Will County Farm Bureau Foundation Meets

Farm Bureau Graphic

The Will County Farm Bureau Foundation met on meeting on Tuesday December 19th and was called to order by Lyle Tewes, President at 9 am with the following members present: Lyle Tewes, Rita Luedtke, Debbie Werner, Jim Robbins, Kris Mulderink and Mark Schneidewind, Farm Bureau manager.

The first item of business on the agenda was Lyle reporting that Diane Tordai was stepping down as a Foundation board member and the group thanked her for all her work and service as she had served 7 years and appreciated her hard work. They will start to look for a replacement board member and discussed several names to ask to be on the board and they will be contacted in an order as spelled out by the board.

Lyle then discussed having a wall plaque in the hallway that recognizes the original 6 Foundation board who started this foundation in 1988 and include Bob Muehling as the Farm Bureau manager at the time who suggested we start a foundation. This was approved and we will work on this in the 2024 year.

Lyle then reviewed the year end audit and the current year financials. The year end audit shows we were in the black on without donor restrictions by $4,611 and in the black on the area with donor restrictions for $18,108 for a total in the black after all expenses of $22,719. We are off and running in the 2023-24 fiscal year. Currently with markets not as robust as last year in November we are in the black but down some based-on markets. The group then reviewed the trust in the estate of Jerry Davidson that were donated to the Foundation along with several other nonprofit organizations. They discussed the restrictions within the trust and that all paperwork is filed with Edward Jones and we are just waiting on the liquidation of the trust.

The next item was the scholarships for the 2024 year and the applications went live on December 1st and the fill in boxes are going well. The deadline to apply for the 2024 scholarships is March 3rd, 2024 and there will be a total of 54 scholarships at the $1,500 level. 26 are high school seniors and the other 26 are higher education (sophomore – doctorate) and 2 high school ag education scholarships to seniors in college. They will also provide 2 internships at $500 each and will provide $500 in teaching grants for classroom activities and/or institutes. They discussed raising the dollar amount for the 2025 scholarship year and approved going to $2,000 per scholarship beginning in 2025.

The board then reviewed the auction coming up in January with the online starting January 19 and running through February 1st. Postcards will be mailed January 12th with instructions, and we will need items in by January 5th for the silent auction as we will start to place pictures and notes for the online auction January 9th. We will keep the same format for the online auction. We have already selected 3 items for raffles: the wheelbarrow full of booze (over $450 in value is now over $500); the patriotic Afghan made by Lorreta Sartore; and the Play Station 5 bundle. Each raffle is $10 each or 3 for $20 or 8 for $50. Tickets are on sale now at the Farm Bureau office. We will work on raffle schedules after the first of the year. Invites to the annual meeting have been sent out to scholarship winners of the 2023 scholarships and Larry Lorenz has been ok’d for doing up to 4 live items. We will select some after January 9th. They will also have the pictures online for the auction of the scholarship winners as well as at the annual meeting.

The group went through all the contacts and made assignments for contacts and were encouraged to do before Christmas with the deadline coming up on January 5th. They set their next meeting for Tuesday, February 6th at 9 am. Lyle asked if anyone else was wanting to step down and there was no one else to retire from the board so they will work on a replacement board member and hold the election of officers at the February 6th meeting. Lyle wished everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and thanked everyone for their hard work!

Events

February 2025
March 2025
April 2025
May 2025
June 2025
July 2025
August 2025
No event found!
Prev Next