Minutes:8 Jul 2020

Agenda

• Announcements/new business - 5m
• Dire Financial situation - 5m
• lease renegotiation / other lease options - 10m
  • No word yet from Oxford on our most recent proposal. Joe will get in touch by phone.
• AHA Bank account - proposal to get Nate on the account. Will need to reach out to Mike to coordinate. Long-term might be nice to look into other banking options, such as credit unions.
• plan for solvency: classes, members, sponsors-20m
  • James wants us to reach out to members to teach some simple classes (nothing super elaborate that requires a ton of planning)
  • Use the mailing list (mailchimp) to get more publicity
• Online classes/call to do more - 5m
  • As above, reaching out to members to share their skills is critical a this point
  • Space improvement day - getting more people involved, having plenty of tasks that are easy to get started on with a shallow learning curve.
  • Reaching out to other orgs is a high priority. Lots are trying to figure out their next move, so this is a good time to reach out.
• Tech items:
  • Wiki migration planning
• How to add new members during COVID-19 - 10m
  • "Abbreviated" membership process -- get people into the shop, semi-supervised
  • Online classes to get people trained on machines

Decisions

• Rent renegotiation

Action Items

• Thing that needs to be done
  • People/Workgroups responsible
  • Deadline/Estimate
• Reach out to Michael P. - Joe
• Add guide to wiki on "how to get started teaching a class" - James, by August
• Start email thread on volunteering - Joe DONE on matrix summary on wiki [Volunteering Ideas]
• Friendly email/reach out to others in the building - Mike (PENDING)
• Evaluate voting options on election process improvement thread - Nate, two months before the next election

Running List of Projects

Active Projects

• rent negotiation
• wiki migration

• Online classes
  • infrastructure for running / promoting classes unclear
  • no classes run in June! Let's get things scheduled for July
    • Joe can run fusion 360 class
    • David idea for arduino class
    • Nate home automation class
  • Critical to do these since we have no other income at the moment, besides dues.

• Volunteering
  • Need to get things running again, see if anyone would like to teach a class during the downtime
  • Start contacting volunteer/reduced rate folks by mid-next-week.
  • list of volunteering ideas started
  • How/if to track how much people are actually volunteering?

• Finish Website
  • Joe added a few pages and closed some issues.
    • page to pay for classes
    • added payment option to membership page
    • added reservation form for access to the space
    • remove links to the gfm and add our own donation page
  • Someone could label issues as critical or not

• Accounting
  • Stay with freshbooks or switch?
  • Use accounting software to track individual member payments? Joe's research says that Homeowners associations and German Club use this method. Both are billed yearly, however
  • Interim solutions: better spreadsheets with documentation

Inactive Projects

• Marketing
  • social
  • newsletter
  • local publications etc

• election system

• Ongoing Wiki Maintinance

• determine how new members can join during COVID-19

• determine how people can qualify on new tools during COVID-19
  • Online/video class followed by brief in person qualification?

• Find Sponsors
  • Have a clear idea of what we bring to the community

Future Projects

• Social Events

• Partner with scouts

• How to increase diversity