Opening Statements
Reviewed minutes but no minutes
Reviewed agenda
Future meeting: do we change the by laws around voting in new treasurer / secretary. Erica suggests moving the introductions up front
Eric suggested updating contact information on the board list
Thomas is excited about all of the programs
Thomas has been on the board for 3 years. He suggests we say how long you’ve been on the board, any committees, thing you are excited about and favorite snack.
Board Introductions
Monthly Meeting Time
Thomas would like to move the meeting because his work schedule conflicts with the meetings. He will focus on the board meetings over the programs. His leadership style is not one where he thinks he knows best. He is not authoritarian. He understands the needs of leadership but he wants to collab. He opens the floor.
We will keep the meeting at this time. No one opposed or abstained. The motion passed without objection!!!!
Weekly Task Management
This is opaque for Thomas. He doesn’t know how to have this conversation. He wanted to go over these things. Kelly has been doing good work on SM stuff. Thomas is going to take over the newsletter but he needs to talk to Andrew first.
Newsletter / Social Media
Eric thinks that SM is key. Marilyn says we are on FB and IG. Kelly makes memes about programs. Marilyn finds key words and she gives them to Kelly. Ralph posts on YouTube about the teaser that is coming.
Eric thinks it is good that people who are doing the work know how to do it.
Thomas is pleased with the numbers off SM.
Andrew Kalloch calls in at this point.
Alyssa says she is available to help on programs and to do any of the tasks that Thomas would do if he ever went on vacation.
Mailbox
Andrew said to check it every other week. That gets us checks to cash and anything from the state or other government agencies. Ralph volunteered to check the mailbox every so often.
Some questions about depositing checks. Andrew said it depends on the banker working when one attempts to deposit checks. Ralph might have to pass the checks on to a different person. Thomas will continue checking the mail and cashing the checks.
There was a question about mobile deposit for banks. Then we started talking about switching banks. Joey said it is a pain in the ass to change banks.
Thomas is having trouble to get into the Norton vault and check the email. Somehow Ralph will get Thomas the email credentials for logging into. Ralph talked getting a paid Google Workspace account to get access to more advanced user access control or user management.
Food/Beverage
Sandy will be picking up Yumm Bowls and Coffee. We sell the bowls for $15. Ralph thinks we are about breaking even. Ralph thinks the bowls are a bit boring. Alyssa thinks we should not offer launch. The Yumm bowls are loud on the recording. Betsy does not like the noise of the Yumm bowls. Alyssa really wants to phase out the lunch.
Kathryn expressed concerns about the challenges related to tracking the cost of the lunches. She does not like them. They are difficult. The deposits are not working. She wants to clean up some things in how they are tracking. It isn’t dollar for dollar. She cannot always map Bloomerang donations to lunches because there is no meta-data She wants to track the data because with the data we can answer the question of: do we want to continue spending money on this, but we cannot ask that question if we do not know the total amount of money. Duh.
Andrew thinks Sandy uses her own card and then takes cash to pay herself back. Kathryn wants to get rid of lunches too. Down with lunches! Does anyone care about lunches in our audiences?
Program Set-up
Banners. Thomas does not mind bringing them to the programs and setting them up. For him he enjoys it. He has a question. If Keizer pulls sponsorship, do we need to return it? Andrew says we never returned the banner. We can, as a matter of courtesy, we can offer Keizer its banner back. Thomas does not mind doing the banners and will continue doing them he will find someone to do the banners if he cannot do it for a program.
Moving into Summer Campaign
Alyssa says she leads this with Kelly. They are doing the same thing they are did last year. Thomas will write the letter. We will create a simple mailer. There will include a return envelope. Also has a City Club branding. Note: Josh is the intern that we pay. We will include his little pretty annual report. Marilyn says these reports are on the website.
Eric wants to receive the membership letter to experience the process and to make a possible donation.
Marilyn notes that there is more competition for non profit dollars now. She says this because she notices how much the other nonprofits are begging for money.
There will also be a social media piece to the drive. There could be more but we do not have more time with the resources we have.
Telling the President What To Expect
Ralph sees gaps but he doesn’t remember what he was thinking of. He knows Thomas will fall into the gaps when he finds them. Eric wonders if he will be able to climb out. Thomas think he is not very good at walking away from things for which he does not have time for. He is leaving some other stuff he is doing. He is putting down some other things too.
Eric says we do not have a president elect. He wants to know what that is about. The other by law is about having a manager. Eric is curious about both of those. Thomas said he needs to find a president-elect. He’s gotta find someone to do. Andrew wrote this is the prerogative of the President is to find the next president.
Randy was a manger we had in the past but she is gone now. Off in MI. She was very cheap so she was kinda donating some of her time. It was nice. But we do not have her anymore. We really stretched ourselves to fund her position. It was great. When she left we didn’t have the sponsorships to underwrite the salary of an employee.
Alyssa reminds us that we pay Josh for the stuff he does. It is about 5 hours per week. This is not the same kind of thing that Randy does.
Committee Reports
Membership
Not much has happened. They had a wee meeting and included some ideas in the board packet. Go read it. There are some suggestions. None of the ideas are new. Ralph thinks we do not have initiatives until the Fall at the earliest. August is off. Membership is stable. Part of that is because there have been no expiry. This month and next month about 10 people are coming up for expiration — not their souls, their membership.
Marilyn talked about the ad suggestions. She says we did ads. She said it was in the news paper — something with paper. She wrote them. It listed the programs under a headline. It had the logo, social media icons. It cost about $180 a month. She has no clue if anyone ever saw it. Now SM is available and the data is incredible about engagement.
Ralph does not want to pay for ads.
Eric wants to know if we have a way of understanding how people heard about us when they sign up. Marilyn said that information would be helpful when planning a campaign. They are trying to figure out how the form is created and where it is created.
Betsy wants to know about our table-ing experience. Alyssa says we have been invited a number of times but it is a labor issue. We have very little swag to enable the table experience.
Program
Alyssa wonders if we want a written report for Program. We say it is fine to give verbal.
6/27: ODOE
4th of July
7/11: Lane County Deflection
7/18: Deportation and Immigration
7/25: Future of DEI Work
First Sept Pro: Annual Interview with Mayor—might have a journalism student
There will be a retreat hosted by Betsy where they seek to plan the year.
Media
Marilyn is here in the flesh. She wants to know if we want to continue receiving stats on the programs. Alyssa wants to get them because it helps her be competitive. Marilyn said she would keep doing it because Alyssa likes it. Alyssa wants Marilyn to keep sending the data her so she can share it with the Program committee.
Eric wants to know if we can get the data so we can do historical analysis. Marilyn says the data is ALL OVER THE PLACE. Eric thinks maybe we could find patterns over a period of a year. Marilyn says she can deliver the raw numbers. Marilyn will deliver the data to Eric of the raw numbers. He wants to make charts and graphs to see if there any patterns.
Website — seemed like a goal was usability, management of the content — could that be made simpler or easier. The other was the cost of hosting. Marilyn has looked into SquareSpace. Joey got a proposal to move our website to SquareSpace. Marilyn has no information on her qualifications. Marilyn cannot recommend to the board that we incur the cost. She cannot see where we would get big benefit if we do incur the cost. Right now Marilyn and Ralph manage the website, sometimes there are issues but mostly they just roll right along.
There would be a cost — 5 page website — this proposal would have pay for the construction of the website and then there would be ongoing hosting costs. $16 per month if you pay annually, $99 a month if you get all of the features.
Thomas agrees that it is not the time to do the website, especially given that we have recently lost sponsors. But Thomas will think about this and bring it up in a later meeting.
Finance Report
Spending up due to venue rent. Not many donations right now but this is typical for these months. $49k balance right now. (Hard to hear on the phone.) One time expenses include the new equipment. There were errors in the report that Kathryn will take care of! More to come.
Final Discussion & Sponsorship Hunting
There is press coverage of our program sometimes. Thomas wonders is there anyway we get somebody to write an article about us or non-profits that feature us? He wants to get our story into those publications that thousands of people are reading. Marilyn says we have written editorials in publications that are tied to a program launch or an annual campaign. Marilyn has a relationship with Mike and Lookout Eugene and Springfield. Betsty suggests a good story is that we are starting series programs not just one off programs. There will be another series on waterfront development. There was a series on healthcare last summer. Betsty thinks there will be lots of topics.
Marilyn would like to tie solicitations to ads or something like that. Thomas wants to return to this topic next time.
Joey Bruckner, secretary pro tem
