Way that ISU GSB sent and one from the City. Old Business Funder Priorities King reported that the Story County Board of Supervisors approved with no changes. The City of Ames approved its Funder priorities with no changes. The United Way approved with no changes, but there will be upcoming discussion on a possible shift in housing. ISU Student Government has discussed that priorities will stay the same, but approval comes in the Fall. Agency Training Preparation – Agenda and PowerPoint Staff have been making updates to the agency training materials. Mundel sent Schill a few changes for the PowerPoint. Thompson suggested that it would probably be a good idea that someone from ISU Student Government be in attendance as there have been questions from agencies on their allocation process. Hill stated that there will be an advisor and student representative present. Community of Excellence Smith reported that this committee met. King asked if there was a recommendation to create a Housing Navigator position? Smith and Thompson reported that there were no actions that came out of this meeting, and that the purpose of the group would not be to take action but to support ongoing efforts. Virtual Meeting Option Schill reported that the current option with our calendar is a Google Meet and will limit our virtual meeting to one hour. So, we will need to look at moving to a Microsoft Team’s meeting. New Business New Agency Applications Prairie Flower Children’s Center (12:45 pm) Debra Kumar was in attendance, and she is currently the board president for Prairie Flower Children’s Center. King asked if they have a waiting list. Kumar reported that they currently do not but have had one in past years. She reported that this is because they increased their capacity this last year. They have changed locations and now are located at Bethesda with two classrooms compared to one at their previous location. Their current capacity is 32 children. King asked if they take infants and Kumar reported that they don’t. Hill asked what age group are most parents in who utilize this program. Hagedorn asked how many are in Story County. Kumar reported that she thinks all are in Story County. Kumar reported that they are a Nature School with a play-based curriculum, which means a lot of time is spent outside in nature. This curriculum is an emergent curriculum. The uniqueness of this programming is why Kumar thinks some of their clients come from outside of Ames. Smith pointed out that other similar agencies receive funding to go toward clients who aren’t receiving funds from DHS. He also explained that it appears there isn’t a sliding fee scale available at Prairie Flower, which would be a requirement. Kumar reported that they are trying to get a sliding fee scale adopted, but haven’t done it yet. They do have families that receive child care assistance (CCA). She also stated that they don’t request income data from families so it’s hard to tell if families are in need of a sliding fee scale. Schildroth let Kumar know that ASSET doesn’t give guidance to agencies on sliding fee scales or how to implement them, but recommended reaching out to the other similar agencies to learn about their process. Schildroth pointed out that if they are approved as an ASSET agency, one of the required documents they have to submit would be a sliding fee scale. King asked what their current enrollment is. Kumar stated that that data would need to come from their director, but thinks enrollment for the fall is 12. Hill asked about age range for the after-school program. Kumar reported that it’s for ages 5- 12. In the past it was advertised for ages 5-9 two days a week. This fall it will expand the age range and will be a five day a week program. Last year they had 11-12 kids. King stated that the Admin team will have further discussion and then be in communication with them. Discussion: Smith asked if we require sliding fee scales to be income-based. Funder staff answered yes and that ASSET would share sliding fee scales with them from similar agencies. Thompson reported that there is a study being conducted with ARPA funds to look into options in the County and where are gaps. She stated that from United Way’s perspective, they would support this program. King moved approval to accept Prairie Flower’s application; seconded by Thompson. Motion passed unanimously. Iowa MMJ King stated that it appears this agency is a political organization, which would disqualify it as an ASSET agency. Thompson also stated that the United Way board would have some concerns in funding them with their current lawsuit outstanding. King motioned to deny Iowa MMJ’s application based on their ineligibility. They don’t meet the criteria for funding as stated in H1 - Agencies that offer the following services shall not be eligible for funding from ASSET Funders: Agencies that are primarily political in nature as stated in Policies and Procedures; Hagedorn seconded. Discussion: Hill asked if this a political issue because immigration has been made a political issue or is it a political issue. Smith stated that he has trouble on both sides of this. Thompson said there is also the issue that it isn’t clear in their application if they have been providing services for 12 months in Story County. Hill stated that we have grounds to make a decision based on ASSET criteria outside of the political issue, for their application this year. They could be encouraged to reapply next year if they provide services in Story County for the full 12 months. Motion vote: in favor - King, Opposed - Hagedorn, Thompson, Hill, Hereen, Smith, Harker, Rolwes. Motion failed. Smith moved, with Thompson modification, to deny their request due to lack of evidence provided in the application that they have been providing services in Story County for 12 months; seconded by Harker. Motion carried unanimously. Homeless Issue Letter to Funders This item was moved up on the agenda as Schildroth needed to leave early. King reported that updates were made to the initial letter. Schildroth and Goldbeck discussed the letter and the process of communication that comes from ASSET to the Funders. In similar situations, Funder staff have communicated with their respective boards. In the past, they have hired a facilitator to conduct community conversations between agencies and Funders and an action plan has been produced out of those meetings. Schildroth communicated to Goldbeck that the homeless issue seems to be a similar situation. Schildroth said it would probably be a good idea to have a Joint Funders meeting to start this conversation. A recommendation could come out of this meeting. King communicated with the Board of Supervisors that some form of communication would be coming on this issue. King also reported that she has been communicating with General Assistance (GA) and exploring options for addressing this issue in the County. Thompson stated that she doesn’t think a letter is needed, but that Funder staff could communicate with their boards to have a Joint Funders meeting. Schildroth advised ASSET to come with recommendations to the Joint Funders meeting if that happens. Hill stated that he can’t commit to anything on behalf of ISU Student Government he would need to take any action back to them and they would need to take action on any recommendations. Schildroth stated that ASSET could produce talking points so communication is consistent to all four Funders. King suggested turning the letter into the talking points. Hagedorn pointed out that the letter came out of ASSET receiving requests related to this issue that don’t usually come to ASSET and are outside of the normal process. Schildroth responded that the Funders should know agencies have approached ASSET to request money from the funds that were set aside for the RFP. Hill made a motion to rescind the letter to the City and County; seconded by King. Motion carried unanimously. Schildroth shared Goldbeck's bullet points that she sent prior to the meeting. Possible Homelessness Conversation Goals: Develop an inventory of what services exist today, who provides it, capacity. Identify any gaps in services. (The gap study the Balance of State is doing looks at the entire two rivers regions, not limited to Story County) Hire assistance with street outreach/temporary staff dedicated to engaging with the homeless population. Augments what service providers know. (This could be funding to support an ASSET agency staff member doing extra outreach for a specific period of time. We would want to provide some guidance on what the outreach staff would gather i.e., what information) Community conversations with service providers and the greater community on how might we better prevent homelessness? ISU Allocations Hill addressed some recent concerns that have been brought up by agencies about lack of communication from ISU SG on receiving funding or not receiving funding. Hill stated that there has been a lot of recent turnover where some things got dropped in this process. He is taking responsibility for these issues but communicated that he is working with the students to quickly remedy the concerns. King stated that there were some concerns about how ISU SG made changes to the ASSET recommendations right after the full ASSET recommendations were posted. King commented that in the past there has been communication from the Funder staff to the Volunteers, so the full recommendations are consistent with what was approved. She stated that each Funder does have the ability to change the allocations, but typically stay with what was recommended. Hill communicated that going forward students involved with ASSET will be made aware of the full ASSET process and the history of ASSET. King reported that there is an outstanding request from The Community Academy and asked if that has been dealt with. Hill reported that their finance director and Quinn Margrett is dealing with this, and he will find out the status and report back. FY26 Liaison Assignments – Action Needed Hagedorn made a motion to approve the FY26 Liaison Assignments as presented; seconded by Thompson. Motion carried unanimously. Update on FY23/24 Unspent City ASSET Funds None Review New/Expanded Service Primary Healthcare Schill read the response from Primary Healthcare related to which services they are applying for. King stated that she doesn’t have a problem with approving this, but the services would need to be separate services and itemized in their claims with mental health removed from County claims. Thompson moved to approve the expanded service proposed by Primary Healthcare; seconded by Harker. Motion carried unanimously. ASSET Aug. 8th Agenda Schill will make the edits and look back at old minutes to see if the full board approved New Agencies or New or Expanded Services in the past. Hearing Schedule Schill will update and include it in the ASSET Agenda Packet next week. Clear Impact Scorecard Mundel was not present at the meeting but provided this update to Schill. 1.Agencies are currently submitting their program descriptions, program data for FY24, volunteer statistics for FY24, and agency client statistics for FY24. This is due July 31, 11:59 pm. I did get several requests for extensions which were granted as noted: The Salvation Army – extended to September 25 (due to medical leave) Central Iowa RSVP – extended to August 15 (director will be at a conference at the end of July and wanted to leave the Volunteer Impact Survey open as long as possible to strengthen results; most data is already entered) 2.Agency Client Statistics (former ABF-2) – I routinely get questions about whether this data should be reported for Story County only or for their whole agency. For United Way purposes, Story County-only would be most helpful. However, either way, I think that it might help to clearly mark what ASSET wants reported right on Scorecard. Also, I regularly get questions about the definitions/ who should be included in these final 3 measures: If these are not data points that any of you use, we may want to consider removing these for the next fiscal year’s reporting. Additional Items/Concerns Schill asked about printing the agency packets for the agency training and asked if it be done at Prints Copy Center. It was discussed and decided that we should move toward providing the Reference Manual and Policies and Procedures manuals electronically unless requested to have a hard copy. Motion for adjournment Thompson, King seconded at 2:28. Motion carried unanimously.