Minutes:13 SEP 2023 Members Meeting Agenda
Meeting begins: 1906
Meeting ends: 2038
Participants: Nate Y., Brian J., Meredith H., Victor M., David G., Joe D., James K., Jacob M., Sarah B., Andrew C.
Agenda
- Announcements/new business - 10m
- Operations
- Financial
- Membership
- Outreach
- Education
Minutes
- Announcements/new business:
- Operations:
- Downstairs flooding - ice machine from AD leaked water down into the CNC room. Spoil board of bigger CNC ruined, drywall damage/ceiling (Jo from AD offered to fix it).
- Moisture sensors? Excuse to do automation?
- We had LaunchX again, Joe had a good impression about working with everyone else.
- Joe: having paid staff made it very easy to make this work
- Financial:
- Financial Position: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F29Lmr2ErLSa345LZqu1eowOCt0JekKE/view?usp=drive_link
- Financial Activity: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ukyJO6BRNd5urnypPwO3lh16b91K6_or/view?usp=drive_link
- ~$12k in the bank.
- Should restrict the monthly transfers from savings -> checking since we have a good surplus.
- Finances doing well due to donation, memberships.
- Only lost about $232 this month, have actually made $728 overall this year.
- Metrics tracking/monthly "report card" -- still working on this - Joe D.
- James: let's talk to an accountant about making sure we're doing the right thing when paying people to do things!
- David offers to pass some of our questions onto folks he knows
- Joe suggests looking on Taproot for volunteer CPA help. Joe will do this.
- Membership:
- Election updates - James K.
- Member list is updated, less the new few new members since then.
- Going to try to get the first election email sent out tonight.
- Will send the nomination announcement email tonight. Plans to hold the election from October 12th to the 19th.
- Membership tracking
- Co-opting Quickbooks to do membership tracking
- James needs a way to know when a member has completed their volunteering requirements.
- Nate has been giving out keys to those who have met the requirements, posts in chat when that happens; but will DM James directly to make it very clear.
- Membership classification - how to classify folks who have paid (probably donation) but also aren't members?
- David: Archiving them should be fine
- SOP for getting members started -- Can we make this a checklist or something anyone can follow.
- Election updates - James K.
- Outreach:
- Unified social media tools - Sarah B.
- Would make it an easier distribution of labor to have some kind of social media automation!
- David suggests Buffer, which has a free tier (no analytics, but that's not a big deal). Has a non-profit discount if we use a paid plan.
- Easier to promote our classes very easily. Could give easily give access to anyone who needs it at the time.
- Develop post templates in Canva that can easily be reused for promotion.
- Sarah will go ahead and make us a free Buffer account.
- Would make it an easier distribution of labor to have some kind of social media automation!
- Zine festival - Sarah B.
- UM group would like us to participate since we have our Zine library. Sometime next spring. Would be some kind of booth (ala Tech Trek) allowing us to display or even create some zines.
- Creative Washtenaw grant submitted! Thanks, Xander!
- Moving onto other grants - Nate Y.
- James brings up whether we should hire some help
- Sarah will post something in chat requesting help
- Moving onto other grants - Nate Y.
- Other events:
- Sunday Artisan Market - September 17th 11am-4pm (Kerrytown Farmer's Market) - CNC portrait demos and whatever else we want to bring (LED art?)
- Tech Trek - September 22nd 1pm-5pm (along E. Liberty St., near the space) - we will have a table/tent and demo some things like the CNC portraits, as well as LED art and meshtastic stuff Nate has been working on.
- Green Fair - September 22nd 5pm-8pm (on Main St., right after Tech Trek!) - Bike/personal mobility (scooter/onewheel/EuC/other?) parade around town. AHA will be a point of mention on the parade. Bring your favorite (non-automobile) ride!
- UM class visit - October 10th @ 11am
- Unified social media tools - Sarah B.
- Education:
- Mesh network class (Nate Y./Mike Z.). Did an initial test of the meshtastic nodes and it seemed to work (but we concluded the supplied antennas were lousy for urban usage). Nate needs to spec out costs and order a handful of kits. Now targeting an October timeline, since Nate is booked up most Saturdays in September.
- CAD/3d modeling class - End of September/early October