From: Birgitte Tessier, Consulting President, The Piedmont Lace Guild of Virginia
Re: Meeting rooms in response to Lyn Bailey When reading your message, Lyn, I realized how lucky The Piedmont Lace Guild of Virginia is! We meet at my church in Remington, Virginia. Because I'm a member of the church, we don't have to pay a fee. Use of the fellowship hall or Sunday School rooms is free of charge. My church is a United Methodist Church, whose motto is "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors." My church tries very hard to provide meeting space to various organizations in the community. Fees for non-members are kept within a reasonable range as most small organizations don't have a lot of money. Our guild does send a check to the church every Christmas as a small thank you and we also participate in putting together "Kits for Conference." These kits go to the United Methodist Corps on Relief (UMCOR) which stores everything from flood buckets to health kits and sewing kits for use in emergencies both in the US and around the world. This past year our guild donated a dozen sewing kits and helped assemble health kits. Anytime we have a special event, church members are invited, and we always invite everyone to come join us for refreshments at our Christmas gathering and see our lace display. If you were put off by your own church, perhaps someone else in your group is a member of a church that will look more kindly on your meeting at their facility. A slightly different approach would be to offer that in return for free meeting space, lace group members will participate in one of the church's missions or service projects. One of our local library branches has a meeting room, and there are a few meeting rooms available here and there, but the fees are generally quite high. Unless a group is registered as a 501c3 charitable/educational organization, the group is charged the commercial rate, which can run anywhere from $150-$300/day, so we count our blessings that we are able to meet at my church. Wishing everyone all good things in the New Year! Happy Lacing! Birgitte - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003/albums/most-recent
