May 2020 Board Notes

Date:

05/12/2020

Attendance:

Board Attended: Tristan Anderson, Kevin Ehrler, Michelle Clark, Jay Bottem, Christina Kramer, Kim Hofer, Anthony LaBerge
Board Absent:
Observers: Troy MacDonald, Heather Bufkin, Ashley Rahn, John Itzin

Notes:

Meeting called to order 18:34

Agenda

Recap off cycle board actions and votes

  • Board Position Announcements

    • John Koniges has resigned his position as president

    • Open applications via email tonight/tomorrow

    • Proposal to amend the bylaws to state at a venue of the boards choosing, no less than 60 days out, with at least a weeks notice

    • Voting timeline:

      • Email tomorrow

      • open 13-19th application period

      • 20-26th review period

      • 27th-2nd being the voting period

      • announce results on the 3rd

      • Add open positions, and add who is filling interim if they have questions about how it works 

      • Clarification on who can run for presidential vote

Open Session (First 30 minutes)

  • Tristan will go through articles of incorporation, who wants to do it with him

    • Tristan will pick a date for people to meet on this, Michelle, Kevin, Ashley, lots of volunteers

  • When voting for Treasurer, you are also voting for Vice President

    • VP Only really exists when there is no President

    • Action Item to put / VP

      • Educate general public on how bylaws work

        • It is an executive position 

        • Chairing a meeting in the absence of the president instead of using the term Vice President

        • Or transition one of the member at larges to VP

          • Don’t really need to add a VP position

        • In Bylaws only time VP is mentioned is that the treasure is acting as the VP in the absence of the president

      • Bylaw change Article 3 Section 3 Item 2 last sentence

        • The treasurer will also serve as chair to conduct the meetings in the absence of the president, and will report to the board of directors.
        • All in favor
  • Question about voting rights, how they are decided, how it works, what % is run

  • Position descriptions for board member positions

    • Not as immersive with membership about what the board does

    • Branches we have, how the branches are separate

    • Reeducation of membership

    • What legal responsibilities are legal/fiduciary

      • X number of minutes, presentation period, 30 minute questioning period

  • Can we look at actually paying an accountant for treasurer

    • It would probably be hard to find a paid accountant that would do all of the work one of our volunteers would do at meetings. 

  • Stipulations about attendance if unable to make meeting due to military service

    • In order to count for attendance they would need to coordinate with coordinator or department head, actual interact with someone about what was at the meeting

    • Is this something that we want to get into, to have to verify military service

    • Concerned about blurring lines between employment and volunteers, wants to make sure we are very careful about this wording. 

    • John and Tristan will work together with legal about possible bylaw change

  • Bylaws and articles of incorporation

    • Articles of Inc trump bylaws, bylaws trump policies

    • Our AoI say ATC membership is $20, Bylaws say $15

      • According to legal expert

    • Update articles of incorporation to $15

      • Need to add bylaws so they are not 

      • Jay seconds, all in favor

Planned Discussions from scheduled visiting parties/ATC Partners

Equipment Rental Requests

Coordinator Updates

Anime Detour

  • Staffing issues being dealt with

  • Trying to figure out how to have a post mortem about planning

  • Addressing areas of efficiency 

  • Review element for department heads 

  • Until we know more, it might be very difficult to have a convention in 2021, if we are still under stay at home through December the con will be very different. 

Charities

  • Do we have a letterhead that we can use for the charities letter about us not doing charitable giving this year. Michelle and Kim will work together to get the letter out. 

    • Will be done before the end of the month

  • LEG request from Dan Krueger bills in amount of $3500

    • Not sure what precedent we want to set

    • How much we would want to assist with

    • We have the discretion to approve or not approve the full dollar amount 

    • We could pay a larger bill to give a helping hand 2200

    • Michelle is voting to pay the hospital bill of $2259.71 and not pay the clinic bill which they have a payment plan for $1273.44

      • Tristan 2nds

      • All in favor

      • Will pay the hospital direct

  • Maybe look into discussing some sort of cap on individual disbursements 

    • We have been trying to find leg fund guidelines but haven't been able to find them 

    • Perhaps there are some in old board meeting notes?

  • How do we currently make people aware of Leg fund?

    • Asking for donations

    • Raising crowdfunding to cover other expenses

    • Maybe charities could do a fundraiser for the Leg fund, will match an amount and will be taking grant requests. 

Clubs / Community

  • Clubs aren’t meeting

  • Pride has been cancelled

  • Most summer events probably will not be happening

Media Relations

  • The ATC FB page has gone up in views, likes, people reached, and post engagements.

    • Fandom Fridays to garner engagements

  • Working on helping to generate a little blurb of the positions description for media relations coordinator

  • Working on twitch account

  • Beginning to look into twitter

SOS

  • Nothing to report, her branch is very affected by all of this, they do still have the discord running trying to find structured activities digitally

    • Hard to be at 100%, 

  • Some conventions have gone online and others have maye could look into doing something along those lines

  • Promoting those sorts of things, but haven't been able to host anything yet

  • Tristan willing to help out with twitch streaming

  • 2 guys ran entire convention during Anime Lockdown for a weekend 

Finance

  • Financials were emailed

  • Got 3k from millennium refund for staff dinner deposit

  • Bank account $232,656.91

  • Lots of checks that haven't been cashed yet

  • Still a couple of weeks for people to request refunds

  • A mass email went out yesterday, they have until 6/1/20

  • Once email went out about 150 people req refunds 

  • Haven't heard back from guests about returning their payments, some may be coming back in 2021, two haven't been cashed, 

  • Working on haggling with the airlines about credits

  • Tax forms have been updated on ATC website

Short Break from 850-857

Updates on current Board projects

Proposal for recording board meetings

  • Presentation on recording

    • Why does it need to be video versus audio

    • Easier for people to stay engaged when visual versus just audio

    • We are the faces of the org, owe it to the membership to have as many opportunities to view these as possible

    • Visual interactions can mean more then what our words are, things could be interpreted differently if we just have audio vs the whole experience

    • Obviously right now we are streaming this on youtube, no issues with that, once we can meet in person again, streaming meetings at gps on youtube, archiving it seems like it takes up a lot of data space, and audio would be a preferred method, but not against the video being there but just for archival purposes. 

  • What is the current storage situation

    • Has a network addressable storage, it's connected to the internet so people can access it, but upload speeds are slow. 

    • Depends on how long we want to keep them archived. 

    • It is ATC property.

    • what is the back up for it, youtube and vice versa

  • Is there a policy about keeping ATC owned stuff at personal residences?

    • Maybe need to look at keeping an inventory

    • It is not insured by ATC insurance but would be under Tristan’s homeowners/renters

  • Pushing to June so we can discuss over email and vote next month

 

Five Year Plan

  • Got lots of feedback

    • Vision statement was a duplication 

  • Will email to new board members

    • Going over document options

    • Living document, can we adjust as we go due to current situation

    • Will look to finalize next month

Need to reassign existing projects

Open Board Projects/Future Meeting discussions (sorted by due date):

  • Meeting Month <Caretaker(s)> - Example Project

  • May<Tristan> - Five year plan

  • June <Tristan/Ashley> - Proposal for waiving Anime Twin Cities membership costs for Anime Detour staff who meet requirements for free badge

  • June <President> - Board Members’ Projects

  • June <President> - Coordinator Reviews

  • Coordinator Reviews to Secretary by 6/2/20 so people would see them ahead of time

    • Email out to board by the 3rd, to prepare by the board by the 9th

    • Do we want the staff to review coordinators? Need to look into that.

    • Email this weekend about annual reviews In June, we will be doing coordinator reviews, if you have comments or feedback please submit to the secretary.

    • Board and coordinators all at once? 

    • Possible closed sessions for reviews

    • Comments from public should be anonymous

    • From the board could go either way

    • Reviews are sent ahead of time, and then they can respond at the board meeting 

  • July <?> - Review ATC policies

  • July <?> - Coordinator Goals

Open session ended at 10:02 pm