Date: October 13, 2020 – 7pm PST

Location: Virtual (ask for the password in slack)

Attendees

• Chris O’Sullivan
• Rachel McCrafty
• Sabrina Merlo
• Cela Smith
• Steven Sheffield
• Patrick Safinya-Davies
• Matt Cridland
• Nicolas Chia
• Angelina Mia

Minutes

• Call to Order
• Attendance
• Approval of the Minutes from the previous meeting (1min) – APPROVED
• Approval of this meeting’s Agenda (1 min) – APPROVED
• New Business
• Welcome Angelina
• Welcome Nico
• Board SOO Analysis and Q&A from SOO (September SOO)
  • • • • Delivering on BLM promises:
          • Cela: 4 Anti-racism workshops this month, 2 have happened.
          • Cela: A lot of the attendees are makerspaces from other parts of the country (<–rad!)
          • Rachel: feels good about the number of people attending the workshops (around 15-18), not as good about the fact that attendees are almost all female. Rachel raised the issue in #general and has received some interesting responses.
          • Sabrina: how can we support Rachel’s effort to balance out the audience? (Engage with Rachel’s slack post about the issue, share info about the workshops to a diverse audience on social media.)
          • Rachel: more excellent news: the New Jersey Public Library plans to incorporate the workshop into their professional development framework and has put it into their schedule. 
          • Rachel shared a link to the Abolitionist Toolkit of Everyday Resources in the SOO. Abolitionism is particularly relevant in California, which is currently using (and has historically used) slave labor to fight wildfires.
  • Supporting Sustainability
    • Cela: we are reducing single person dependencies by sharing knowledge via workshops and wiki articles.
    • Rachel: it would be enlightening and meaningful for members to learn what the board does aside from board meetings.
    • Sabrina: board members, particularly new ones, would benefit from more insight into staff activities.
  • Results from the business model discussion
    • Sabrina: board check-ins have been great, but moving forward it would be great to produce more actionable ideas for recruiting and fundraising. 
  • Financial Update
    • Sabrina: it’s great to see the new financial details provided in the latest SOO.
    • Steven: we generated more member revenue than expected in September, that is sweet.
    • Cela: what projects can we use the Relief Fund for aside from the PPE program?
    • Steven: 40% of the PPP loan can be used for administrative costs, the rest needs to go to labor.
    • Steven: we are on track for loan forgiveness (not the full amount, but a decent percentage of it.
    • Rachel: It looks like we have more money than we actually do because a chunk is allocated to staffing/labor (sewists, for instance).
    • Cela: is the budget replenished monthly, quarterly, or annually? (it is annual)
  • Business model discussion
    • • • • Sabrina: board check-ins were great, but moving forward it would be great to produce more actionable ideas for recruiting and fundraising. 
    • Rachel: we should analyze our existing income streams and determine what actions need to be taken in those areas before we come up with new ones.
      • • • Sabrina: we should determine methods for reviewing the current income streams that will serve that purpose.
          • Rachel: AMS is member-supported, which can mean different things from a business model perspective.
          • Rachel: one of the implications of member support for Ace is that our value proposition differs from person to person. It’s not just “I want tool access”. 
          • Rachel: turnover is expensive. Current performance relies on high contributing volunteers. This is not sustainable and is artificial. We should calculate the true cost of that contribution when doing financial planning at a fair market wage.
          • Steven: maybe we should review the programs we are holding to make sure we want to keep them all. What resources and tangible benefits do we get from each program?
          • Nico: pay to play model (tiered access based on how much a member pays) is interesting, he needs to know more to make a recommendation.
          • Rachel: culturally, pay to play doesn’t fit well with AMS.
          • Chris: agreed.
          • Sabrina: witnessed the issues with pay to play introduction to Maker Faire but thinks sometimes hard choices need to be made in the service of making a profit.
          • Chris: it’s okay to increase prices as long as everyone can participate. We don’t want to break the social bank. 
          • AMS was founded with the idea that the economic accessibility would be baked in, per rhe mission. . The rates were artificially low for a number of years. It turned out not to attract lower-income folks. Eventually when rates were raised there was some grumbling, but only 10 members were lost. And the next month saw an increase in membership revenue in spite of decreased member count.
    • We lost 50% of our membership in May. We have the opportunity to rebuild our membership in any way we like.
      • • • Meeting with The Crucible will be an opportunity to learn the secret sauce.
          • Rachel: it’s possible to introduce events that are targeted toward an audience with more spending money.
    • Rachel: we know we have an active program when 1) we are running out of supplies and 2) people are complaining 🙂
• Comments and Announcements
  • Upcoming Meetings:
    • Next Board Meeting: Tuesday, November 17th, 7pm – 8:30pm (Contact: Cela)
    • Next Board check-in/working meeting: October 29th

Meeting Adjourned

Agenda

• Call to Order
• Attendance
• Approval of the Agenda (1 min)
• Approval of the Minutes (Sept 15 minutes) (1min)

New Business

1. 1. 1. Welcome Angelina
      2. Board SOO analysis and Q&A from SOO (September SOO)
      3. Results from business model discussion
         1. (if time, can do an income stream rubric exercise for any proposed model)

Old Business

1.

Comments and Announcements

Meetings to Schedule before Adjournment:

• Next Board Meeting date and contact person (responsible for calendar, agenda) >> ASSIGN to temporary volunteer.
• Next Board check-in/working meeting (meet at midpoint between Board meetings)
• SOO & Key Metrics exercise – there is a lot of information that has been added to the SOO over time, and its worth revisiting the information we are tracking and the format and organization of the report to ensure we are getting what we need from it. We need board and officers input for this, so find time in month where good number of people can attend.

Adjournment