Category: News

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We Made A Mistake

Thanks to a mem­ber, we found out we had a mis­take in our trea­sury report­ing. It involved how we report­ed dona­tions com­ing from peo­ple using PayPal. No dona­tions were lost, only the sum­maries we cre­at­ed did­n’t record the dona­tions as dona­tions. Fiscal Year 2020 has been cor­rect­ed where the issue occurred and sum­maries that have been updat­ed are marked with “Corrected“on our Monthly Treasury Summary page. Fiscal Year 2019 will be checked this week­end and sum­maries will be cor­rect­ed if need­ed.

Continue read­ing “We Made A Mistake”
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We will have a virtual meeting

As the state of Ohio bat­tens down the hatch­es to bat­tle the COVID-19 out­break, many of our friends and fam­i­ly are being affect­ed by the increas­ing need to “flat­ten the curve”.

The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) cares not only about our mem­bers, friends, and fam­i­ly, we also care about our com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.

Continue read­ing “We will have a vir­tu­al meet­ing”
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Having A Blast At Skepticon

This week­end I am attend­ing Skepticon 11 in St. Louis, MO with Shawn and Peggy. Skepticon is a free con­ven­tion for sec­u­lars and skep­tics.

Shawn and I are hav­ing a good time, meet­ing new peo­ple, get­ting new ideas, and com­muning with peo­ple who have sim­i­lar world views as we do.

I’ve learned how to make an awe­some pod­cast and how to per­suade peo­ple on issues I think are impor­tant. I also learned about the reli­gious right’s effort to have spe­cial laws passed in state leg­is­la­tures through their Project Blitz ini­tia­tive. Did you know Ohio has a chap­ter of the Prayer Caucus? It lob­bies state leg­is­la­tors in Columbus.

Shawn and I are bring­ing back meet­ing and event ideas for the com­ing year.

The only mis­step to this year’s con­fer­ence is it being sched­uled dur­ing the 5th Anniversary of the death of Michael Brown. He was shot and killed by a white police offi­cer just 10 miles away in Ferguson. Until one of the talks this evening, Skepticon made no effort to acknowl­edge the event. I hope they do bet­ter next time in mak­ing sure there are no con­flicts like that or at least ded­i­cate some time to mark­ing those kinds of tragedies.

Shawn walked around the area where our hotel is locat­ed and men­tioned to me she saw a lot of home­less peo­ple. It made me con­sid­er that a con­ven­tion like Skepticon should include a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice project so par­tic­i­pants expe­ri­ence life out­side the hotel.

I do want to attend anoth­er Skepticon in the future. This type of con­ven­tion is need­ed by peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty.

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SHoWLE Board of Directors Elect Officers for 2018–2019

The Board of Directors held their first meet­ing on October 16th and the first thing on the agen­da was elect­ing offi­cers for the year.

President: Doug Berger
Vice President: Shawn Meagley
Secretary: Margarette Webster
Treasurer: Larry Brach

Minutes of the meet­ing and oth­er news will be shared soon.

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We Achieved GuideStar Bronze Level

Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) was recent­ly rec­og­nized for our trans­paren­cy with a 2018 Bronze Seal on our GuideStar Nonprofit Profile!

GuideStar is the world’s largest source of infor­ma­tion on non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions. More than 8 mil­lion vis­i­tors per year and a net­work of 200+ part­ners use GuideStar data to grow sup­port for non­prof­its.

In order to get the 2018 Bronze Seal, SHoWLE shared impor­tant infor­ma­tion with the pub­lic using our pro­file on www.guidestar.org. Now our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and poten­tial donors can find out more about our mis­sion and pro­grams.

Check out our GuideStar Nonprofit Profile and tell us what you think:

Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie GuideStar Profile

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Our Pride Booth Introduced The Group To Many New People

Our booth at Toledo Pride festival

SHoWLE had our first infor­ma­tion­al booth at the Toledo Pride Festival on August 18th. Doug, Shawn, Margarette, and Larry had over 50 peo­ple show inter­est in the group.

It was a beau­ti­ful day with a large crowd vis­it­ing all the booths in Promenade Park in Downtown Toledo.

“Having a booth takes a lot of time and effort to pull off,” SHoWLE President Doug Berger explained. “For our first time, we did a great job. I have a lot ideas on how to improve our booth for the future.”

If you be inter­est­ed in help­ing staff our booth at oth­er events let Doug or Shawn know.