MEET COSTS BY CUTTING THE NUMBER OF SCHOLARS

If you have to do a financial pass you'll be considering all costs, expected airfare costs, the contributions scholars can make or believe they can make, the chances they might be able to get additional funding from their institution, and the anticipated ground costs of their training program. There are 6 basic patterns here for how a scholar self-funding might work, based on the kinds of donor support or institutional support the scholar may have

1: Scholar can pay nothing

2: Scholar can pay their own airfare in full

3: Scholar can pay their own airfare and ground travel expenses in full

4: Scholar can pay everything

5: Scholar can pay PARTIAL airfare only

6: Scholar can pay PARTIAL airfare and PARTIAL ground expenses

7: Scholar can pay PARTIAL ground expenses only
You'll also know how much you have to cut from the program in order to meet your funding limit, and you'll have to also consider your equity balances as you look at candidates to cut from the program. Since there is always a chance that someone won't get their visa or won't be able to attend, you'll also use these scholars as your standby list.

Tasking Costing Team = Karen, John, Leslie
March 16

APPLICATION & REVIEW: Charles, Karen, ?? Esri-based meeting GLOBAL REVIEW DAY 8:

What you will have at the end of this difficult 3 days is a final list of selected scholars, a list of Standby Scholars, a list of meritorious scholars not in the program who you'll be organizing special resources and grants for, and a more specific estimate of the overall cost of the program.

• 
  FIRST notify the international committee
  

• 
  By this time, you must know EXACTLY what you will be doing:
  

• 
  training dates, locations, curriculum, trainers etc.;
  
• 
  schedule for additional & community events;
  
• 
  a 3-week deadline for finalists confirmations so you can reallocate awards to standby candidates if someone cancels;
  
• 
  Notify Standby scholars for each program as well so that they can begin to prepare in case someone cancels, make sure they are kept in the loop of all scholar communications for the next 3 weeks.
  

• 
  Notify the winners, and inform them of the deadline for them to confirm participation or not.
  

• 
  start sending out mass emails. Time them well. No more than 2 mass emails during a week. Think carefully about structuring all the information. Try to keep each email no more than a page long, make sure to give the scholars time to read, absorb and act on each email before sending the next one.
  You can send them at will, but don’t expect the scholars to absorb and meet your requests.
  

• 
  They now have roughly 11 weeks to obtain U.S. visas and book air tickets. We've had a 98% success lately with scholars getting visas but some countries are traditionally difficult to get visa approvals in such as Cameroon, Pakistan. Also we instruct scholars to get the "B1-B2" visas as they have fewer restrictions on what they can do and where they can go once they arrive.
  

• 
  1-2 days after the award letter: 1st mass email with program information and instructions for obtaining a U.S. visa.
  

Draft the scholarships notice containing the list of the finalists, countries, and organizations and do a quick internal review. Include status on the important developments in the program, important relationships, etc outlined in the original funding request to Jack. Distribute to David Gadsden, Jack, UC, Other Donors, SCGIS Board.

Teacher Candidates Finalized, Formal program offer sent out to candidates, Formal Contract Signed

Start working on EVERYTHING – The deadline for everything is NOW.

Organize homestays,

posters,

Schedule meals & catering if needed,

volunteers,

logistics,

Esri UC and SCGIS conference registrations,

Van Rentals, shuttles, carpools and airport pickups,

• 
  If you plan to use vans, book them as soon as you can.
  

• 
  
  
• 
  TRAVEL If you plan to buy air tickets for travel to San Diego, start weighing your purchase timing options. The cheapest reservations are non-transferrable but airlines like Southwest may only charge a nominal fee to transfer in case of a cancellation. Group rates on Southwest are available for groups of 29 or more and are so cheap that it may well be worth it to buy a group pass even if a few tickets are unused and unlike other discount tickets, group tickets ARE transferrable!
  

• 
  TRAVEL Some scholars will be in countries where currency or other restrictions prevent them from purchasing their own international tickets, so you’ll have to identify those scholars quickly and begin working on the ticket booking and payment needed for them to get their tickets. NEVER EVER send money overseas, by any means, no matter how reliable it’s claimed to be. We’ve had nothing but trouble and loss whenever any attempt to wire or send money to scholars internationally was ever attempted.
  
• 
  If you plan to use UC buses, coordinate with Events team.
  

You'll need to start paying for bookings, confirming reservations, buying tickets, so you need to formalize expenses predictions, tracking and over-under problems. The following set of spreadsheets helps keep track of budget and expenses for each of the major areas of expenditure and tracking.

If not too many other emails, consider sending out a preliminary personal introduction to the training program like this example document from John Schaeffer:

Start on the overall fundraiser t-shirt design, which will also be the conference and society logo for that year. Begins as a discussion of what part of the international program should be honored that year. Typically it's a recent chapter, or a chapter that had a significant event that year, but it can also cover the conference theme if there is a strong connection to some of the international work. Generally the role of the design team is to sketch out design concepts, NOT to try to do any finished designs, that's what the esri artists are best at, let them do it! What you look for instead is a design concept and you collect snippets of imagery, patterns, borders, colors, existing designs and paste-up what you want and provide some words about the emotions, visions, inspirations you are hoping for the image to create. The artists are very good about taking it from there.

- Research what laptop types may be available for esri donation, specifically screen size, CPU performance range, and ultra-portable versus big heavy desktop replacement. Do some comparative research on those choices, looking into reliability, passmark ratings, cost to upgrade etc.

- Short email query to Scholars to ask if any preference between big desktop replacement laptops, midrange, or ultra portable.

• 
  DOCUMENTARY
  
• 
  b0314MassMail_CallForScholarPhotos: Submit photos and give permission for Jack's slides and for Charles Scholar Profiles website
  

Prepare and Submit Scholar Laptop Donation Request to esri. Typically the midrange units are what is available in quantity, with very limited numbers of the others and getting approval for them depends upon the justification.

• 
  b0323MassMail_MedicalInsurance: Explain US medical insurance and ask them to opt in or out if they have better travel insurance from home
  

Scgis Main Abstracts are now delivered for formal session design, conference design and final acceptance-rejection

SCHOLAR ABSTRACTS from approved submissions in reply to last week's mass email b0318MassMail-2_PresentationsPosters should now be in hand and ready to incorporate into the master conference agenda design

Submit Scholar Abstracts to Esri UC Ngo Events Planning team to incorporate as they see fit

Deadline for Scholars to confirm participation, assign any cancelled slots to standby scholars

• 
  HOTELS: make SCGIS Conference - Asilomar reservations for the group. Include dietary restrictions. Coordinate with Conference Committee on deadlines etc. Normally triples & quads are booked. You will need to assign specific names to each room, but scholars can shift after they arrive if they want HOWEVER BE SURE to notify Asilomar of any scholars who change. They have a legal responsibility in case of disaster to be able to tell emergency responders who is where. Asilomar reservations are pre-paid non-refundable. Vivian Garcia on their staff is very helpful: Vivian Garcia@asilomar.com
  

Agenda is sent out for final review, quality control checking, and approval by conference committee and board.

: Create a short draft prospectus for a 90-minute thursday night mini-conference with each scholar speaking for 5 minutes about their life, their work, their storymap. Submit to the "Esri Forum" scheduling committee an request it for Thursday Evening July 6th

Begin assembling scholar profile materials as they come in from the b0318 mass emails, photos, posters, presentation abstracts, stories

• 
  WEBSITE: Begin work creating and posting the Scholar Profiles, in coordination with the conference committee and to help boost conference registration
  

Southwest requires special paperwork for doing group travel bookings

Finish up all last minute schedule changes, cancellations and additions in order to get ready to send to the printer next week.

Begin publishing the finished scholar profiles

Publish the finished Conference Session Design and Scholar Papers schedule for their reference.

MAY 15 4 WEEKS PRIOR

TRAIN-THE-TRAINER:

Send out TTT Candidate Preparatory homework and Assignments

• 
  PRODUCTS Request training manuals printing and delivery (no less than 2 weeks before the training). Esri’s “Production Center” is the group who does this, and they have a standard job request form:
  

John supplies the PDF files to be used, and you’ll need to give permission to esri to allow them to legally reproduce these materials.

Request Agenda hardcopy printing and delivery, per the process outlined above. Agenda final files will be with the Conference Committee and should include as many last minute changes as possible.

• 
  b0504MassMail_TrainingCalendar: Detailed Program Calendar, Examples of certificates to be awarded
  

• 
  TRAVEL Sign scholars up for UC bus.
  
• 
  
  

• 
  Purchase health insurance. Policies and Services for foreign visitors coming to USA are universally awful but there is no other option. If scholars have their own health insurance it's almost always going to be better even if they are from some tiny african country, but it will have to include global coverage and most don't so you are stuck. Among the sleazy tactics they use are onerous documentation requirements after the fact that in spite of having submitted all receipts, prescriptions and fully signed medical clinic insurance forms, they'll still require some additional hardcopy verification form or another directly from the scholars, forms not described or listed in their policy, using international surface mail to notify scholars of the new required forms and a typical 1-2 week due date so that scholars will get these notices weeks after they are due to be returned, so payment is denied with no appeal. This is just one of many tactics they all use to avoid having to pay out for anything. In the ten years we have been purchasing health insurance for our scholars there have been on average 2-3 scholars each year who need to see a doctor, for anything from malaria to tooth infection. Thats around 25-30 valid health policy claims. None of them were ever paid out by any of the companies we used, largely from the sleazy tactics listed above. There are only 3 companies who sell such policies, "HCC", "Atlas Group" and "Tokio Marine" who apparently are all the same company, a monopoly that may explain why the service is so awful. Sasha is recommending we look into localized clinic-specific policies for routine medical and dental care and see if any of them would include major medical. Otherwise try to get IN WRITING the specific documentation requirements and timelines, and IN ADVANCE all documentation and paperwork they might conceivably require in order to have the scholar and the medical provider fill it all out at the time of service. Another option is to try to find someone who is a professional in this field who might be able to know how to work with insurers to make them pay up on policies we purchase.
  
• 
  Normally you can buy a specific policy with specific dates for each scholar which helps on costs
  

• 
  TRAVEL Start laying out airport pick-up arrangements.
  

• 
  Finalize your cash management plan:
  
  • 
    Know how much you will need, and design the specific denominations you’ll need for each scholar
    
  • 
    Notify the bank of upcoming large withdrawal. Be sure to request the new $100 bills for all of the airfare awards as scholars typically take these home, where the old $100 bills are often rejected by currency exchanges.
    
  • 
    Implement withdrawal;
    
  • 
    Know how you will structure handing out cash, (see the cash management process below)
    
  • 
    Know how you will structure overall cash handling throughout the program
    

and Envelopes are pre-printed using prepared word docs formatted for envelope printing like: