Feb. 5th 2026 WMAN Community Meeting notes

·

by

Lindsey Teuteberg

 

WMAN Community Meeting Notes

Organizational Issues

  • Next community food swap is also a seed swap, on Feb. 21, 11-3 at the library
  • Setting up a finance committee to open a bank account and be able to take donations
    • Lindsey, Fen, Mary Jo 
    • Will be going to a credit union, hopefully set up by Feb. 21 event 
  • Considering becoming an official non-profit 
  • Connecting with Indivisible Waukesha East – Dan came to meeting, explained they are technically a non-partisan advocacy group but have been focusing on ICE and immigrant support
    • Works in coalitions, has been a successful model for them
    • Supports Waukesha Resist and Brookfield Resist 
    • Less member-based, more issue-oriented 
    • Can apply for grants, $1k-1,500 to start 
    • Does a distributed financial account
    • Can process Venmo 
  • Suggestion to connect with Waukesha Farmers Market, which has community org booths (could be good way to get financial donations) 
  • Need to get a banner 
  • Amethyst set up a website: WaukeshaMutualAidNetwork.org and setting up proton mail (look into getting business acct for multiple @waukeshamutualaidnetwork.org) 
  • Question about providing a resource of available resources 
    • This has been started? 
  • Library’s Community Resource Fair – Amethyst and Mary Jo went and worked on building relationships with other organizations. Left flyers with several groups for the February event and some said they will promote to their groups/add to newsletters. Amethyst and Mary Jo following up with contacts. 
  • WMAN started with the aim of having a network of different teams on different topics
    • Discord set up with different channels
    • Could start having meetings for subgroups. 

 

New Ideas 

  • UW extension garden next to Huber closed, talking with city about new site in Waukesha 
    • City of Waukesha green team, talk to Beth (alderperson) 
  • Erica stressed importance of inclusion
  • Erica brought up idea of a book swap
    • Mary Jo and Amethyst met with Book Ahead at community resource fair, they often have books they can’t use and could donate to us
    • Erica moving forward with this – maybe for March?
  • Erica raised idea of a once-monthly community event going out to different communities to introduce WMAN and look outside Waukesha 
  • Erica suggested 3x year family nights, could invite community resources so they can share. Want to have craft activities for monthly community meetings, so parents can bring their kids. 
  • Beth brought up the idea of healthcare activities – blood pressure checks 
  • Skill-sharing events like mending