I scheduled Karen (managing director) and Carly (development) to come over and work this morning from 9-12 on SLF stuff, and I admit, when I woke up at 8, I had a long, groaning moment of ‘aren’t I supposed to be on vacation still? Why did I make more (volunteer) work for myself?’
But I made myself get up and eat and caffeinate, and after three solid hours of work, I’m very glad I did this. I’ve now:
• requested that two $1000 checks go out to grant recipients (María Isabel Álvarez and Del Sandeen) from our bookkeeper (yay, and thanks for your patience with our little org!)
• gotten Carly the legal and financial info she needs to apply for our first state grant (first grant we’ve ever applied for, actually)
• have worked on revamping the grants schedule to make more sense (we’ll be on a quarterly schedule going forward)
• changed the Older Writers’ Grant to a single $1000 grant; my goal is to get all our grants to a minimum of $1000 this year
• started a schedule for actually publicizing the opening of our grant application periods, and reminders at the midpoint and just before closing
• chosen a winner for the 2020 SLF art contest (announcing very shortly!)
• checked in with the Chicago chapter heads; they’ll be having a planning meeting next week, and I’ve asked them to send me the minutes, so we can post those and give others a sense of what would go into opening a SLF chapter in their towns; we’re also starting to talk about the first open Chicago chapter meeting, woot!
• and I’m about to e-mail the bookstore back about the Deep Dish reading series in 2020 — we’re planning on 4 Thursday evenings per usual and adding 2 Saturdays this year
Good work for 3 hours. 
I’m trying to be more regular and organized about SLF work this year, and I think having regular meetings with my part-time staff will help a lot.
Once the semester starts, we’ll be doing that Mon / Wed afternoons, after I get back from teaching — it’ll mean those are long, tiring days (maybe I can get Kev and the kids to commit to handling dinner on those days), but should also mean I can keep Tues / Thurs clear for writing, and can do so with a clean conscience, knowing I’ve done my duty by the SLF.
(Sripati helps!)
