MeetingMinutesDec10

Sai Temple General Committee Meeting

Date: 10/12/2017 (recurs every 2^nd Sunday of the month)

Scheduled meeting time: 4:00 PM

List of Attendees: Devdeep, Ashwini, Ganga, Anand, Srikanth, Adi, Mohan, Krishna, Mehgana, Uday, Arthi, Vijay, Karan, Jangesh, Kulraj

Minutes of the meeting:

• The meeting began at 4:20 PM and continued until 7 PM.
• The meeting followed a free-flowing unstructured format, allowing the attendees to share their perspectives and comments on diverse issues as listed next. Since this was the 1^st committee meeting at Sai temple, attendees used the time to get themselves acclimatized with each other and issues linked to managing a temple.
• The topic discussed include:
  1. A brief history of Sai temple Downingtown, followed by Sai temple at Malvern
  2. The mission and objectives of the organization were discussed.
  3. Four most important functions to manage a temple were discussed, – food, culture, religious activities, and traffic
  4. There was a call to increase devotee involvement, participation and foot traffic to bolster the Temple’s relevance to the surrounding community
  5. There was a call democratically select a group of leaders to manage to successfully run and be accountable for the temple day to day functions.
  6. Interesting insights were shared during the meeting by Delaware Temple Trustee members who are also serving on Sai temple, Malvern, board.
  7. Constitution, bylaws, policies, and operational elements were also discussed during the 1^st meeting
  8. Discussions pertaining to the relevance and direction of Sai temple, Downingtown in the light of Sai temple, Malvern.
  9. Propositions were made to link donations made with the broad direction of the Temple and having the info to be made public/devotee base.
  10. Positioning of the two temples to its devotee base
  11. Thursday food management issues which included a call for volunteers as well as a paid position
  12. Suggestions were also made to improvise the existing app and communication methodology to have an even higher impactful reach and appeal to 20K – 35K families living in the vicinity.
  13. Suggestions were also made to have a transparent and publicly accessible Financials by one of the attendees.

Action items for the next and subsequent meetings

• Brainstorming on the mission and vision of Sai temple, Malvern
• A clear positioning and the direction of both the Sai Temples (brand positioning) in relation to its mission and vision and its devotee base.
• Food management (cooking, serving, managing traffic, etc.) during Thursdays
• Managing the temple finances and communicating to its devotee base about the temple expansion plans and donation fund usage. A decision to be made whether this needs to be made public or a need to know basis.
• Committee structure and organization – no. of committees, no. of members in each committee, no. of hours of service, meeting days/dates, and duration, agenda and action items, clarity on roles and responsibilities, naming of the committees
• A broad communication strategy needs to be developed for its devotee base.