August 2024 Board Notes

Date:

08/13/2024

Attendance:

Board Attended: Alli Cassel, Sky Dunn, Kevin Ehrler, Alyssa Johnson, Christina Kramer, Hope Kronen, Bruce Levine, and Nick Nelson
Board Absent:
Observers: Allen Sanchez-Capers, Chelsea "Buttons" Lieser, Collin Ireland, Evan Miller, J.C. Horvath, Jessica Silver, Kaida Moran, Liz Spafford, Lori Fischer-Fairbanks, Samantha Cozort, Sherilyn W. Brown, JoAnn Blatchley, and Tristan Anderson

Notes:

Anime Twin Cities Board Meeting Minutes


August
13th, 2024
6:30 PM

Board Present - Alli Cassel, Sky Dunn, Kevin Ehrler, Alyssa Johnson, Christina Kramer, Hope Kronen, Bruce Levine, and Nick Nelson

Public – Allen Sanchez-Capers, Chelsea "Buttons" Lieser, Collin Ireland, Evan Miller, J.C. Horvath, Jessica Silver, Kaida Moran, Liz Spafford, Lori Fischer-Fairbanks, Samantha Cozort, Sherilyn W. Brown, JoAnn Blatchley, and Tristan Anderson

Agenda is available in the link in the description of the livestream, these meetings are counted for attendance for voting rights please comment your name in the chat and fill out the google form in order to gain voting rights.

We are putting the open session at the end of the meeting, so if you have questions you can put them in chat first, but we will wait till the end for questions so nothing gets lost in the chat log.

Agenda

  • Recap off cycle board actions and votes
    • We didn’t have any.
       
  • Planned Discussions from scheduled visiting parties/ATC Partners
     
    • Saint Paul - Nagasaki Sister City Committee
      • We have JoAnn Blatchley, President of the Saint Paul Nagasaki Sister City Committee (SPNSCC) here with us with a proposal for the ATC Board.
      • JoAnn provided information about the SPNSCC, its beginnings, purpose and their main event the Obon Celebration at Como Park, which ATC donated to, to help pay for the entertainment at the event.
      • Included below is the proposal that JoAnn prepared that was presented to the ATC Board and was read on the livestream:
         
        “Dear Christina and the ATC board,

        The Saint Paul – Nagasaki Sister City Committee (SPNSCC) is grateful for your generous donation towards the entertainment on the main stage at the Obon Celebration at Como Park on August 18. There will be traditional koto music and lots of energetic taiko drumming and dancing. Thank you so much for your donation.

        Going forward, SPNSCC is happy to have AnimeTwinCities as our fiscal sponsor for the mainstage entertainment at Obon. We propose that this relationship be revisited periodically and that either party can signal their intention to withdraw from this agreement by March of the calendar year of Obon. AnimeTwinCities will be credited in the program and by the stage emcee and may have a banner or sign indicating the same. We understand that ATC does not want to plan the program or hire the participants; that duty remains with SPNSCC. SPNSCC is delighted with this partnership, and we trust that ATC is also.
         

Sincerely,

JoAnn Blatchley, President

Saint Paul – Nagasaki Sister City Committee

August 13, 2024”
 

      • We are planning to have an ongoing donation, which will be flexible and will be looked at in March of each year (it was previously $5,000).
         
      • Motion to accept the proposal from SPNSCC
        Hope seconded
        All are in favor
        Motion passes
         

Coordinator Updates

  • Communications Coordinator Position Open
    • This is still open; this is someone to handle social media and a newsletter with stuff like the Obon Celebration as well as other events.
    • The Special Events Coordinator Position is also open. Heads up us visiting different conventions and events across the Midwest.
       
  • This weekend there is both Toshocon as well as the Obon Celebration, which are both events that we are sponsoring, Toshocon is a free library convention primarily for teens, but anyone can join.
     
  • Anime Detour – J.C.
    • Not a lot has happened since the last planning meeting those are all on the Anime Detour YouTube page.
    • They have been interviewing a ton, most departments will have heads. Most of the openings will be filled and we have also acquired staff and leadership. Things are progressing well stay tuned for more.

       
  • Finance – Sky
    • Sales this Month - 1,661.48
    • The total dollar amount in each of our accounts are as follows:
      • Business Checking - $341,105.70
      • Education Fund – $3,098.16
      • Business Market Rate Savings (Community Fund) - $14,506.30
    • Expenses this month - 11,177.26
       

15 Minute Break (If the preceding topics take little time, the board may vote to skip this)

Hope motion to skip
Seconded
All in Favor
Motion Passes
 

Current Month Board Topics

  • Charities Discussion
  • These are the 10 we are planning on donating $1,000 each, and these are all charities that ATC has donated to in the past.
     
  • Motion: Should we send $1,000 to each of these to charities to increase our charitable donations by 10K for this year to get back in the swing of donating our money?
    Hope Motions, Christina seconded.
    All in favor
    Motion Passes

 

  • Christina will send to Sky to process the payments and try to get that done this month. Hope – If there is a particular charity that would be a good fit to donate to please let us know.
     
  • We do have a Charities Coordinator position also open still

     
  • Contract Signing
  • For our different events, contracts need to be signed for many different things, J.C. had asked who has approval to sign contracts. From what we could find it is just the Chairman, but he would like others to be able to sign.
  • It could be good depending on the situation to have different people being able to sign the contract if they have more knowledge or expertise in the area, or if they are the ones negotiating the contracts
  • It would help to make things more efficient and to get stuff done sooner, like work shouldn’t stop just because we can’t get a signature from one person.
  • Buttons as acting Guest Head and Nichetta as Assistant Chair would be good positions / people to be able to sign contracts.
  • Could keep as just the chairman then beginning of the cycle, they can note who else should also be authorized to sign contracts and then we can revisit it each year. Would be good to have documentation at the board level for authorization.
  • We need to write it down as a policy, and then it should be uploaded to the shared drive with all ATC documents/policies.
  • Could we add any contract over x amount should get board agreement on it?
    Yep, that makes sense we can vote on it as an off-cycle action and go from there.


 

  • IT Discussion
  • Bruce went over his Information Technology Committee Proposal; this proposal has been pasted below:


 

    • “Information Technology Committee Proposal
    • Purpose: To assist Anime Twin Cities and their events with management of all IT resources.
    • Information Technology (IT) Coordinator: Charles Kirsch
    • Committee Members: Bruce Levine (Anime Detour Technology Services Department Head), Future ATC Event Tech/IT Department Heads, and any IT committee staff

 

    • Reporting Structure
    • The Information Technology committee will be a committee at the ATC level similar to our coordinator positions at the ATC level (Special Events, Communications, and Anime Detour Convention Chair(s)). The committee will have indirect reporting to any ATC Event (at this time only consists of Anime Detour) coordinator to assist with IT needs. The committee will consist of any staff who want to directly join the IT committee along with each ATC event Tech or IT department head for awareness to take any pertinent information to their event coordinator. 
    • During actual ATC events, if the IT Committee staff wants to assist they would then report to the Technology Services or IT Department Head of the respective event. If the IT Coordinator is working an event they become a sub-head of that respective Tech/IT department for the event.

 

    • Committee Responsibilities
    • The responsibilities of the Information Technology Committee will be to:
      • Assist with management of all IT platforms owned by Anime Twin Cities and their respective events.
        • Tasks can be delegated to the respective ATC Event Tech/IT Department Head by choice of the IT Coordinator.
      • Management of any servers, websites, and software as directed by the ATC Board and Event Coordinators (as needed).
      • Super administrator privileges for management of Google Workspace (or other productivity suite).
        • This may at times require helping the Staffing/Admin department with onboarding and creation of staff emails and access to Google Workspace.
      • Any other duties or tasks that the IT coordinator”


 

  • This is being tabled for now, so Charles has a chance to review the document, which also needs to be forwarded to him.

     
  • Treasurer Position Discussion
  • Sky will be going back to school, so she won’t be able to help with the next fiscal year.
  • Christina has put out feelers, asked her husband in finance, and asked others, hasn’t gotten anywhere yet.
  • We need to figure out how to make it a paid position before Sky can’t work it anymore.
  • We could hire someone to do all the outside of con things no problem, the at con work may be more difficult, is that something the chair and vicechair could take over?
  • Christina will come with some options as well as look into how we would go about hiring someone for treasurer, which we’ll plan to talk about at the September meeting.
     

Open Session (up to 30 minutes)

  • Any members of the community can bring new business to discuss with the board
     
  • “In the past the members had a say in choosing the charities we gave to. How were these picked this year. Did the ATC board choose, or was there an email that I missed?”
  • Christina – We haven’t donated in a while and wasn’t sure what the history was, she went through the donations we made and put those all in a list and picked 10 she thought best fit our current values. We can look into doing more, and then next year for sure we can take charity suggestions, if you want to email the board about a charity you think we should donate to you can.
  • Hope – We don’t have a lot of written guidelines for the past, there has been some learning curves, but if we have in the past sent out emails asking for charities that is something we can document and do moving forward.
     
  • Sky let the board know about her departure last month.
     
  • We were provided helpful information on how PacSet handles their bookkeeping.

 

  • We did not do the charities discussion in May since we didn’t have time because we were busy with other matters, which is why we are getting around to it this month.
     

Open Board Projects/Future Meeting discussions

  • Bylaws Update
  • Policy Updates
  • Bans
  • Coordinator Reviews
  • Board Training
  • ATC Policies Document
  • Trademark renewal (due by December)


Motion to adjourn
Seconded
Motion Passes
 

7:24pm meeting adjourned.


Please contact atcboard@animetwincities.org or atc_secretary@animetwincities.org if you would like to be added to the agenda for discussion items.