President History – Julie Mussog
343 members (171 Sustainer, 151 Active, 21 Provisional)

Building upon more than 30 years of success, the year’s focus was on redesigning the board into governance versus management functions to allow the governance board to focus on strategic planning and to have a management board focused on the day-to-day decisions necessary to carry out the board’s vision.   This involved a significant update to our bylaws and policies and procedures. We also upgraded our website to Digital Cheetah in an effort to modernize and facilitate communication and transfer of institutional knowledge from year to year.

Highlights of this year:

• We welcomed 25 provisionals to active status in January and currently have a class of 21 provisionals for the spring class.
• Successful new logo launch.
• New user friendly website directly linked to your Association of Junior League Internationals account.
• Voted in two new community impact projects
  • Seeds4Success
  • First Book (Now Read2Kids)
• Established Training Tracks that will be available to members in the 2015-16 league year.

Financial Resources Council

• Membership voted to continue all current fundraisers.
• Chefs by the Bay netted over $21,000 and was held at the Loews Hotel in Annapolis. Attendance was over x00.
• FDE raised over $xx,000 for the Annual Fund including a few corporate donations.
• Gift Wrap continues to be a strong fundraiser bringing over $15,000 of revenue with a net profit of $12,000.
• Fun Run netted just over $7,000 despite the loss of our main sponsor, Dr. O’Reilly
• Cookbook netted $12,000 for the year.

Community Impact Council

• The membership voted in two community programs for the three year terms:
• Seeds4Success (S4S) -We will be helping S4S with their new Alumni and College Access program (ACA), a college counseling program for graduates of Eastport Girls Club, focused on helping the young African American and Hispanic girls living in Annapolis public housing apply to college, find scholarships, and successfully attend college ready program and existing programming targeting girls in low-income housing.
• First Book– Our partnership with First Book will involve putting in place additional reading programs for young children, developing family reading programs and other projects to help increase youth literacy.
• Ten Done in a Day (DIAD) events were sponsored:
  • Oct- Lighthouse lunches
  • Nov- Coat Drive
  • Hillsmere Festival
  • Dec- Lighthouse lunches
  • Blood drive
  • Jan- Chrysalis House Drive
  • March- Blood Drive
  • April- Maternity Clothes Drive
  • May- Family fun day at Sarah’s House
  • Career Day at Germantown Elementary

Communications Council

• After an extensive two-year process, JLA rebranded its logo identity system. Lead by the External Communications Committee, the new logo selected contains an anchor for its ties to the Annapolis-community, as well as for evoking a meaning of hope and strength. A color palette was selected with the classic Junior League red a the primary color. The decision to rebrand came after several years of conversation and research of other non-profits and volunteer organizations in the committee.
• JLA participated in a variety of public events to help boost exposure in the community and brand awareness. A booth was setup at the annual Maryland Avenue Fall Festival and for the first time ever, members marched in the Military Bowl March leading up to the annual Military Bowl football game at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
• The Holiday Luncheon took place at Loews Annapolis Hotel, featuring several past presidents who spoke on the theme of change. Representatives were also present to share details on the new Management vs. Governance Structure of the League.  The May Annual Dinner was graciously hosted by Dana Cate for the second year in a row. GMMs were held in the Conte Lubrano Community Room.

Membership Council

Membership approved the council motion to reduce Active requirements from 8 years to 6 years to qualify for a status change to Sustaining member.

Education & Training held four training events including a discussion of Lean In, an event to discuss blogging, which was open to non-League attendees, a viewing of Misrepresentation, and a JLA 101 training to give newer members a ‘crash course’ on JLA history and language. They also organized 4 Take-10 trainings during GMMs. The committee established Training Tracks to enhance membership experience. At its heart, JLA is about promoting civic leadership through trained volunteers. To further this goal Education & Training has created a specialized training track program, which will allow our members to tailor their League experience to tangible training opportunities.  There will be three tracks; Leadership & Management, Communications Expert, and Financial Literacy. These three tracks will be available for members to pursue next year.

The Provisional Committee trained two incoming classes of Provisional members. Seventy-eight women attended two summer Open Houses (at a committee member’s house and at Metropolitan in Annapolis) and 25 completed the Provisional Course.  The winter Open House at Metropolitan had 40 women attend and 21 completed the Provisional Course.   The Fall Provisional project was a collection and delivery of 6 Thanksgiving baskets to the Lighthouse Shelter.  The Spring project involved hosting a booth at the Homeless Resource Day event. The committee also planned two events after the Provisional courses ended to collect feedback from these new members about the course, training, and early experiences as Active members.

Nominating & Placement’s attention was on discussing and brainstorming more effective and successful placement models. They also welcomed 9 transfers and held a transfer welcome event in the spring.

The Consulting committee continued to collaborate with Education & Training and the Provisional committee by working together to host events.  The Consulting committee once again hosted breakfast (Fall) and lunch (Spring) following the Provisional bus tour, and they hosted a social event in the Fall to welcome new active members and recent transfers.