Episode 32: Plus One

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Buzz, a podcast by Boone Electra Cooperative. The Buzz is a monthly message to our community celebrating what it means to be a member owner of your local electric cooperative, Boone Electric Cooperative, your co op, our community. [00:00:27] Speaker B: Welcome back to the Buzz. I'm Zach Smith, communications specialist here at Boone Electric Co. And this month on the program, we are talking about Boone Electric Cooperative's new program, plus one. Joining us today are Boone Electric Cooperative's manager of communications and member services, Laura Baker, and our longtime Boone Electric community trustee, and now reader, Kim Sticknote. Laura. Kim, welcome to the program. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank [00:00:52] Speaker B: you. So if you've been a member of Boone Electric Cooperative for a while, you've probably noticed something different over the last few weeks. Certainly if you were at annual meeting, you got a piece of paper with some new information on it. And today we're going to discuss a little bit about what. What +1 exactly is. Folks who have been part of Boon Electric for a long time are probably familiar with our program, Operation Roundup. It's been part of the electric Cooperative DNA across the country for many, many decades in which people can round up their electric bill to the next nearest dollar amount. And that money goes towards different sorts of charitable organizations. Here at Boone Electric, that money has been part of funding the Boone Electric community trust since 1997, which we've recently learned. We crossed the $5 million mark, I believe. [00:01:36] Speaker A: Yes, we did. We did. That's pretty amazing. [00:01:39] Speaker B: And at Boone Electric, the community trust is made up of nine volunteers from the community. Kim, you spent. How long were you a member of the. Six [00:01:47] Speaker A: years. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Six years on the board of trustees, and then you now serve as a reader, [00:01:52] Speaker C: Correct. [00:01:52] Speaker B: For the trust. So the change from what we've traditionally always talked about is Operation Roundup to plus one. It's both an actual change in how you can donate to the program, but the philosophy, I guess, if that's a good word behind it, sort of stemmed from an event that we had earlier this year, right? [00:02:12] Speaker C: Yes. So we were introducing our plus ones and thought, what a fun way to rebrand operation roundup into plus one. How we can make a difference with just plus one. So plus one member adding just $1, adding just change, you know, so. And [00:02:33] Speaker D: then, of course, [00:02:33] Speaker C: the [00:02:33] Speaker D: play on words [00:02:34] Speaker C: with. With change. We want to impact change in our community with change from your bill. So you're still rounding up. You can still add a dollar, which again, is the plus one play on words. But you're also impacting our community in such big ways with such small change. So helping bring a child out of human trafficking, you're helping provide foster care for a child, you're helping provide meals to people in the community that can't afford a meal or maybe are just down on their luck. You know, there's so many organizations that help the community and just plus one can impact an entire community. [00:03:16] Speaker B: If I remember correctly, part of the inspiration for it was, you know, we typically invite someone to speak, someone from one of the groups that was awarded a grant in the previous year to speak. And we had representative from Voluntary Action center and representative from I'm going to [00:03:32] Speaker C: Stop Human Trafficking. [00:03:33] Speaker B: Yes, the Missouri Coalition for Stop Human Trafficking speak. And they both really brought their A game. I mean, they didn't just come up and kind of say, oh yeah, thank you, it makes a big difference. They had a presentation and showed us what the difference was. And you could just kind of feel it in the room. It was a really sobering moment. And they really brought home the difference that those decisions that you all make around the table can be. And putting faces with names on an application of and seeing what the dollars were actually doing when they went back into the community. And I'm sure that you have many stories like that from your time. [00:04:09] Speaker D: Yeah, I think one of the things that I've always taken away from being on the trust board is that we might okay an application fund an application for a young child. The shoes one is the one that comes to mind where they buy shoes and take them to the different schools and then you benefit all the way up to the senior center. And the senior center needs something and we're helping to bridge a gap that they don't have funding for. And so you've got both ends of that age demographic. And then you also have people that are. We've funded some things related to sports where we've had organizations that needed. They were trying to develop their community fields and different things like that. And then you have that. And then you go on the other end to the theater or performance. And we've got organizations who are renting that kind of equipment out to the community and they need at a very low rate. And so they needed to be able to have that equipment for these people that are trying to make a change, do something different, but they can't afford the big heavy duty equipment, you know, that they're using. And so now you've got that juxtaposition in what we're doing. So when I look at this, it's like a star. You know, you've got this side and this side and you got that side and that side and in the middle is the trust. And we've just, we're reaching out in all directions to try to meet everybody that comes to us. No matter where you're at. Yeah. The stories are endless, the specific stories. But you know when you're, when you're living the dream, you're sitting in the meetings, it is just that idea that we can be talking about human trafficking in one breath and then you're talking about you know, putting shoes on kids feet or you're funding meals for this organization or you know it is just amazing. [00:06:15] Speaker B: You run through a full spectrum of emotions in one trust meeting. It's easy to see. Could you tell us a little bit about that role? [00:06:22] Speaker D: As a member of the Trust itself? We receive applications from the community to benefit different organizations within the Boone Cooperative area that they serve. And we evaluate those applications and try to decide if those organizations deserve to have the Cooperative members money. And so we take that very seriously when we read those applications because we do believe that we are stewards of your money and that we want to use that money to help the most people. And we also want to make sure that the programs that we are doing are not being duplicated in other places. We really try to make sure that services are not being duplicated all over the place. We just, just don't like that kind of thing. So we read the applications and the group of us makes the decision on what we think should be allocated. And we are limited by the funds that we take in. We can't say yes to everything. Sometimes that puts us in really bad positions as far as like how we feel like the people that serve on this, that do this, believe in what we do, like they, they read those applications carefully. They ask lots of questions. Questions. We don't just do it in a cavalier manner. I mean there's a reason why and we always have justification that we all agree on. Like it's a very enlightening thing to do. We want something new and innovative or we want something that the community can use at large, you know, or that is going to benefit the organization for a long term. It gets really rough sometimes because I know what they. Sometimes what they need is just money sometimes that they could do whatever they want with. They're going to have to find that somewhere else. That's just not our role. That's, that's not what we feel like are the members of this cooperative would appreciate, you know, that we feel like that they want us to Be able to say exactly what this money went for. When you've got several million dollars to allocate over the course of the time that we've been involved in this. You want to be careful with that. You know, as my role as a reader, that's a little different. I work for one of the people that is on the board and I get the application and I just give a gut assessment based on the application. Now I have an advantage that I was a board member. So one of the things that I do as a reader is I read those and then I ask questions that I think that the board would ask. What can they do with a partial? What would they prioritize? Because I think I would prioritize these things. And so those are like the difference in the role. I don't have to go to the meeting. I don't have to make the final decision. I don't actually usually know whether we funded something or not. And that's okay too. Like, I like that. I like being able to give my opinion and walking away. So I also, as part of my responsibility, set on the group that does the scholarships and that's also funded by this trust. And that's a thing we get these scholarships in and they require all of us to read them and rank them and pick one. And we do that by schools within the Boone Electric Cooperative area. So each school gets their own scholarship. So, so kids from a larger school like Columbia, Hickman or Rockbridge are not competing against a smaller school like an Ashland or a Hallsville. They are separate. And then we also have a separate group of homeschool or at large. And these can be people that have received a scholarship before and they are in college and they can apply again in that at large group. Or the homeschool population is separate because they don't. A lot of times they don't have an entity that they're working through. We keep Father Tolten separate for the same reason that we keep the other school separate. So it's public and private. And we do this and that's a huge undertaking on all parts, the administrative part. And then those of us that read, keeping all that stuff coordinated and stuff is a huge, huge deal. But that's something that the trust has been doing for a long time. I don't know what the length of time, but it's been in business for a long time. [00:11:06] Speaker C: To add on to that these scholarships, there are 10 local high schools that we give scholarships to that specific school and the list is on our website if you want to apply for that. We'll have that open here now. It's open [00:11:21] Speaker B: now. As of this recording. We just finalized the changes to this year's application process. So those are open now and running into the end of the year, January next year, I think. [00:11:32] Speaker C: Yes, January is the deadline for those scholarships and there's an essay, but all that information will be on the website. And we love for our schools to apply. Part of our, our communications team, we go to local high schools and promote this scholarship during our nights at the bowl game and nights at the theater here in Columbia. So we like to do that to introduce our students to what we have to offer and make sure that they apply. And. And the scholarship committee does a great job of vetting all of those scholarships. We've had 80 scholarships at one time and so they're going through all of these. The private personal information is redacted, so you don't have to worry about that. A non biased way to try to pick the best student who deserves this scholarship. [00:12:19] Speaker D: It's why, you know, you need people to volunteer to read applications, read scholarships, and you need people that are willing to make the final decisions. So you know, there's multiple roles, depending on what you feel like as a volunteer that you can do, but really kind of opens your eyes to the opportunities that Boone Electric offers the community, their involvement in the community, things that they do it. They're much more than just an electric company. They've embedded themselves in the community and what they can give back. [00:13:00] Speaker B: And I'll also say that a lot of the folks who you've served with on the Trust and as readers, you all have experience with some of these local nonprofits or prior experience with them. So you kind of, when you come to the table, you have a very informed opinion of what's going on and the kinds of challenges that they're facing or the sort of projects that they're trying to fund. And so all that experience and knowledge goes into that decision making process too. [00:13:26] Speaker C: Yeah, the trustees are just some logistical information. They are a board of nine. They're all volunteers and they are from the community. They meet every other month to discuss these applications. The application process is on our website as well. If there are any groups who want to apply, six of them are from our service territory districts and then three are at large and then each person. So we have eight committees that these trustees represent. And I couldn't tell you all of the committees right now. [00:14:02] Speaker D: I know what I'm on, but that's it. [00:14:06] Speaker C: So. But yeah, education, rural Development, youth development, that kind of thing. And so they're divided up, and each trustee has their own committee and then which is made up of readers. And so we like to have two to three readers on each committee so that they're all looking at these applications. And then the trustee will go to the organization if they have any additional questions that they want answered. That's an important part of how the trust works. And again, they're all volunteer. All of the funds that come into the trust are given out to the community. None of the administrative fees are covered by the trust. It's covered by Boone Electric, so it's completely volunteer. And then again, all of the funds that are coming, coming in for the trust go out to the community. [00:14:51] Speaker B: It's a lot of people at the table and people behind the scenes. But to your point earlier, Kim, that's because you all aren't just, you know, meeting every two months and just kind of spinning an arrow on a board at what you're going to give money to. You want all of those readers and trustees thinking about these things and asking questions and digging into the application and trying to make sure that you're being good stewards of that pot of money. So for a member who's interested in contributing to plus one, Laura, can you explain a little bit about how that works mechanically? [00:15:22] Speaker C: We really just changed the name. The mechanics of everything are the same, but want to really impact how the butterfly effect is working from small change from a member. So you have one member who adds a few cents to their bill every month to go to the trust. And then you add 5,000 members on top of that. That really can impact a lot of change in the community. [00:15:52] Speaker D: And so you can [00:15:53] Speaker C: round up your [00:15:54] Speaker D: bill through [00:15:54] Speaker C: +1. You can add additional dollars on, which [00:15:58] Speaker D: is, [00:15:59] Speaker C: you know, plus one [00:16:00] Speaker D: plus [00:16:00] Speaker C: $1, [00:16:01] Speaker D: plus more [00:16:01] Speaker C: than [00:16:01] Speaker D: $1. [00:16:02] Speaker C: You can do any of [00:16:03] Speaker D: that. And [00:16:04] Speaker C: then [00:16:04] Speaker D: our trust, all of [00:16:06] Speaker C: that [00:16:06] Speaker D: goes [00:16:07] Speaker C: directly to the trust. And again, [00:16:08] Speaker D: there's no administrative fees coming out [00:16:10] Speaker C: of that money. [00:16:10] Speaker D: There's nothing. It's going straight to the trust that they can divide [00:16:14] Speaker C: up among these [00:16:16] Speaker D: nonprofits [00:16:17] Speaker C: that are [00:16:17] Speaker D: in [00:16:17] Speaker C: our community. The trust [00:16:19] Speaker D: is also funded by unclaimed capital credit. So we try to reach out to our members, and if we can't get a hold of them after a certain amount of time, then their funds that are retired from the capital credits go to the trust as well. So again, we're putting that back into the community and instead of back into Boone Electric to operate, so those funds are going back into the community for nonprofit groups. And [00:16:46] Speaker C: 100% of that money that goes into the trust goes back out into the community. [00:16:50] Speaker B: So since we started that program roughly a month and a half ago from the time that this comes out, what's the response been like to that? [00:16:57] Speaker C: It's been great. We've had a lot of people, we have a competition going on in the front office. So they're competing against each other to try to get members to participate and to round up and no, [00:17:10] Speaker B: don't worry, [00:17:10] Speaker C: to participate into plus one, it's hard to change. [00:17:14] Speaker B: Yeah, no, [00:17:16] Speaker C: it's been round up for years. So. Okay. So yes, so they're having a friendly competition in the front office to get our members aware and participate in the plus one program. [00:17:27] Speaker B: Because it is a voluntary opt in thing, you're not being automatically signed up for it. If you're starting a restarting service with us or something. That is correct. That's kind of the. Just like the trust and the readers. It's the volunteer nature of the thing. [00:17:40] Speaker C: Yes. [00:17:41] Speaker B: So if that sounds like something that you're interested in, if you're a member of Boone Electric Cooperative and doing some good for the community, or more good, if you're already contributing through Operation Roundup and you want to step it up through plus one in some way, how can folks go about doing that? [00:17:57] Speaker C: We make it as easy as possible for our members to participate. So you could go through the Smart Hub app, you can call us, you can do it online, you can send us an email, whatever you prefer. Just let us know that you want to participate and we're happy to do that for you. At the end of the year on your bill, we'll send a summary of how much you have donated to the trust in the year. So you're welcome to put that in your accounting packet to turn in for your taxes. But yes, so we try to make it as easy as possible and we're happy to have you participate [00:18:34] Speaker B: for the members taxes, not Boone Electric's taxes. [00:18:36] Speaker D: Correct. We're not taking a write off. [00:18:39] Speaker B: So Kim, as a reader, I wanted to hear a little bit more about that experience because we do have a position that's going to be open and always looking for new blood to help fill the ranks and do the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. Can you tell us a little bit about that process, what you enjoy about it from the standpoint of kind of digging into those applications and helping the folks who sit around the table where you've sat many times come to those informed decisions about what to do with this money. [00:19:10] Speaker D: So the process itself is not very, it's not very difficult. You receive the application from the trustee person that's, you know, that's our administrator as part of Boone Electric, and we receive that application. You read your one or two. I mean, you could have more than one. It's been about one per time. So you just read it, you read what's important to you. Like, I know that some of the readers, because I've worked with these readers for a long time that are sitting with me and they all pay attention to something different in the application. And I think that's why you want multiple readers on an application. Because not everybody focuses on the money part. Not everybody focuses on, you know, the, the minutiae of following all the rules part. Like they just read it holistically and we have others that are just like really good with the numbers and their, their conversation back to our person that's on the board is going to be more about those numbers or the, you know, like we think that this is too expensive or you know, we're not sure that they're going to use the money the way that, you know, it could just run the gamut. And so you don't have to, that you have to know everything about whatever this application is on because you're going to get applications where you know zero about what they're dealing with and that's not your job is to know about that. So like we've worked with organizations that run end of life programs. I don't know anything other than my own personal experience dealing with hospice and in my parents home. I don't know anything about that. I don't know what that looks like on an institutional level. I didn't have to. That was not my job. My job was to read that application, make a decision, and then pass that on to the person that's going to make the final decision. So you're looking at 5, 10, 20, if you're a slow reader, maybe 30 minutes every time period dealing with your applications. The only exception is the scholarship and that is a time commitment. But as a reader, you would never be put in the scholarship pool as a reader unless you agreed to the time that it was going to take. Because we understand that limitation. [00:21:43] Speaker B: Well, I will say I don't think I've ever been present at a meeting where anybody who's sitting around that table didn't ask enough questions. I mean, you guys really drilled down on those. And I think that speaks to the caliber of both the people that you are and the experiences that you have. But also as you mentioned earlier and we've talked about a couple times since, the stewardship aspect of what you're there to do. And I think you all do a very good job of taking that seriously and being thorough and consistent every meeting with how you approach all these very different applications for again, as you mentioned, very different needs. Needs. [00:22:22] Speaker D: Yeah, I would agree. I, I think that that's. That is true. They're very consistent. You know, once they make a decision that we're not going to fund this kind of thing, then we don't ever fund that kind of thing. Like it's. Yeah, and it's nice because we leave the board in staggered. Like it's not. We don't turn over a whole board at the same time. So you always have that history that's being preserved. Because if, if it was done the other way where you had a new group, you'd reinvent the wheel every three years. You know, so this is nice that it goes off in a staggered way. You know, I mean, I think that you look at the population of people that could do the readership would be people that have. Maybe you were on PTA when your kids were in school. Maybe you are a member of the local Lions Club and you're either no longer doing that or you know, like you want something additional. Maybe you were on the booster club. Those kinds of people kind of have a heart to service. That's a great fit for this because it's a very limited role. If you're in those other organizations, you're used to being busy all the time doing stuff for those organizations. This is not like that. It is a 10, 20, 30 minute immersion and then you're done and you don't have to think about it again. That piece of. This is very nice. And if you're wanting to branch out into something new, then this would be a good way to. This is a good place to start. [00:23:57] Speaker C: And with the meeting every other month, that helps as well. So it's not like it's a monthly. You're doing this, you know, every week of. Every month. You'll. You'll have about three weeks to review and get back to your trustee. So there's some time in there too that it's not. That is so pressing that you have to [00:24:16] Speaker D: get it done. I don't get it on a Monday and have to turn it in Monday night. The trustee should set the tone for that. Like what they need, you know, I know for me, if we would get them about two or three weeks in advance. And as long as I had it by the first part of the month before we met, that's about when I was going to start making my phone calls and start trying to reach out to the I was going to give my readers time. Yay or nay? Gut check, what do you think? And then I'm going to reach out to my applicant and I'm going to ask them, what else would you have liked to put in your application? What did you wish you would have said? And then address any of the concerns that I have and try to kind of give them a lay of the land of what it looks like after we say yes or no. [00:25:02] Speaker B: Anybody who has been part of any of those groups that you mentioned earlier, I mean, almost everybody has even just kind of brushed up against the kind of background or the kind of knowledge or the kind of volunteer efforts that are really helpful when approaching this as either a reader or as a trustee. And so if you have any interest in potentially serving as a reader or being nominated to be a trustee, please reach out to Boone Electric Cooperative. You can look all the information up on our website boonelectric Co Op. You can also, if you're interested in participating in rounding up your bill through the plus one program and assisting the trust efforts that way, you can also contact us here at the Cooperative Boone Electric Co Op or call us here directly at 573-449-4181. Or if you're old school, walk right into the lobby 8 o' clock to 4:30pm Monday through Friday. Laura Kim, thank you very much for joining us today. Really appreciate you lending your perspective and telling us more about the program. [00:26:06] Speaker C: Thanks Zach Thanks. [00:26:07] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us on this month's show. Be sure to come back next month and until then, we'll see you somewhere down the line. [00:26:16] Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to the Buzz, a podcast by Boone Electric Cooperative. To subscribe or for more information, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram X and LinkedIn. And of course you can always visit us 247 at Boonelectric Co op Boone Electric Cooperative, your co op, our community.