Dear Members,

Happy end of 2019! What a year? It’s more of rhetorical question, but seriously what a year! We have had our milestones and challenges this year and I am grateful to the support of those that believed in this board to render what needed to be fixed. We cannot continue this journey without your donation and/or renewed dues. In addition, there are many ways for you to support the center at the year end. Generations Fund/Capital Campaign, raffle tickets for the library, scholarship donation, year end giving, and/or attend events.

Remember ATTEND- DONATE-RENEW- VOLUNTEER and 2020 will be an amazing year!

We had goals at the beginning of the year that were presented and discussed at the January 10th meeting. One of the biggest discussions was increasing our venue rentals.

  • Fundraise for this transitional year and create a next phase plan.
  • Determine the value of membership and promote and recruit members
  • Establish Irish cultural programming- create a collaborative plan with Irish clubs and Irish businesses
  • Promote cultural space supporting the cultural programming
  • Create cultural member events
  • Non profit outreach- promoting Irish culture and community and increase cross cultural partnerships
  • Create a team to help rethink- revitalize and redesign the space to support members and cultural programming- like extending the library, genealogy, San Francisco Irish history center

For the last 11 months, we have touched each one of these goals in some capacity. In some areas, we are not where we would like to be but in other areas we are more advanced. And as we move into 2020, 45 years on 45th Ave., we will continue to explore and evaluate. The above goals fall into one of our 5 strategic priorities that we will use to move the center to be the best event venue on the west side of the City.

  • PRIORITY #1 ~ Increase revenue and decrease expenses.
  • PRIORITY #2 ~ Create membership benefits, increase dues paying members & increase number of new members
  • PRIORITY #3 ~ Promote Irish cultural programs and expand cross cultural programming
  • PRIORITY #4 ~ Create and execute fundraising plan for a state of the art Irish Center
  • PRIORITY #5 ~ Be the best event venue on the west side of the City

To end this whirlwind year we have several events that we hope you will attend.

NO members meeting for December. We will be having a meeting with clubs and organizations on December 18th from 6pm- 7pm to discuss 2020. Following the meeting we will have the library raffle pull.

Here’s to a Happy New Year – 2020 – 45 years on 45th Ave. I am so excited about our next phase of this journey- hope to see you at the celebration honoring our jubilee of 45 years on APRIL 25th, 2020. Details to follow.

“Here’s to eyes in your heads and none in your spuds. May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far.”

Sláinte
Anne Cassidy Carew, President of the UICC