Training Log Archive: barb

To Fresh Pond in the morning to hang controls for the Morse 5th grade class. Then to work, then home.

Event: Vampire-O
 

To North Point Park and back for our IS League O event, and to Danehy Park for the Vampire-O

Some control setting and some orienteering at the Vampire-O. Super fun. Light rain. We had a pretty good turnout, given that we only got permission a couple days before, and all the high school boys bailed because of fear of melting in the rain. I think the problem is that when they run cross-country (training or competition) in the rain, they don't have the right gear and get all cold and then sick, so they're scared of it. We had 5 kids approximately middle school, and maybe 8 adults. A guy named Alex won, and also helped us pick up controls. Keegan arrived late but still went out on the course, and then picked up all the farthest-away controls to get the exercise/experience.

Thanks to the Bermans for bringing their tent and refreshments. Thanks to Ethan for coming up with the idea and pulling it off! He did a nice job giving instructions and orchestrating the whole thing. Great energy.

A long day, putting on two local events: our 4th IS League series event at North Point Park and a Vampire-O.

We haven't figured out the PR piece yet, and went into the fall with a reasonable plan for outreach but did not manage to fully implement it. Over the winter we will plan for next year.

The silver lining of low (but nonzero!) turnout is that we get to spend more time with each group. At North Point Park, we were busy most of the time. I talked to a woman who is interested in stewardship of the park, and we have a plan to get together later and do some joint orienteering / learning about the native plants activity in 2017. Several families came. We finally posted on NEOC website (why didn't I think of that earlier?) and got at least one family that way.

C • Alex R beat Keegan? 1

work, isabel breakfast, work, home

So much happening.

Tonight Ethan is having a mentoring call with Erin Schirm. (Ethan taught two kids' orienteering classes today, and will teach another tomorrow.) I had a call with NEOC and CSU people about putting on a youth/beginner series of events in 2017. Ethan and I just got permission from the city to put on a Vampire-O in Cambridge on Sunday night so we've been scrambling to try and find people to come to that. And more...

A nice conversation tonight with Leike (?) who found out about the CSU training on Meetup, and Ed, Isabel, Ian, Ari and Alex. She and Ian had a lot in common. Got to talk to Ed about the OUSA equipment committee, as well as map-making to expand our small-park orienteering efforts in the region.

Planning a phone call with NEOC and CSU people to talk about expanding the little events in local parks aimed at bringing in families and kids and newcomers - we'll talk on Thursday night. Bud (President of NEOC) wants to see if Ed can brainstorm with us about how to get more small park maps made. Pia, Ian and Wendy were excited about Sunday's event and wanted to talk about expanding the program with their help in the spring.

First time out with my new construction worker's reflective jacket. I didn't get run over, so I guess it worked. I felt I had crossed some line - other bikers have more expensive and streamlined but still reflective cold weather gear.

Working on my nonprofit financial reporting midterm.

A good morning - managed to sleep in until 7:30; didn't dawdle in bed with phone because I had to bring maps & compasses to Morse School before school started, and I made myself some oatmeal with cooked apples, walnuts and yogurt, which I'm finding works well to last me until lunchtime. Biked to work, after figuring out how to pump up the tires on my bike (haven't used Presta valves before); it was like having new sneakers or something.

C • presta valves 14

Hanging and picking up controls for Navigation Games event at Fresh Pond. We had kids from a few different schools. Fresh Pond is great for catching passers by, and we had a few of those, including Tomas and his parents who had been drawn into our "guerilla" events from last year. They asked after Isak; they think he's great. Discussions were had with Wendy, Pia, Ian about doing more of these park events aimed at kids & families, with NEOC. We'll have a meeting soon to discuss. Also Bud (NEOC Pres) is interested in this topic.
Sam's dad was going to reach out to her school this week to see if we could form a team for the remaining 3 events.
We got 3 new kids from CRLS, sophomores; one of them had done orienteering with me when in 5th grade at Morse school; that was the year we were able to take the class to the national meet put on by CSU at Franklin Park. Always good to see that efforts over the year pay off, even if everything still feels small.
I spent a total of at least 6 hours at Fresh Pond plus travel today, and Ethan and I spent a number of hours in preparation.
Ethan did most of the communication with the rangers; we will follow up with a thank you and report on the event to them.
There were many people who stopped by our table, or talked to us as we were picking up controls, asking what it was. Again, just having controls out there raises awareness. I think we should make signs for each control with explanation of what it is and how to participate.

C • Signs for each control 6

Ethan got his first thank-you card today. From the entire 8th grade class at a local middle school, for taking them all orienteering.

C • Keepsake! 1

I've been working on understanding how the endowment works.
Here's where I am so far:
Notes
Spreadsheet

The Fund returns 4% of total assets to OUSA each year.

My current impression is that the funds OUSA has transferred to the endowment are composed of (1) direct donations to the endowment, and (2) life memberships. The latter is "board-designated", and typically (in other organizations) those funds can be retrieved later -- the organization is just using the endowment as a place to stash long-term investments, and have the endowment people manage the money. One example, not really relevant for us, is if you know you are going to do a capital project in the future. However, I don't see any language in our policies or the Fund bylaws saying that we can get that board designated money back out later.

OUSA keeps separate track of OUSA board designated endowment funds vs donor-restricted endowment funds. However, the Fund doesn't track these. I'm seeing differences between the Fund version of total assets and OUSA's version of total endowment assets. (Why?) The fiscal year is different for the two organizations, so I'm referring to the 6/30 OUSA financial statements to compare to the annual Fund reports.

Where are the 2014 and 2015 Fund annual reports?

C • Recent EF reports 1

C • Raiding the EF 3

With bike trailer to Danehy for our 2nd Nav Games event. More people came this time, but it was still sparsely attended.

With Aya

Recent Navigation Games activity:

We are pushing hard this week to get the word out about the 5 upcoming Sunday events aimed at school kids (park epunch score-Os and white courses). We've gotten permission to flyer all the grade 6-12 public schools in Cambridge (Ethan is spending the day making and distributing flyers) and need to work outward to neighboring towns. We will start working with the Morse 5th grade next week. Last week we had the grand finale for the 8th grade with 100 people in the woods. On Sunday we were pretty much rained out of our first fall Nav Games event, although Ethan and I were there anyway. Along with Cristina's friends and Alex. We've started posting on Meetup and Facebook and EventBright. I guess we could add the kids' events to AttackPoint. Ethan is setting up some of the CSU Wed night trainings out of my house.

We want to keep the CSU trainings informal, free and run by volunteers, but I want to pay Ethan for his time setting up the courses that he sets up. At the same time I don't want to cast a wet blanket on the whole deal, because I completely love the Wed night trainings. Not really sure how to resolve it, but I think the most likely approach I will take is to go ahead and pay Ethan, treat this as our contribution to CSU community, and separately ask people to support Navigation Games financially as we try and get things up and running these first few years. I think in general it's fine for people to volunteer their time (which most of us do, while holding other jobs) and for others to get paid, depending on their circumstances. Sometimes we talk about how it's important to recognize the value of orienteering services by paying for them, but we also want not to keep people away because of cost. Ya know?

This is one example of many in trying to figure out how to make orienteering sustainable while also attracting new people and serving populations such as low-income urban kids. My general attitude for Navigation Games is that for the first few years, we are getting people and organizations hooked on orienteering by providing lots of free or cheap experiences, trying not to say no to any opportunity, and supporting the efforts with donations, volunteer time, and partner clubs' resources. Once we really get going hopefully we can apply for grants. And after that hopefully things will stabilize with recipients happily paying for services. It feels like a long road from this point. It's still really hard to get kids to attend events that cost a lot of money, like the national level meets. The cost for local meets is really low, and that should help - but part of the reason the cost is low is that the clubs aren't trying to raise money to invest in growth, outreach to schools, serving low-income populations, and the like. Vicious circle, perhaps.

Just got off a two hour finance committee meeting. It was really great to hear people who want many of the same things. I feel very optimistic. I loved how easy the discussion was. No uncomfortable tension. Just figuring out what we each thought and what the areas are to be tackled.

Elthan and I put on our first Navigation Games Fall 2016 Series event today. It was very rainy, blustery, a bit cold.

How shall I say this? We've done two events in the past three days, and the average attendance was more than 50 people. Huge thanks to Cristina, who was directly responsible for recruiting 2/3 of today's attendees.

That is not just a fraction, it is a literal two out of three.

Still, we have some good courses at Magazine Beach ready to go. And we did a dry run (a very wet dry run) and know a few more things we need to organize better. Also, it felt really good to come home, get dry and warm, and do some cooking and baking. And watching Madame Secretary.

We made $10 today! (Costs were quite a bit higher, but I look at it as an investment :-). For the past three weeks at the middle school, we'll earn around $1000, though the sponsor from the last two years is cutting their contribution due to poorer than usual business this year. But I think the "Friends of" group will cover the cost.

C • You´ve posted 2

Love these people.

It was at this dinner that we were talking politics, and then we played "who looks most like Justin Trudeau?" and I can't unsee it now.

Maps for the relay last week at Vassal Lane Upper School. We are getting ready to take the same kids on an all-day field trip to the real woods on Friday.

Let me know if you need a password to view it.

Green - Splits

8th graders at our orienteering relay on Wednesday.
Let me know if you can't see the photo; you might need a password.

C • Happy 2