May 2023 Board Notes

Date:

05/09/2023

Attendance:

Board Attended: Alli Cassel, John Hermanstorfer, Chelsea Lieser, Kristen Loth, Nick Nelson, and Matt Paulson
Board Absent:
Observers: Kevin Ehrler, Troy MacDonald, and Lorien Paulson

Notes:

Anime Twin Cities Board Meeting Minutes
May 9, 2023
6:30pm

Board Present - Alli Cassel, John Hermanstorfer, Chelsea Lieser, Kristen Loth, Nick Nelson, and Matt Paulson

Public – Kevin Ehrler, Troy MacDonald, and Lorien Paulson

Meeting agenda was approved, motion passes.

April meeting minutes is approved.

  1. Recap off cycle board actions and votes
    • Resignation of Tristan Anderson, Appointment of Matthew Paulson as acting President.
      1. There was no special election due to how close the general election was.
    • Update of Corporate address was approved.
      1. The secretary of state requires us to have a physical address. This is currently changed to Matt’s home address, which can be changed in the future.
         
  2. Open Session (First 30 minutes)
    • Any members of the community can bring new business to discuss with the board.
    • Positions up for voting:
      1. Matt Paulson as President
      2. Alli Cassel and Lorien Paulson are candidates for members at large.
        1. Lorien- “What qualifications do you have for the position?”
          She has experience as a legal professional, could ensure that the Board is taking legally appropriate actions, for any rules or laws in our periphery, she could give another perspective. She has been a staff member for Anime Detour. She started in security / safety and did that for 5 years. Worked one year in the hotel department. Had to pull back after law school, she wanted to be here, to help contribute to the anime scene in the Twin Cities. She looks forward to serving.
        2. Matt- “What are you planning on doing / what is your vision for ATC?”
          ATC used to be big on charities and social outreach activities. After COVID-19, ATC primarily acted as the body to approve the budgets for Anime Detour. ATC should be an entity that stands apart and has its own goals and accomplishments. We could do that. Matt has experience running boards around this size since the age of 18. As a previous parliamentarian he can run meetings efficiently and should do an adequate if not good job as president.
        3. Alli has been on the Board for two years and has been Detour staff for 11 years. She has been attending Detour since the beginning. She hopes she has done a good enough job to earn a 2nd term, to represent what is best for the org.

           
  3. Planned Discussions from scheduled visiting parties/ATC Partners – None
     
  4. General Election
    • The voter list has been finalized; we just need to email out the voters.
    • There are 25 voters.
    • Voting will start at 8pm tonight and will end at 8pm tomorrow, May 10th.
       
  5. Charitable Giving Requests
    • Saint Paul Public Library Request - $2500
      1. Would be their 7th event, ToshoCon had over 350 attendees last year. It is a free one-day event that will take place in August.
      2. The total cost to put on everything according to what was sent would be $5500, they are asking us for $2500.
      3. They have been one of our biggest donors for teenage programing since they have helped with providing manga for reading at Anime Detour and we have a good working relationship with them.
      4. We should approve the $2500 that is requested and then if that gets matched, we can kick in the remaining $500 to make our total contribution $3000 fully funding their $5500 goal.
      5. By approving $2500 now, that gives them the freedom to start getting to work on the event.
      6. We are planning to donate $2500 with a max donation being $3000. The motion passes.
      7. We originally budgeted for an office, which we can change to charitable donations, which is applicable to this month’s two charitable requests.
         
    • Saint Paul - Nagasaki Sister City Committee (SPNSCC) Cherry Blossom Festival
      1. We did the cherry blossom festival last year; they would like financial support from us again.
      2. We gave $1k in the past, we have an ongoing relationship with them.
      3. The only possible issue would be helping to run a table since the Anime Detour planning meeting would be at the same, would need to see if table support is requested.
      4. We motion to give the $1k we previously gave, seconded. The motion passes
         

 

Coordinator Updates
 

  1. Anime Detour
    • Last Friday we opened early bird registration, since we couldn’t do Sunday registration at con. We are seeing a good turnout.
    • Lots of activity on the executive end with opening the cycle, we are restructuring on the marketing end and seeing how we handle sponsorships like a sponsorship deck. We will be looking at potential space allocation, we have some empty spaces where we could do some repurposing.
    • We still have our executive post-mortem where we will use the data, we have from the staff wrap up and data that IT and admin have from the online external survey. We will plan to disseminate this information to the various departments to look at and go over how the previous cycle went and to plan for the next cycle.
    • Another big thing is we are looking at where we are at for hotels, in terms of what we have for room allocation with various nights either at the Hyatt or at other hotels. We are looking at potential additional space at the Millennium.
    • The next big convention wide item for department heads is budgets, we plan on getting budgets from the departments in September to deliver to the Board in October.
    • A new department was created. Buttons did all the department head work being an ambassador for all the external ambassador road trips, ad swaps and room swaps and handling it when they visit us at Detour. We wanted to make that an official department this cycle which we did.
    • We have a few other vacancies to fill.
    • We are having a technology restructuring; a proposal was made for the restructuring of our tech department and how it works with our IT department. Tech will continue to have their normal department head then they will have sub heads in charge of different areas. Technology services department head is the new title. There will be an IT subhead that handles streaming and streaming services. All the roles would be filled by people we already have. The main purpose of tech services is to be the cat herder and contract handler since that has been an issue in the past. This is more to hold people accountable and to make it more specialized, tasks are assigned to specific people. We are trying to make sure that everyone’s role is clear and that all the job descriptions match up.
    • We are looking into a charity ball at the Millennium.
       
  2. Communications – None
     
  3. Finance
    • Kim wants to add Sky to the account, this may require our action. We think we should let Kim add people who she feels are necessary to add to the account. We trust the treasurer with the finances, if she trusts them then it should be fine.
    • We motioned for Kim to add people to the account that are necessary, this is approved.
    • Business Checking – 298,468.13
    • Education Fund – 3,094.81
    • Business Market Rate Savings 14,490.58
       

7:02pm meeting adjourned.