October 26 Board Meeting Agenda & Minutes

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Zoom: Zoom 7PM

Call to Order – called to order at 7:13pm
Attendance – Cela Smith, Rachel Sadd, Steven Sheffield, Matt Cridland
Approval of the Minutes from July 19 (1min) – approved unanimously by Rachel Sadd and Cela Smith, 7:14pm
Adjourned at 8:10pm

All the new awesome workshops – thanks Rachel and officers!
Outreach events like First Friday coming back. Everyone in leadership helped with October FF 🙂
Matt keeping the software lights on
Loan perseverance by Steven

notes are paraphrased

Cela: wanted to celebrate the officer team’s work since the four of us don’t meet too often

notes are paraphrased

Cela: What is the viability of a celebration?
Rachel: Is it development-focused, celebration-focused, or both? We could include tours over to space, stories of pieces/makers, and using those to inspire potential donors to give.
Cela: What could the timeline be?
Rachel: Spring is best for both planning time and outdoor access. And it could be done cheaply in a park, but with a sacrifice of the upscale feel for a cocktail night. Other options might include New Parkway, even with a corporate sponsor to offset costs

notes are paraphrased

Rachel: potential need to add metrics showing both gross and net gain of members on a monthly basis. If the report only shows the net, it is discouraging to look at. Currently, the people leaving are mostly departing for employment and financial reasons rather than culture mismatches
Cela: since our Fall 2021 goal fell short (understandably due to Delta), what’s the Winter 2021 goal?
Rachel: in the MailChimp recent newsletter, new goals were established at +20 new members and raising $7500. However, the click-through rate was disappointing, even though the open rate was well over 50%
Steven: could we do something to take the asks from the Mailchimp newsletter and get them on the website?
Rachel: what about modifying the Member Contribution Portal?
Rachel and Matt to meet to modify Member Contribution Portal in late October
Cela: and can donations be done in a more frictionless manner?
Steven: and I can use GiveLively to reduce the number of stripes and/or build digital wallet acceptability?
Steven will revamp donate page in late October

group discussion: workshops are going well as a general recruiting tactic, it’s relatively low-cost thanks to most of our instructors being amazing volunteers, and the revenue we bring in is well worth the effort and material costs

notes are paraphrased

Cela: is researching ways to do this, but Board Match may be defunct in the Bay Area, and Volunteer Match has been a relatively low success in the past. Could we tap membership (with the ask coming from Cela) in a way that doesn’t sound desperate and doesn’t overdraft the high-contributing members?
Rachel: the most successful tactic she’s seen is a direct ask with a story that leverages or creates the relationship between the person and the potential Board Member. Perhaps we (the four of us) could use this tactic, draft a story, and seek these asks from people we think could be great members.
Cela: interested in this (recruiting/pitching) for personal/professional development, so this sounds like a useful move forward on many fronts
Rachel: LinkedIn could also be a useful digital platform to use that we haven’t in the past