The projected 2008 budget, included in the Success Plan portion of these notes, was reviewed. A key to our success is maintaining and expanding the full time resources, 108 volunteers, and student member population. An equally key focus is fundraising. We will test including the newsletter with a donation envelop in the Davis Enterprise as one fundraising effort. We will also submit grant proposals and reach out to members for reoccurring monthly financial support.

The Peace Education Center will be funded with 2.5% of donations once $100,000 or more is raised. In addition, 2.5% of donations over $100,000 is allocated for future use. Teach Peace will build both a headquarters location within the Peace Education Center and a Foundation at a speed determined by donations.

We will continue to produce the html version of the newsletter each month. To manage funding and resource constraints, the print version of the newsletter may only be produced three times in 2008. Specifically, we will definitely print a December, March and a September newsletter.

All board members voted and approved the 2008 Success Plan. All members were asked if they wanted to volunteer for a staff position on the Teach Peace team. Since Mary Wind stepped forward to serve as President, it was a unanimous vote by both members and the board to select Mary Wind as President. Dave Dionisi also received unanimous support to continue as the National Awareness Officer. New board members Dr. Linda Copeland, Mary Anne Kirsch, and Don Forrester were also unanimously approved.

While paying a living wage for full time positions is part of our goal to create a model where teaching peace can be a full time career for people in all 50 states, we recognize this process takes time to develop. We should always note and appreciate that donations of services are equally valuable as donation of cash as the purpose of cash donations is to purchase services that enable us to teach peace.

In 2008, Teach Peace needs a full time executive director, webmaster/technology leader, peace education program director, and fundraising director. In addition, we need a part time graphic design specialist, marketing officer, financial officer, customer service specialist, and operations manager. Like all startup organizations, multiple hats are often worn. In the absence of paid staff or volunteers to fulfill these positions that usually require working Monday to Friday, Dave Dionisi will continue to wear the latter multiple hats. Mary, in her full time role, will increasingly take on operations, program management, and program delivery responsibilities. This primarily creates a window for Dave to focus on fundraising. Nancy Patterson, as in 2006 and 2007, continues as a part-time volunteer leading both public relations and media promotion.

Mary's decision to work full time without pay for more than one year, is a huge fund raising boost for Teach Peace (just consider the cost over a few years of paying salary, medical, and retirement benefits for a year or two alone). Literally Mary's decision is better than Teach Peace receiving a grant of $100,000. To put Mary's extremely generous donation of her full time services in perspective, in 2006 and 2007 Mary volunteered on average 20 hours a week! In addition, she and her husband Mike helped make Teach Peace possible with their cash contributions. This information is not provide to publicly thank Mary and Mike, although this is much deserved, but because our experience tells that unfortunately Mary will likely be criticized at some point for only wanting to help Teach Peace "for the money." By making her incredible donation known, board members are in a better position to shine the sunlight of reality.

On a related note, two board members shared the feedback that at least a few people have commented that they thought Dave was promoting Teach Peace because he wanted to sell his books. Dave replied that since the first book was published, every penny from the book has been donated to peace organizations. He noted that this is explained in American Hiroshima and there is also a written contract with the Internal Revenue Service as part of Teach Peace's 501(c)(3) application promising that all book profits be donated to Teach Peace. While Dave answered the question that he has not profited financially, anyone who wishes can access Teach Peace's Form 990 tax return on www.teachpeace.com and discover that Dave is the organization's #1 cash donor. To wrap this up, it should be noted that making a living income for one of our associates working full time is something we should be proud of and not have to defend as something inappropriate. Our Success Plan will only be successful if full time people are paid a living wage as it is unrealistic to rely on only people who are receiving a retirement income to teach peace.

Teach Peace is working to create a business model where people can be full time peacemakers but this does not happen overnight. We do this because we can better compete with full time war profiteers when we have people who are also able to focus their full time efforts. As a matter of fact, some of us are of the opinion that with the truth on our side one full time Teach Peace employee is worth more than a one hundred war profiteers.

The latter is a key objective of the campaign to establish a Department of Peace which seeks to be funded with just 1% of what the Department of Defense/War receives. While Teach Peace supports the creation of a Department of Peace, one thing that is unique about Teach Peace is we are developing and delivering an alternate and complimentary program for a more peaceful world that will never be under the authority of people like President Bush which as current times reveal would successfully pervert any subordinate branch of government, including a Department of Peace.

Returning to the original question which really can be summed up as preventing conflicts of interest, not only has there been no conflicts of interest, the true Teach Peace story is one of generosity and sacrifice.

A key value for Teach Peace is transparency. All members are encouraged to surface concerns so that they can be addressed. As board members we can demonstrate this value by never being asked to take feedback under the promise of not revealing the source. We have a fiduciary responsibility to the Teach Peace organization and as a result it is important that we always be in a position to bring issues to the board for discussion. Our transparency and open source methodology puts us in a unique place relative to most nonprofits and for profit businesses. We adhere to these values because it will help us be more effective and also demonstrate how transparency is an essential ingredient of all healthy organizations (especially America's democracy).

Perhaps our militaristic pro-weapon spending corporate media is why people are comfortable with people making millions and billions from war related businesses but are quick to criticize peacemakers even when they are donating their time and money. Maybe the people criticizing the peacemakers are not really people with good intentions or simply misguided. We know from history that FBI programs like COINTELPRO attempted to disrupt peace organizations by planting disinformation so we are all well served by transparency and staying on the peace frequency (communicating difficult information while retaining love in our hearts at all times).