Minutes:12 SEP 2012 Board Meeting Agenda

Agenda

1. 501c3
   1. Allocated time: ~60 minutes
   2. Lead: Josh W.
   3. Purpose: Let's finish this, tonight.
2. Board Elections
   1. Allocated time:
   2. Lead:
   3. Purpose:
3. New Treasurer Vote in?
   1. Allocated time: ~5 minutes
   2. Lead: Josh W.
   3. Purpose: To discuss voting in new treasurer, review responsibilities, general awesome.
      1. We're talking with Khevna, she has expressed interest in taking on this role, hopefully good news for Wednesday!
      2. If she's not down, we'll be on a rapid search for a treasurer, ASAP.
4. Financial ponderings
   • Allocated time: ~15-20 minutes?
   • Lead: Nate Y.
   • Purpose: We are in a bind financially. Let's have a quick regroup on how we can raise a more moneys, and how we can make our ideas happen in a timely fashion.

Meeting started at 19:48. Meeting attendees: Jamison Lundy, Dana Nelson, Josh Williams, Corey Tebo, Michael Senkow, Nate Yost, Thomas Hunter, Mrs. Hunter, Terence O'Neill.

Khevna Shah is officially our treasurer (Nate Yost, Jamison, Dana, Mike vote yes, Nate Dotz absent).

Josh, Nate worked on 501c3 narrative, filled in details based on follow-up questions Noisebridge received from IRS.

$800 for 501c3 application, approach Awesome Foundation? Dana: Others have offered $500 here and there to pay for us to apply.

501c3 financial section a bit over half done, Josh will be working on it tonight and finishing up soon.

BOARD HOMEWORK: Read over 501c3 for next Wednesday (9/19), make notes of concerns, questions, especially related to NB/Harford's application. We will have a recap on an email thread at that time.

Khevna will update board with finances on Monday before board meetings. Goal is to make sure we have good vision of finances for any upcoming projects.

Dana wants to see financial infographic: money earned from concessions, membership, gaming, etc. for motivation/information at-a-glance. MOAR GRAPHS. Josh will talk with Khevna about this.

Checks finally cleared from IQGuys! BGE had some accounting issues trying to reconcile re: IRS closing down their business but still receiving money.

BOARD HOMEWORK: Take a quick look at finances; familiarize yourself with them to know what's going on with the moneys.

Need to be raising roughly $500 more a month to stay afloat.

We only have 4-5 gamer memberships currently, the rest are paying hourly. Possible gaming dropoff due to unclear hours of operation.

Clarified that hours are 2-10pm all days except mon., wed.. (members only mon./wed.) Hours will change again in about 2 weeks for classes/Bright Futures.

Josh will let Nate know new hours in two weeks.

Could approach more businesses/groups to gather interest in AHA. Khevna is participating in MI hacker's group, PC gamers group. MISec meeting in the area, could approach them. See if TOOOL wants to hold their meetings at AHA? Nate will coordinate. GoTech, A2Geeks... Can we work on a group project to display at their showcase?

Basically, we all need to do more evangelizing at other related groups in town!

Possible that overall membership has dropped off due to no reminders going out to get payments, but monthly payment reminders sent to group might be getting ignored. Can we target specific folks who have paid previously and not paid later?

Josh proposes making someone in charge of spending ~4 hrs a month to personally remind folks to pay.

Corey needs some help with general steps related to cleaning out lockers.

SPARK offered to fund a hackathon of sorts, with cash prizes, possible employment opportunities for winners. Could use that as an avenue to promote AHA.

BOARD HOMEWORK: Meeting at 7:30P Friday to come up with some formats for Hackathons with SPARK for whoever can make it.

Ech0 wants to organize another Space Race fundraiser with Elk's Lodge. Will be getting details to us soon once he figures out the state of renovations at the Lodge. We will need to do more promotion (about a month ahead of time) to get better attendance.

Dana is putting together another Kickstarter to raise money for mobile AHA operations, including laptops, projector; needs footage of members to put together a video for this (who we are, why this is a good thing to raise money for, etc.). Plan is to open source any developed curriculum.

Thomas' mother (501c3 help) has joined the party! Good resource for MI nonprofits: [1] Specifically [2]

State of MI has good resources that probably will not try to screw you! Also a good resource for nonprofits: [3]

BOARD HOMEWORK: Plan a time, ideally a Saturday when Mrs. Hunter can meet up with us.

School Factory taken on more liability than originally assumed? Should look into this. There is at least one clause in the School Factory's Fiscal Sponsorship agreement stating that they are not liable for mistakes we make (see #12).

Good resource is to talk to other non-profits in town if we have any remaining questions.

Josh raises issue of having a more "external" board arrangement; Mrs. Hunter says that a lot of grassroots orgs start out with "hands on" board (like we have currently), but it is a large topic to cover. Might be a good thing to work toward further in the future.

Board elections happening at the end of October (10/26) -- election announcements need to go out before 9/26.

Some gamer members didn't get nominations/election email last cycle because they were not on the big email list/didn't see it. Figure out how to get the word out to the physical space; not just email.

Could put nominees with picture, short paragraph about their goals for the next 6 months. Dana has offered to set up a web page to track this for nominees.

Terence from AADL points out upcoming events with 3D printing, seeing electricity. Wants to discuss future collaborations, including one with musical instruments, synthesizers, circuit bending, music software, etc. around winter break. Board shows an interest in this and possibly some other holiday-related events.

Of note, library members can currently borrow a number of instruments from the AADL.

Corey raises the point that holding events sometime during break might pick up any students who are not making it home for the holidays.

Dana wants to have another tea party before it gets cold.

Nate is interested in some sort of open house in October?

Terence is interested in looking at AHA for a School of Social Work Financial Planning project, examining streams of revenue, future finance opportunity. AHA's books are open for inspection.

Board meeting adjourned at 21:13.