Board 2007 07
When: 6:30 pm
Place: the NEW meeting room! swanky! and cool!
Facilitator: seamus
Scribe: laurel
Minutes Checker: marie
Attendance: Aaron, Marie, Tim, rfs, Sam, Oso, Seamus, laurel, Jon
Last meeting: Board 2007 04
COMMITMENTS
- rfs & seamus: talk to money people about moving money to more lucrative accts. carry over.
- laurel: update board web page. waiting on individuals' updates on board wiki page. http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Board carry over.
Q: what should we do about budget items that get carried over from month to month? can we just make them go away? A: yep, we can just make them disappear.
REPORTS
- Trademarks update We have a trademark in the educational field, working on one in recycling field. Working with an attourney.
- 3 - 5 year plan report
Marie and laurel have been working on a 3 - 5 year plan that can guide our priorities, growth and fundraising in the mid-term future. It is on the wiki at http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/3_-_5_year_plan. This is meant to provide some traction in the big planning meeting that we planned to do at last month's council meeting. Having an overall narrative of our plans will help in grantseeking and other fundraising. Others' input is encouraged.
BUSINESS
Board and officer turnover
wren is on the east coast for the forseeable future. This means our chair is remote until the next meeting (which is after the elections, so we'd be electing a new slate anyway). Board has consensus that we would prefer to have our officers be local, in case something comes up. We will ask wren if he will resign from the position of chair; should he do so, the board has selected Oso as the replacement officer for the remainder of the term (ends in October).
Proposed change to the bylaws: if a board member leaves in the middle of their term and the number of members does not fall below a certain minimum (5?), the council should not have to fill that position until the regular election cycle. But because the board can set its size within certain limits (5-11, not cutting terms short), this may not be necessary.
Marie's candidate (Curt Pedersen) is very excited about Free Geek, and we want to figure out what his route to participation is. People who might be interested in positions on the board should be invited to come to meetings and events.
Whose terms are expiring? Oso, Seamus, Aaron. Aaron is undecided on whether he'll run again.
Marie is in favor of trying to expand the board in order to bring in more skills.
Budget (rfs & seamus)
Bad news: there isn't a new budget yet. Good news: our budget from last time is functioning, and we had a good quarter. We've made something like $49000 ytd, even with payroll increases. There are requests from c7 for budget increases in the next budget; we expect some requests from action to get our building better by the fire code.
Tim: Can we also see the "cash in the bank" figure along with the incoming/outgoing figures? This would be useful in figuring out one-time expenses. A balance sheet would be nice too, w/assets & liabilities.
Q: What's an appropriate reserve? A: "Anything less than 3 months is considered embarrassing." "so we're close to the high end of embarrassing."
(Some debate over the optimal approach to an operating reserve. We'll move the discussion to the list.)
Q: Do we have fire insurance? A: The building is insured by the landlord. We have liability insurance.
We may want to start a building fund in the future, if owning our building turns out to be a priority.
COMMITMENTS
- laurel will ask wren if he'll resign from the position of chair
- seamus will write a draft for a bylaws amendment to do with vacancies and notify the council before our next meeting
- rfs & seamus will get to first tech
- all will be thinking about potential new board members to invite to council meeting
- seamus and rfs will make the new budget and we'll approve it by email
Next Meeting
- Facilitator: Marie
- Scribe: Oso
- Date and time: Oct 10, 6:30pm
- Place: Free Geek
- Next meeting: new members