Regular Meeting -- May 2, 2009
The Board of Directors held its regular monthly meeting at 2007 Bert Avenue, Austin, TX 78704, starting at 1:20 pm. The following directors (constituting a quorum of the full board) were present at the meeting: President Kathy Lee, Vice President Robert Gardner (by phone), Secretary Leslie Harvey, and Treasurer Pam Chambers. Robert McGarey (Executive Director) was also present at the meeting.
The Mission Statement was read aloud at the beginning of the meeting. Minutes from the April meeting were read aloud and approved as read.
Tumblebus. The $9K has helped us and given us some working capital.
Bingo Franchise Tax Issue. Moving in legislature - the House approved one bill that corrects mistake, and there is another bill in Senate. The results look promising, but no guarantees yet. If we don't have to pay that would provide another $9K for us.
New CPA volunteer, Annapurni. Found her through VolunteerMatch.org. She cannot work for money so is coming here 4hrs/week to help us catch up with our finances.
Financials. Books were balanced up to 1yr ago. We're not falling too far behind but we need to keep working on things to catch up on one month per week. Once we get current Annapurni might be able to help us with bigger picture and budgeting.
GoodwheelcChairs. We will have a Sidewalk Sale on May 16. The new shop manager, Smokey, is getting all the equipment ready and replacing batteries, etc. We will need to have a meeting soon to determine the logistics, particularly how to get the chairs/scooters over here.
Interns. Hannah has moved in and the place looks really nice. There was a core staff meeting a few days ago that was very productive. The meeting made it clear that the interns want more direction from the staff, so Bob and Robert are working on giving them more specific tasks to work on. Hannah needs some desk space, so it was decided that she will share a desk with Pam. Pam will work on getting the desk cleared off.
Press Releases/Calendar Postings. Press releases have not been effective for getting on various calendars. Instead it's been more effective to go to the web and enter things in manually. Bob had a program that did this, but it needs updating. Jerry Kilpatrick is working on this, but is in a learning curve. Once this is together, postings should happen really quickly.
Plumbing. Bob talked to a plumber about what it would take to add a bathroom in the art barn. He said it would cost maybe $3K, but said there are higher priority issues we need to address. He said the orangeburg sewer plumbing behind the garage apartment is disintegrating. The city of Austin is on a mission to have this kind of plumbing replaced everywhere, and if they 'catch us' then they could give us only 2 weeks to fix it and then heavy fines. However if we are proactive the city also can help with financing so we can start now. Part of the sewer plumbing was replaced a few years ago, but the rest of it needs to be done. This may cost ~ $10K. It should save money to have the Community Service Restitution people chop through the concrete on the patio.
Bingo. The Lottery Commission - Bingo division has decided to do away with the position of Primary Operator (Bob's role) and keep only the Bingo Chairperson (Robert's role). This requires that the Chairperson sit through 8hrs of Bingo Training. Bob has already had this training, but the Chairperson has to be an appointed officer/chairperson of the BOD. The Board appointed Bob the position of Information Technology Chair, and he will take over the role of Bingo Chairperson.
Car Share. We haven't used it yet, but we have it ready to use.
Shabby Chic. Bob has listed his priorities are, in order, the living room, back porch, Imaginary Room, the activity room and finishing the office. First priority is to get them functional. We are currently working on the living room; we started a couple weeks ago with sorting through the library books and bringing all the books down from the attic. A lot of books were thrown away due to their condition, and what was left needs to be gleaned and what's left of that will be organized into the library. We have a possible library volunteer.
Shed. Everything installed except for the flooring.
Chicken Coop. Trying to work with Josh to use the Center to display/sell coops. We could sell the extra eggs. Josh has people calling Robert to answer questions. They could also have classes in assembling chicken coops on site.
Funky Chicken Coop Tour. Over 120 people showed up! That's more people than he's ever seen at the Center at one time.
Garden. Irrigation installed, timer will be installed next week. Recent rain helped a lot.
Volunteers. We have been able to get volunteers for everything we wanted volunteers for. He's working on improving the ads so that the org looks more impressive. Still need to find areas for volunteers to work and to readily plug them in. We have different levels of volunteers (little time/lots of time, complicated vs easy). Plan is to sit down with the staff to outline what tasks we can take off Bob's list and assign to volunteers.
Board Film Showing. Robert proposes the Board get together for dinner and watch the film about how nonprofits work.
Volunteer Coordination Training. Robert found a lot of information online with which he can train himself on volunteer coordination. He wants to improve his skills in this area since he has no formal training.
Since there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at 3:01 pm.
Minutes submitted by Leslie Harvey, Secretary, May 2, 2009.