Minutes:11 Nov 2015 Board Meeting Agenda - 9th Board's last meeting

AHA Mission Statement
We seek to establish, build, and support a collective of individuals organized around the principles of community-driven education in the arts and sciences, and to ensure ready access to the tools needed to pursue the realization of those principles.

• Meeting attendees: Alex W., Donnie J., Lauren W., Mike Z., Esty T., Alec B., Larry W., Tyler S., Nate Y., Dan C.
• Meeting starts at: 19:10
• Meeting ends at: 20:15

Board Meeting Protocol

* Standing Committee Reports - Individual Updates by Assigned Director/Officer presented in the time allotted.

* Open Time: For anyone to bring anything up to the Board. IF the Board agrees the item requires action, it will be put into New Business and addressed at the end of the meeting.

(15m) Open For All

• All Are Worthy. All Are Welcome.

Mike Z. congratulates AHA for being so accessible/open to the public/inclusive. After travelling to hackerspaces abroad, he realized that a good number of them are not set up that way by default. Basically, he got a tour and then they kicked him out (presumably unless he joined).

Minutes Approval

• October 2015 Board Minutes

Meeting minutes approved - 4/5, one absent.

Financial - from Larry W./Deirdre D.

Larry:

• Nov 2015 P&L - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rPORpgqhNdJDC-wFugQtjgyZ5uD7OxkbgeDD_jKVi7Y/edit

501c3 submission debt paid off! Thanks, Larry, for your generosity!

Lauren:

Xero is mostly set up, we are doing a trial before the new fiscal year.

Membership invoices will be automatically generated each month to the emails of the members (should come in on the 15th, for December's dues). Xero also allows us to see incoming/outgoing cash flow for grants, accounting, etc.. We can see grants coming in to allow us to give the donor a receipt and later generate a thank-you note for them. Class payments can be tracked to allow us to see which classes are popular, and also allows us to keep track of previous students to see if they might be interested in joining AHA. Until there is a more electronic system to do this, we can manually have folks sign-in at classes to put them in our CRM.

We're around $1100 in Paypal, $4500 TCF.

Larry requests for Lauren to provide the average monthly costs from August-October. Nate Y. will update these minutes with that value.

Fundraising - Greg G.

• Monthly Fundraising Report - LINK HERE?

No update from Greg.

Governance - Esty T.

Several new members! Esty has had trouble getting keys since she needs to coordinate with Larry to do it. Mike points out another new membership form out there.

Elections happening tomorrow! We are having an actual election since we have four nominees.

Larry reports 38 members in good standing - 6 BYB, 18 standard, 10 reduced, 1 household, 4 volunteers on regular shifts. We are more or less holding even since last month.

Esty needs to update Gerald about snaking out the drain more than once a year, going to send out an email tonight.

Volunteers - Tyler S.

Tyler has been printing more membership forms lately, so presumably people are going to be filling them out!

Tyler has been making an effort to open the space on Sunday. Nate Y. would like to try and get a head-count to quantify how well it's going (and also for other public events, so we can see how well they go).

Art party had six people last month!

We have a janitor for Saturday night.

Education/Classes/Events - Donnie J.

U of M Make Health Fest went well. BYB's products were very popular. Donnie is going to email out a link to the pictures from the event.

The Arduino class this month is going to be a birthday party, so there will be a number of younger folks participating that day. We also have Cryptoparty.

Still in the engineering phase for the Penguicon badge. Nick R. is heading up the effort. A reminder to get our Square reader ready to go ahead of time so we can take credit cards.

Donnie is making marketing material and templates -- he hopes to get them done by the end of next week.

(30m) Unfinished Business

* Carried over from previous Board Meeting.

• August Items

ACTION ITEM - Nick R. will work with Tyler W., Nate Y., Brandon D., Alec M. for a user-account solution for computer log-ins.

Not addressed yet. Larry raises the point that we will need to soon consider replacing our existing machines.

• SEPTEMBER ITEMS
• ACTION ITEM - From Alec M. - Election process needs to be documented clearly so members know the consequences of the point system.

Nate will document this in a central location for future Board Members. OR, use an alternative, more direct voting process. - Esty (topic for All-Members Meeting Sun. Aug. 23rd).

Nate wrote Esty an email about this -- could just port this more or less directly to the Wiki. Esty will email Nate with whatever holes are left in the documentation process.

• ACTION ITEM - From Jacob M. - What about a "Bounty Board"? Put up in the space offering prizes for doing various duties in AHA (ie. prizes). Approved by 2 Board members. - Larry W.

Waiting on room to be made by the front desk.

• ACTION ITEM - Jacob M. - should AHA make a proposal to Sylvia's for a non-profit rent write-off for Sylvia's.

Alec suggests creating a proposal. Larry or Jacob to write this? Larry maybe can work with Dena?

Nothing received yet. This is probably not going to work since they are showing off the Sylvia's space.

(30m) New Business

What to do with fish tank when demolishing the front desk, presumably Saturday? Donnie will talk to Greg about this tonight. Larry offered to donate 2x4s to hold the tank if needed.