Anime Twin Cities Board Meeting Minutes
October 10th, 2023
6:30pm
Board Present - Alli Cassel, Chelsea “Buttons” Lieser, Kristen Loth, Nick Nelson, Lorien Paulson, and Matt Paulson
Public – Samantha Cozort, Kevin Ehrler, Amy Johnson, and Troy MacDonald
Recap off cycle board actions and votes – Maintained access to infrastructure at the board level for confidentiality reasons.
We got a subpoena at the Detour level brought up to us, Matt had to provide records requested, everything is good on that front.
Open Session (First 30 minutes) – Nothing
Planned Discussions from scheduled visiting parties/ATC Partners – Nothing
Charitable Giving Requests – Nothing
Coordinator Updates
Anime Detour (Budget for 2024 Fiscal Year)
Troy-
We are finishing up with the budgets on board approvals, we will then move to hotel block stuff, a lot of that is in process, shifting that to the public side.
Room parties just opened, hitting some of those familiar benchmarks. Hotel blocks are the biggest benchmark coming up in 2023. The next largest deadline is for programming and for the programming book in early 2024. We will start then with staffing levels at the tail end of the year.
We have our one staff meeting a month and then after the holidays we switch to two meetings a month. Working with departments on any needs they have on the hotel side, exhibit hall, logistics, programming , main stage, etc.
Budget proposal:
(Shown on screen, can see finer details in the recording)
Ignore department wide 3% and tech cut columns.
The grand total would be $440,000 even, that gives the best operating budget to put the event on in 2024.
That represents a 90K increase from last year, a 25% increase. Realizing that is a significant increase, but in the last two years attendance has increased 33%, so some of the figures are adjusting to meet attendee needs.
Artist alley, exhibit hall, IT, logistics etc. had nominal increases or stayed the same. Merchandise cost isn’t as large due to the initiative last year, the anime detour plushie.
Our Eventeny, we could lock into a contract with them for a number of years.
Tech cost is up at least 20% until we starting locking the contracts we won’t know what percentage that will be even if the equipment need is relatively the same as before.
VolCon cost increase is 13%, with nearly each meal we ran out of the meal food sooner than they wanted to, since the point is feeding volunteers then we fell short of that goal so it’s a necessary increase.
Staffing is a new department this year, it will make up 11% of the budget, since it’s a new department but it has still been reflected in previous budgets, but some of the stuff would be providing staff badges which is a perk of staff.
Last year was the first year that in our 20-year history we were able to provide staff with hotel rooms and we will expand on that this year. This was a new cost last year and an increased cost this year. That line item will see an increase, housing and additional perks for staff will represent 11% of total operating budget. Important to provide for staff food and housing.
Kept facilities cost down with our room attrition rate.
Our guests costs have continued to increase, they would and should since that is a draw and brings attendees to the convention and that has a representative cost, the cost of bringing that talent and the contracts associated.
We have not had a dedicated accessibility department, we had initiatives before that addressed accessibility, but we have kind of fallen off on that. We felt it was important to establish a department for accessibility and inclusivity so we have the sorts of things in place to address the needs of all attendees, it will have some initial start-up costs and will have annual costs going forward, but it was necessary since we have continued to grow.
The last two years we were able to brings some costs down considerably in the safety department switching from a law enforcement presence to a collaborative process with the security team so that’s a significant decrease in cost.
With Eventeny we have gained the flexibility for staff management, mapping management, and just the use of Eventeny in 2023, brought our walk up line wait down from 5 hours to 45 mins or less that alone was a significant value to our reputation, brand and attendee experience.
That is a lot of information, but it’s important to talk about the operating process and the growth period we are in. That growth has really impacted the cost increase.
No questions from the board or from chat.
Buttons motions to pass the budget.
Kristen seconded
Motion passes
The budget is approved.
Communications – None
Finance
Current account balances are:
Business Checking: $287,575.45
Education Fund: $3,096.75
Savings: $14,499.69
ATC (Budget for 2024 Fiscal Year)
Matt-
This isn’t as comprehensive as the Anime Detour budget, but here is the breakdown of the 2024 budget:
Ongoing Charity – 5k
Storage Locker – 15k
Insurance – 3.5K
Community Engagement Fund – 5k
Grand Total – 28.5K
Kristen- It makes sense to have a discretionary fund with consideration to what other boards have done based off her experience with other boards.
Motion to pass the ATC budget – Kristen
Alli – seconded
Motion passes, budget for the financial year 2024 is now approved.
Scheduled break – Skipped with no objections
Board Topics
Nothing new currently.
Opened to the floor.
Motion to adjourn – Buttons
Seconded, Lorien and Alli
6:58pm meeting adjourned.