Author: Emrys Staton

SAWUURA Board Meeting Minutes for May 7 2026

• Meeting date, time & location:   May 7, 2026,  6 PM Arizona Time, on Zoom
• Board attendees: Emrys Staton (Pres), Curtiss Seale (Treas), Hanna Coy (VP), Scott Henderson (Sectry)
• Not in attendance: Eb, Efia Mallas, & Jim Sorgatz, Bob Davis
• Approve Meeting Minutes from last month: not done 
• Check-in 

Reports & discussion: 

Facilities 

• Report from work weekend/Memorial Day Preparations
  • Hanna, Emrys and Fernando did some work the kitchen area.
  • Eb and Hanna cleaned up around creekside cabin
  • Finished door for lower composting toilet. 
• Battery for solar system
  • Emrys will look for a good deal to replace 12v deep cycle battery
• Propane Refrigerator        
  • Eb has a full side refrigerator that can be donated – no discussion
• Eb going back up first weekend in May  
  • Will patch and turn on water system.
    Some Discussion about how to deal with winterizing the water line. 

Finance

• Insurance renewal – (Liability ins) – Emrys has reviewed it and all seems fine. Curtiss will follow up and renew policy. 
• UU Common Endowment Fund report back 
  • Decided to put $22K of savings into the UU Common Endowment fund. Everyone agreed this is the best option for the bulk of SAWUURA’s financial assets. We will take 5% distribution annually, which should cover insurance. 

Membership

• Need to send out emails to get people to pay their annual membership after confirming PayPal is properly set up on the web site.
• Scott would like to eventually pass off the Secretary job to another member. 

Memorial Weekend 

• Final promotions needed to boost registrations, several families from Phoenix and Tucson confirmed. 
• Registrations coming in via online form
• Expected weather should be pleasant, dry
• No fire restrictions announced yet – but restrictions are likely due to dry and warm spring

Other business

• Curtiss having trouble connecting to Google Drive SAWUURA site. Scott to work with Curtiss to figure this out 

SAWUURA Board Meeting Minutes Feb 12 2026

• Meeting date, time & location:   Feb 12, 2026,  6 PM Arizona Time, on Zoom
• Board attendees: Emrys Staton (Pres), Curtiss Seale (Treas), Hanna Coy (VP), Scott Henderson (Sectry), Efia Mallas, Jim Sorgatz
• Late or Absent board members:  Bob Davis
• Approve Meeting Minutes from last month: not done 
• Check-in 

Agenda items:

• Treasurer Report
  • There is $638 in checking 
  • There is $25,951.77 in savings
  • …still searching for a new investment/brokerage/bank to handle SAWUURA money – Scott and Emrys said we might get together and discuss this
  • SAWUURA has over $700 in Eb’s Paypal account. We need to establish a biz/organization account instead of using Eb’s
• Promotions/Fundraising:
  • Status of and discussion/ideas about Promotions, e.g. sending out packets, emails, preparing sermons, plant sales, slides for projectors, and photos that congregations can use to promote Memorial and Labor Day group camps. 
  • Also Hanna is looking into submitting a proposal to Harvard divinity school’s call for papers. 
  • Hanna also to look into cost of advertising with Athiopagan group, which has a lot of UUs.
• Membership report:
  • Have not located a good membership CRM/database for SAWUURA yet.  Still investigating. We can continue using Scott’s existing Google account for now.  
  • Contact Scott if there are questions or comments about this.
• Camp “Work weekend” items that remain immediately below. We need to keep this list and at some point work on these items:
  • Remove stone cabin roof 
  • maintenance on both gates 
  • Gather firewood
  • paint toilet interiors
  • secure historic well 
  • a lot of lumber around the boneyard needs to be moved to stone cabin 
  • cattle guard work 
  • lock on the historic well 
  • need paint for interior for composting toilets 
  • Remove old barbwire
• Visioning: Emrys asks us to think about visioning and what things we could do – including:
  • searching for things other outdoor groups have done (search online)
  • Outdoor education stuff, e.g. “how to be outdoors” for kids and others who have not had much (or any) exposure to outdoors and camping
  • Organizational/membership structures – how do we want SAWUURA to operate, incl fundraising & what can we learn from others 
  • Think about how could we see ourselves in the future for SAWUURA  
  • Our next meeting will not be a Board mtg but open to all membership to discuss SAWUURA’s vision 

Next meeting will not be a Board meeting but a Membership Visioning meeting:       to be held  March 19, 2026 @6pm AZ time, on Zoom

Our 2025 Annual Membership Meeting was held on Zoom on July 7, 2025.

Attendance: Emrys Staton (Pres), Hanna Coy (VP), Curtiss Seale (Treas),  Scott Henderson (Sectry), Efia Mallas (board member), Bob Davis (board member), Eb Eberlein, Jim Sorgatz (board member?), Terry Robinson, Barbara Robinson

President & Treasurer report (PDF)

Other updates from the meeting include:
– Membership committee has worked on better tracking of SAWUURA member information using a Google Drive account. All membership forms and camp registration is now using Google Forms. We want to look into other affordable options for member database and accepting payments.

– Facility maintenance reports that the well and pump need servicing, which will be hopefully be scheduled before Labor Day campout. Eb states he is ready to step down from the duties of all camp maintenance, including fence and water line maintenance.

– Bylawas: Board president suggests we update bylaws to reduce the required number of board members from 9 to 5, and to change the requirement that annual meeting notices must go out via postal mail to instead use digital communication. The bylaw changes will be drafted and presented at a future special member meeting for ratification.

– Discussion about no longer using a liability waiver (after input from a lawyer and the director of DeBenneville) but instead just provide all campers with comprehensive safety information – to be determined at a future meeting.

– No changes made to board members or positions

– Conversation dedicated to ideas and brainstorming about promotion and projects for camp.