Board 2007 01

• Date: 6:30pm, 10 Jan 2007
• Facilitator: wren
• Scribe: laurel
• Minutes Checker:
• Place: free geek meeting room

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Attendance

wren, laurel, Seamus, Marie, Elizabeth, Shawn, Richard (staff rep), Oso, Tim Collier, Aaron, Jon, Dave (left), matteo (late)

Old Commitments

• Marie - find/send links to Board legal responsibilities, procure DVDs for directors. - DONE
• Seamus - sign credit card paperwork - DONE
• RFS will seek the board responsibilities book (Chapter x) DONE (Marie brought in several copies)

Business

Budget Report

• Richard presents
• The format/structure of budget has changed somewhat: expenses are now categorized by committee, so that it's clearer what funds are available for what. We'll probably see less underspending because of that. One-time expenses have ben separated from recurring expenses for better trend tracking.
• Overall, Q4 2006 was good. Despite the expense of buying a forklift, we came out in the black. Best income came from sales: retail and wholesale sales were both greater than we expected. The robbery resulted in media attention, and we saw a greater than usual increase in donations at the end of the year.
  Expenses may go up because we are going to be changing monitor vendor for one that has higher rates and more integrity. Payroll was over what we expected, balanced by spending less than budgeted on substitutes.
  • Q. Why did online and external sales drop so much? A. It's volunteer-run and hasn't been consistent. Staff will propose an exploratory intern to help with this problem, so we can increase our online sales income.
  • Q. What's up with the projected online donation amounts? A. There's a bit of a tail on the spike that we got after the burglary.
  • Q. What's all this about write-offs? A. It was from changing the invoicing system over, clearing out the books. There was an account that no one knew anything about, so we wrote it off.
  • Q. So how do we make sure there aren't deals like that in the future? A. We have better tracking of sales now. Now whenever a bulk sale happens, it basically goes through Dave, and there's reporting involved. Everything is paid for in the store.
  • Q. Who makes the decision to write something off? A. It's done at budget time, so rfs explains it to Seamus, then it's reviewed by the board. Note: rfs cannot write checks.
• Projections for Q1 2007. Additional budgeting of $1500/Q for physical improvements and maintenance should help with doing some of the many, many one-time projects that the action committee would like to do. Almost all of our growth in expenses lately have been in staffing. The projections include increases in staff expenses throughout the year, but don't include increases in income from those additions, so that's why the projections all have us going into the red each quarter. Note: total of the potential losses and non-recurring expenses for the next year is less than what we have in the bank.
• We should be thinking a quarter ahead, instead of trying to just catch up in time.
  • Q: Are there legal issues about staff who volunteer as well as work for pay? A: Probably not, especially because everyone is salaried, rather than paid hourly.
  • Marie: we need to make a goal of increasing fundraising to compensate for additional spending on staffing, rather than planning to take it out of the bank.
  • Q: Do we really intend to lose $52000 in the next 5 quarters? A: No, income from new positions has not been included, and we aren't locked into the spending increases that we've budgeted for. We will definitely not lose the $52000 that appears in the budget. Figure that!
  • Q: Are we specifying how the increase budgeted for staff will be spent? A: No, i think we'll leave it up to the staff.
• PROPOSAL: We accept the expense budget as presented for Q1. Increases in staff spending are budgeted for and left to the discretion of the staff and council. APPROVED
• Moving on to nonrecurring expenses. There are a number of projects that should probably happen soon. Some may be grantable.
• PROPOSAL: We accept the nonrecurring expenses budget as presented for Q1. APPROVED
• PROPOSAL: We should we move some of the money that's in our default checking account into our reserve. APPROVED

Credit Card Progress

== Board's role and actions in fundraising (?)

• Burglary report - financial costs, media coverage, etc
• $1,315 "we owe it to SQL Clinic" account -- discuss what to do with it
• FGOLY letter -- fgoly history recap, and discussion
• Reminder to spice up http://freegeek.org/board.php
• E-Waste legislation endorsement request from Recycling Advocates

New Commitments

• Seamus and RFS will go to First Tech and look into putting our reserve money into more lucrative instruments.

Next Meeting

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• Reporters to other meetings?
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• Unfinished business for the next meeting?