American Association of the Deaf-Blind

• January 2012

Submitted by: Lynn Jansen

To save money, the board has voted to transfer the phone calls and faxes over to eVoip. We are now using eVoice and eFax and this seems to be a success as we are not missing any calls. The numbers for the main telephone and for the faxes are still the same. There are three extensions, one for donation, two for membership, and three for all other inquiries. The first two goes directly to the secretary, Debby Lieberman and the third one go to me (Lynn Jansen). We take all calls directly from our homes.

For the month of December we answered 28 phone calls and 106 emails. If we don’t know the answers, these are forwarded to the correct person.

Jill reported she is working with the Landlord about advertising the office space and this is being done. We are having difficulties getting into Craigslist but will keep trying to advertise on this list. Jill was also able to negotiate with the Landlord and there will be no increase in rent
for the year 2012.

 

• February 2012

Submitted by: Lynn Jansen

During the month of January, several of the board members, Jill Gaus, Lynn Jansen, Elizabeth Spiers, and Kacie Weldy, were in Silver Spring for ten days at their personal expenses to continue to get many things organized in the AADB Office on Fenton Street. Our main goal was to finish cleaning up the office, scan all the important information for our files according to the Record Retention Rules for the State of Maryland and finish entering all the entries into QuickBooks so we could close the books for the year 2011. A big thank you goes to all the volunteers who came in and worked tirelessly with us, Leslie Foxman, Becky Hall, Candace Strayer, and Valerie. Also, thanks so much to Kacie’s husband, Mike Weldy and Hewitt Packard for letting us borrow their commercial scanner.

There has been significant progress on QuickBooks. We identified and reconciled those documents to the data already entered into QuickBooks. We verified that the data had been correctly categorized and recorded any necessary adjustments or corrections. A larger task has been to identify what had not been entered. In order to identify data that had not been entered, we have spent a considerable amount of time reconciling documents located in the office to bank statements and our online credit card processing vendor. The necessary entries were recorded to correct the QuickBooks balances to agree with the Audited Financial Statements for the years 2010 and 2011.

We prepared and sent out the required Form 1099’s. While all the QuickBooks data is entered, we are still in the tedious task of verifying and reconciling each line item to the paperwork to support these entries. We have made the arrangements with the auditor for an independent review or audit and preparation of the annual tax Form 990. Once 2011 is complete, we will have a solid base and be in a better position to provide accurate and timely financial reports.

We continue on with the tasks of looking over all important paperwork by separating these into piles by “to archives” at Gallaudet University, “to scan/save files”, and “to put into storage”. If not needing any of the paperwork, these were shredded. All the donor’s and membership due’s forms were put in order by the year, put into alphabetical order, and finally scanned. We also blacked out all the credit card information on all the forms to protect private information and we will continue to do so.

We canceled Verizon’s for telephone, Internet and TTY Services. To save money we are now using NexTalk, eVoice and eFax to be able to continue to answer telephone calls and to receive faxes. We also discontinue the lease on the copier that expired on February 1, 2012 and this was picked up on February 2, 2012. We also got rid of all the furniture and equipment as we no longer will be using these in the office.

Now that the office is pretty well empty, we are still looking for anyone interested in subleasing it. If you know of anyone interested in a spacious five room’s office located in Silver Spring, please have them contact Jill Gaus at mailto:jagaus@sbcglobal.net. In the meantime, the board members will continue to work on office tasks, such as receiving the mails, pay bills, answering calls/email, etc., so AADB can continue to be active.
Thank you!
Respectfully submitted by Lynn Jansen

• March 2012

Submitted by: Elizabeth Spiers

n order to save money ($580 a month), we have canceled the law firm who have been filling out our States Registration Forms. The Office Committee is now filling out these forms so we can continue to legally solicit funds.

Elizabeth Spiers and several local DC area volunteers went back to the AADB office in early March to finish cleaning out the office and to give away office furniture to prepare the office for subletting. This was a follow up visit to complete work on the office that Jill Gaus, Lynn Jansen and Kacie Weldy were not able to complete during their visit in January.

• April 2012

Submitted by: Lynn Jansen

The office is now cleared out and empty. We are still trying to sublease the space. We had several interested parties but they found another place to rent. If you know of anyone who is looking for office space in Silver Spring, please contact Jill Gaus for more information at jagaus@sbcglobal.net.

We have a new address for AADB!
For any future correspondence, please send your mail to the following address:

American Association of the Deaf-Blind
PO Box 2831
Kensington, MD 20891

We are still using the same telephone number and fax number because we switched to eVoice and eFax. We canceled services with Verizon a few months ago to save some money.

We need legal advice on how to handle the lease and other contracts, since we no longer need the space and the services, and the contracts do not expire until 2013. We have found someone practicing law in the state of Maryland who can give us pro bono legal advice. We have sent in the required documents and are now waiting for an attorney to advise us.

For the month of March, we received and answered 34 phone calls and 121 email messages.  The SSP Refund Forms were sent back to me on March 30th and I will get back to work to re-organize the paperwork. The board is hard at work doing some fundraising to help pay for the remainder of the refunds.

• May 2012

Submitted by: Lynn Jansen

The accountant has finished entering all the necessary information into QuickBooks and we are now reviewing the financial statement for the year 2011. Because the financial report is not ready yet, the CPA filled out a form 8868 to IRS for a three months extension to send in the required Form 990 that was due on May 15, 2012.

We are still in contact with a pro bono lawyer to seek legal advice on how to handle the lease and other contracts that AADB no longer needs.

 

For the last part of April and the first week of May, we have received and answered 4 VP calls, 17 phone calls and 78 email messages.

 

• September 2011

Submitted by: Lynn Jansen

 

The Office Committee has been keeping track of all the Account Receivables and Account Payables, organizing info for QuickBooks, and is still looking into subleasing the current office located in Silver Spring. The goal is to complete the 1st and 2nd Quarter Reports by the end of September.

Also, we are working with the Landlord to try to lease or sublease the office.

• October 2011

Submitted by: Lynn Jansen

 

During the month of September, Jill and Lynn were in the AADB office for eight days to continue to clean up and to get things organized. Some of the tasks done were to put important papers in proper storage (some of them at the Gallaudet’s archives), to donate the office furniture to Deaf Reach (www.deaf-reach.org), to have the old computers cleaned up and donated to a local church, and to reorganize the filing system for donors, membership, accounting, and other important documents. We are still working on updating QuickBooks.

 

Thanks to the volunteers who came in to help out with moving furniture and boxes and shredding papers. We are also researching our options for telephone service to save money. This includes landline, fax, VP, TTY and online services. We will be going back in a few weeks to continue to clean out the office and are looking at other office space as an option.

While in Silver Spring, Jill and Lynn held meetings with several non-profit organizations and agencies. They met with Howard Rosenblum and Andrew Phillips from National Association for the Deaf (NAD), Claude Stout from TDI, Joe McNulty from Helen Keller National Center (HKNC), Steve Rothstein from Perkins School for the Blind, and Greg Hlibock, Rosaline Crawford and a several other people from FCC. The purpose of our meetings was to introduce ourselves, to let them know that AADB is being restructured, and is moving forward. We asked many questions and talked about how we can collaborate and partner together with them in AADB’s future endeavors. They are very supportive of AADB and are behind us all the way.

• November 2011

Submitted by: Lynn Jansen

 

Jill is working with the Landlord about advertising the office space and the advertising has started, we will advertise with Craig’s list, FB, Twitters, Blogs, local newspapers, local business. If anyone can think of any other way to advertise please do not hesitate to contact me.

• December 2011

Committee Chair:Lynn Jansen

~No report submitted by chair~

 

From Jill Gaus:
I am still working with the Landlord and they will be checking to see if we can have a discount on the cost of the rent because no one is in the office and we also have a potential sub leaser; we are negotiating at this moment. Some of the board of directors is planning a trip out to Silver Spring, MD in Jan. We are working on dates.

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