Minutes:10 FEB 2021 Members Meeting Agenda

Meeting begins:

Meeting ends:

Participants:

Agenda

• Announcements/new business - 10m
• Membership update - 5m - Joe
  • Process Improvement meeting results/discussion - 15m - Nate
• Financial update - 5m - Joe
• Events - 10m - Nate
• Old business updates

Notes

• Announcements/new business:

• Membership update:
  • Initial pass at mapping out the current membership processes, and some ways we can improve it, happened on 1/19. Notes from that meeting were put in Matrix in #Operations. Next step is to try and implement some of these improvements.
  • Discuss!
    • Old business, but related stuff pulled in here:
      • Motion to replace new-member vouching system with n-hours of volunteering/vote on it? - James
    • Create an "exit survey" that can help identify why a person is leaving, but also can try and convince them to stay by pointing out our reduced cost options available.
    • Make sure we are on-boarding new members consistently -- specifically we should try much harder to ensure that they join the mailing list (using an "opt-out" basis, even?). This needs to be a specific part of the on-boarding process that is always done, possibly during the point at which we add them to the membership roster.
    • James: get feedback from new members on how the process currently works, and see how we can use that information to get the above things done.

• Financial update:
  • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MTjgdvGJI9-FI7OFxkDdw-hJbirdUaxwBpERWVGVSQs/edit#gid=0
  • Thank you notes for the end-of-year fundraiser sent out!

• Outreach:
  • Thank you notes for the end-of-year fundraiser sent out!
  • Corporate donations/solicitations - David
    • Probably won't get started until end of the month or so, check in again.
  • James will reach out to his contacts to see if we can get more guidance on how to raise funds.
• Events:
  • Seasonal Solder-kit build-along -- Cupid Edition: This Saturday @ 6:30PM!
  • Pick a kit for St. Patty's? -- Nate will look around this weekend.
  • ATMegaZero class - David
  • Companion bots with Alex G. - David
  • Old business:
    • Joe is adding places to promote events to a page on our wiki: [[Promoting][ ...And also adding a cross-promotion section

• Older Business:
  • Volunteering:
    • A task that could be done is to pull the list of donors/sponsors (via GoFundMe, Duo, etc.). Also DigitalOcean for hosting our website. Also SPARK, maybe?
    • James would like to figure out how to get our name on the list (presumably through the various schools) for future volunteers. This was also a suggestion from our Nation of Makers call: reach out to schools and other volunteer hubs to attract more help.
      • Improve the process to find and recruit volunteers
      • Joe recommends following suite of another space that has "job descriptions" for new volunteers, so that they can start up doing something well-defined instead of some nebulous "volunteering time": https://www.acemakerspace.org/monster-corps/ https://www.acemakerspace.org/member-contribution-portal/
      • Volunteer hour tracking
      • Lonely Space Hardware cleanup/organization effort -- When do we want to do this? Ask James for update.
  • Events:
    • Joe connected with two people from Nation of Makers who are possibly interested in cross-promoting classes with similarly-sized hackerspaces.
    • Another hackerspace would be interested in having us check out their bi-weekly show-and-tell events -- microcontroller/electronic. https://www.meetup.com/Robot-Garden/events/gvcgvrybcqbqb/
    • Are we allowed to post upcoming classes in the NoM group?
  • Bylaws revision:
    • Nothing really to report here since James is busy with a lot of other things; so just keeping it on the radar. We all agree that the bylaws could use a little attention after 5+ years, especially to better fit how the organization has been running (or could be run!). Follow-up again next month.