Ladies, Start your Engines!

Letter from the President

The beginning of our new year is upon us!  The first board meeting and general meeting of the 2013-2014 year will be held in August.  Now is also the time when we firm up committee membership and assignments - so please, if you haven't already, fill out our Skills and Interest Inventory.  This will enable us to best match your desires with the club's needs in staffing our various committees.  There is much to be done and we need to get to it, so please help us get the committees finalized soon by completing the inventory.

Remember there will be another Friendraiser in August - consider who might be a good fit to join or organization and send those names to DeLoris so she can invite them to the event.   And please plan to attend the August 15th general meeting.  It will be a good time to reconnect after our summer break.

Hope to see you all there!

Chris Bonney
LOWC President

General Meeting - August 15

Thursday, August 15, 2013
7:00 pm social 7:30 pm meeting
Location: Lilly Pacioni’s home 14001 Goodall Rd

Lilly Pacioni  (LOWC sustainer) has graciously offered to host our Thursday, August 15th evening meeting. Her covered patio and newly landscaped back yard will provide the perfect backdrop to sip and mingle, and cover some LOWC business too.  Wine, beverages, and appetizers will be provided by the club so come and enjoy another beautiful easy, breezy, summer evening while they last. Lilly Pacioni’s address is 14001 Goodall Rd. Lake Oswego, OR 97034. (near LO High School) There is limited driveway/flag lot parking. You may want to park directly on Goodall Rd for easier access Thanks Lilly!

Julie Lester
Meetings Chair

The President wants You!

...to renew your membership and pay your dues!

We need membership confirmation to assign members to a committee.
AND
We need your dues for our club's operations - we are self-funding and dues are the largest part of our operations budget!

Membership renewal/dues are due on or before September 1, 2013.

Thank you!

Welcome Our Acting Treasurer

Most recently, I regretfully accepted a resignation from Joni Powell, this year's Treasurer. Joni will be staying on as an active general member and we appreciate her continued support of LOWC.

Robin Tremayne will be our Acting Treasurer until a new replacement can be trained

I’m sure I speak for everyone by wishing Joni all the best in her busy family life and her continued support of LOWC as an active general member.

Chris Bonney
President

From the Acting Treasurer

Hello Members!

As you likely already know, this year, $5,500 was distributed to five high school seniors who not only succeeded academically, but found time to incorporate exemplary community service into their busy lives. A big Thank You goes out to Virginia Rubin and her committee for their selection efforts. Judging from the thank you notes received from the students, their efforts were well worth it!

I hope all our members are finding the new online membership renewal process easy. The payment deadline is September 1.


Robin Tremayne
Acting Treasurer

How Are our Dues Used?

One hundred percent of our membership dues are used for LOWC's operating expenses which keeps our club running. This includes a monthly Quickbooks fee, our website and domain registration costs, storage unit rental fee, our US Post Office box rental, State license fees and taxes for our non-profit status, liability insurance, and our accountant to prepare our annual taxes. We plan ahead for printing costs for our club's directory and additional brochures made for PR purposes. We also budget amounts for committees (ie: Meetings Committee in order to have food and drinks at our general meetings), reimbursements for paper, postage, and ink for club business, gifts for the outgoing president and our graduating provisionals, and a small amount set aside for miscellaneous incidental expenditures.

Your paid dues may be tax deductible. Save your online paid receipt and check with your tax professional.

Robin Tremayne
Vice President

Fashion Show

Our 13th Annual LOWC Fashion Show/Luncheon committee is in full swing organizing and planning a wonderful event for our club and local community.  We want to remind you that this is also a fundraising event to earn money for our amazing charities so we are asking for your help with donations this year to fill our gift baskets.  We need products, gift certificates or even personal donations that we can organize into our raffle baskets.  Please have all donations to Scottie Johnson no later than Sept 16th but if you can bring them to the next general meeting on Thursday Aug 15th that would be fabulous!  You can reach Scottie via email at lynn3831@comcast.net or by phone at 503-656-3117. To make things easy at the general meeting, you can complete your donation form in advance!

We are also looking for some club members that may want to be models for the show!  This is a fun way to strut your stuff and show off some amazing clothing from some local clothing stores.  If you are interested in being a model please contact Galina at 503-680-8036 or email at gkaesche@comcast.net.

The event will be held at the Lake Oswego Country Club on Thursday September 26th from 11:30am-2:00pm!  Tickets will be $35.00 when purchased in advance and $40 at the door.  Watch for the invites in the mail later this month and reserve your spot!  This is an event for your friends and neighbors as well so be sure to invite anyone you may think would want to attend since the more the merrier!

Thanks for your help and see you all soon!   

Rhonda Webber

LOWC Fashion Show/Luncheon Lead

Social Activities and Directory Information

Hi Ladies,

It's that time of the summer when we all need to start looking ahead to another year in our wonderful club.  In light of our last Friendraiser at Becky Nicoli's house (Thank you Becky!) this is a perfect time to go online and make sure your information and photo is up to date.  Remember when you are uploading your photo it needs to be a headshot... Think Yearbook not Facebook.  I want to be sure to include everyone, including our new members in the directory this year.  To log in to your account, visit our web page at www.lowomensclub.org. Use your email address as your log-in ID. If you have forgotten your password, just submit a lost password request and your password will be sent to you automatically.  Contact Lori Malone if you experience difficulties with your log-in.

NEW! Yellow Pages!

We are excited to include Yellow Pages in the back of the directory this year so if you have a business be sure to add your business info to your online including the type of business you have.

I will be in touch with some of you on the board soon regarding requests for info/dates for the front pages of the directory.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer enjoying our beautiful Oregon weather.

Thank you for updating your info and take care,

Jeri Parrott
Directory Chair
Social Chair

Friend-raiser and Sustainer Fiesta

Our 2nd Friendraiser is set.  It will be a Sunday brunch, held on August  25th, from 10:30am – 1:00pm.  A big thank you to Denise Smith for opening up her lovely home to host this event. If you would like to attend and did not receive an evite, please email me at membership@lowomensclub.org.  Also, if you know of someone who might be interested in our group and would like to attend, you may email their contact information to me.

Sustainers, mark your calendars!  The “Fiesta Dinner” will be on September 21st.  Kathleen Ellman will host this event at her beautiful home on the lake  Start digging in your closets for a pair of huarache, a serape/poncho, a rebozo/shawl or a colorful Mexican blouse. There will be a best dressed costume prize, and you won't want to be the only one missing out on the fun. It will be a catered event with a reasonable fee charged to attendees.  There will be sangria and margaritas for everyone! An evite will be coming with all the details.

DeLoris Scherschligt
Membership Chair 

Technology Report - How far we've come!

What new with Lake Oswego Women's Club use of technology?  Well, that depends on how you define "new."  When I joined LOWC in 2006, I was the first newsletter editor to send our newsletter using email. Prior to that, we printed and mailed hard-copies of our newsletter to members via USPS. In 2007, we revamped our website and started using a service provided by ClubRunner. ClubRunner was targeted to Rotary organizations, so it worked for us, but it wasn't always a great fit. Although ClubRunner wasn't perfect, if offered us a major step forward.

With ClubRunner were able to update our web pages without extensive knowledge of HTML or web-design programs. In addition, we could provide our members with an up-to-date online calendar, online member directory, event registration, and the ability to easily email specific LOWC member groups (like sustainers, provisionals, or board members). We used ClubRunner until the summer of 2012.

In August 2012, ClubRunner increased their pricing to an amount that it made sense to look for other options. I spent some time evaluating other services in 2011. At that time, one service - Wild Apricot - stood out from the rest. It was feature rich and reasonably priced.  Pricing is a huge issue when evaluating these services. We need an online member database, calendar options, event registration, member self-service, email distribution, and the ability to easily create custom web pages. Many service providers are "out there" but features vary by provider and some services charge in the range of $6,000 to $10,000 annually. Wild Apricot offered the features we needed at a price we could afford. Our new Wild Apricot website was unveiled in September of 2012 and we're still exploring new features - like online member renewal!

We hope you will help us embrace our steps forward. We understand there is a learning curve with anything new, but these enhanced features save committee chairs an enormous amount of time. Please renew your membership online, even if you don't plan to pay with PayPal, we need you to click through the online links to renew. Renewing online will help our membership director and our directory chair with their tasks. While you're logged-in, have a look around! Update your profile (we've added new phone number fields) and search for your friends in our member database or share a recipe on our member forum!

Visit our website (AKA Wild Apricot) at www.lowomensclub.org.

Lori Malone
Communications/Technology Chair

Farmers Market

Thanks to the help of Johanna, Lori, and Robin, a booth was set up at the Farmer's Market.  Lots of women came by to learn basics of our club, and all were invited to our next friendraiser.

Book Club!

For several years the LOWC has had an active (and fun!) book club.  Unfortunately, many were finding it difficult to read a book every month on top of our already busy lives, so we have decided to make a combined book club / dinner and a movie group.  We already have many women involved but would love to have even more!  We will be having an organizational meeting at Sharon Mirarchi's home (4300 Upper Drive, L.O.) on August 26th at 7:00 PM.  Munchies and beverages will be provided.  Come with ideas of books to read, movies to watch, and your calendars.  If you're interested in joining the group but can't make the meeting, please contact Sharon at smirarchi@yahoo.com to be put on the e-mail distribution list.

Sharon Mirarchi
Book Club Coordinator

Children's Center
Second Annual Healing Garden Gala

LOWC members are invited to attend the Second Annual Healing Garden Gala.

Click the invitation to visit the Children's Center website.

Thursday, September 19, 2013
Reception 6:00pm | Program 7:30pm
Children’s Center, 1713 Penn Lane, Oregon City
Tickets: $100 ticket/$1,000 table

Please RSVP to Andrew Watanatraibhob at 503-655-7725 or by email at andrew@childrenscenter.cc.
Receipt of your RSVP and payment by September 5, 2013 assures your seat at this event!
No walk-ins please.

Volunteers Needed

If you would like to participate in this wonderful event as a volunteer instead of an attendee, Children's Center would love to hear from you. Please contact Lori Malone at admin@lowomensclub.org for details.