Anime Twin Cities Board Meeting Minutes
Septermber 12th, 2023
6:30pm
Board Present - Alli Cassel, Chelsea “Buttons” Lieser, Nick Nelson, Lorien Paulson, and Matt Paulson
Public – Kevin Ehrler, Amy Johnson, and Troy MacDonald
Matt attended ToshoCon which went well and had lots of high-quality programming. It was a great use of our funds, and we would be happy to support them in the future.
Recap off cycle board actions and votes - Nothing
Open Session (First 30 minutes) – Nothing
Planned Discussions from scheduled visiting parties/ATC Partners – Nothing
Charitable Giving Requests – Nothing
Coordinator Updates
Anime Detour
Troy-
We went to the pizza luce block party. Matt and Ali (Vice Chair) were there. We had lots of good engagement and we brought over our bean bag toss equipment. Had a table at 2D Con the same weekend as the library event where Matt was. Both of those went very well. We have Anime Fargo coming up where we are tabling this weekend. Buttons is going out there.
We have plenty of stuff coming up, these months are busy before the end of the year. We are in the early parts of budgeting, helping department heads with proposals and we are waiting to receive them and go over them before presenting them to the board. We are switching to the next fiscal year next month. We are working with the departments with specific room blocks and staffing room blocks getting those setup with hotel partners and getting the links out whether to the public or to department heads to send out to vendors and other parties.
Outside of that, we are working on additional contracts for future years. We are looking at more space at the Millenium. We did a tour of the Minneapolis convention center.
We will have some guest announcements and updates on merchandise and the ambassador squad.
Internal staffing updates, we are working with the staffing department that has come on in recent months. We are updating the handbooks and looping-in the newer staff.
Matt-
Should we expect a budget which we will go over next meeting?
Troy-
Yes, the department heads thanks to Kim and Sky got last year’s budget, what they asked for, received, and spent so they should be able to get a proposed budget together. The executive team will then go over those proposals once we get a number from the treasurers, we will work at getting the total of those budgets within the allotted number and then will bring that number to the board at next month’s October meeting. We will then ask for the funds and let the board make that decision. We have several newer department heads who the executive team asked if they need any help with their budgeting.
More of an impact internally, but we did some shifts of a few departments under different division heads to reorganize the structure so those who worked closer together were linked. Not many departments have changed who they will directly report do but some have. The executive team philosophy behind this is that we don’t want them to directly report to one person or Troy but instead work with the main point of contact who will communicate with the executive team.
Brittany, a vice chair could bring an issue to the exec team then the exec team could make a decision and then bring it back to the group.
Discussion at the team level happens with the whole team, so it isn’t as critical who they are exactly reporting too.
Communications – None
Finance
Current account balances are:
Business Checking: $286,583.05
Education Fund: $3,096.37
Savings: $14,497.90
We are financially healthy.
Scheduled break – Skipped with no objections
Board Topics
Website overhaul
Work on this item is actively going-on.
Bylaw updates
Matt is still drafting language on that. After next month Matt will be more available and hopefully it’ll be ready for the October meeting.
The next meeting is October 10th.
Board still has one open position. If anyone wishes to apply, please email the board.
6:43pm meeting adjourned.