2024 Annual Meeting Recap
2024 GIVING WoMN Grantee Representatives
Thank you to all who attended our 2024 GIVING WoMN Annual Meeting!
On Tuesday evening, May 14 GIVING WoMN members, guests and the 2024 Grant Recipients met in Scheid Hall at Surly Brewing Company to celebrate 19 years of GIVING WoMN. The venue was electric with the excitement of hearing what our class of 2024 Grant Recipients had to say.
Surly Brewing was glimmering with the glow of candlelight and was filled with the scent of the fabulous food and delicious drinks that were served. We had a great crowd on hand to enjoy each other’s company and to learn more about this year’s esteemed class.
The evening was emceed by Kaari Miller. We took a break from the usual Annual Meeting format to concentrate more on the Grant Recipients and the various supporting benefits that GIVING WoMN offers to them. We cut down the time of the event by having our President’s Address by Mary Weber and our Treasurer’s Report by Diane Slaton pre-recorded and posted to the newly branded GIVING WoMN website. Please log in to the Member Portal to hear from Mary and Diane about what GIVING WoMN has been up to for the past year and what we are looking to accomplish in the coming year.
We provided a little history of where and how GIVING WoMN began so that new members and guests could be educated. We saluted our Founding Members, recognized our New Members and thanked our Legacy Members that go above and beyond in dedicating more to GIVING WoMN.
After welcoming everyone the mic was handed over to Karen Failes-Coad from HX Coaching & Consulting. While we love the impact that our grants make on each organization, we feel that there is more that GIVING WoMN can do to aid them, allowing them to do more good in the community. Through HX Coaching we offer a volunteer coach to each organization to help teach them and lead them down a more successful business and organizational path for themselves and their nonprofit. We are proud to announce that this year, each organization took us up on the offer and will be working with their own, assigned coach.
Susan Seiler and Beth Kipling, our Grant Committee Co-Chairs, flawlessly introduced each of the seven 2024 recipients: Breaking Free, DARTS, Hope Dental Clinic, Native American Community Clinic, Serve Minnesota, The Bridge for Youth and The Lift Garage. A representative from each organization spoke on their behalf, thanking GIVING WoMN for the grant and telling us about their organization and for what specific program they were going to use their grant. Each of the programs holds such a special place in the metro, oftentimes assisting in ways that we wouldn’t even have thought of. They have the foresight to see a need and the creativity to come up with a way to try and solve it. There were moving tales of survival that were as inspirational as they were touching. The services these organizations provide are just incredible and we’re grateful to them for all of the amazing work they do and impact they are making here in Minnesota.
We also mentioned a new program that GIVING WoMN is providing to their Grant Recipients. We are offering a Grantee Fellowship Membership to one representative from each of our recipient organizations. They are invited to do virtually everything that a full member is allowed to do such as serve on committees, nominate organizations and attend all of our meetings. This works twofold in that it allows us to hear more about the organizations we’re helping and allows them to learn more about GIVING WoMN. It’s a win-win!
Finally the meeting was wrapped up by announcing our Eye Opener topic. This year we will discuss The Face of ACEs: Exploring Adverse Childhood Experiences. We will delve into the underlying effect of various childhood traumas, how we can recognize and ultimately prevent them from happening.
The evening concluded with additional time for fellowship and socializing. Another great Annual Meeting was in the books.
