February 2024 Board Notes

Date:

02/13/2024

Attendance:

Board Attended: Alli Cassel, Alyssa Johnson, Christina Kramer, Bruce Levine, Chelsea “Buttons” Lieser, Kristen Loth, and Nick Nelson
Board Absent:
Observers: Sherilyn Brown, Samantha Cozort, Kevin Ehrler, Brittany Hecker, Jerry Keohen, and Troy MacDonald

Notes:

Anime Twin Cities Board Meeting Minutes

February
13th, 2024
6:30 PM

Board Present - Alli Cassel, Alyssa Johnson, Christina Kramer, Bruce Levine, Chelsea “Buttons” Lieser, Kristen Loth, and Nick Nelson
Public – Sherilyn Brown, Samantha Cozort, Kevin Ehrler, Brittany Hecker, Jerry Keohen, and Troy MacDonald

Recap off cycle board actions and votes.

  • This is Christina’s first meeting as President!
  • We did an intro of everyone on the call, and Brittany is our communications officer and noted that there are still two open coordinator positions.

Open Session (First 30 minutes)

  • Any members of the community can bring new business to discuss with the board.
    • Bylaws and Coordinator Changes
      • We want to investigate updating our bylaws as they were last updated in March of 2021. We are also looking into creating the role of chief ethics officer to help prevent any future conflicts of interest. This could be done by anyone on the board, but they need to be a neutral party.
      • We also want to address making the treasurer an appointed position and not an elected one. Additional vetting for this position is important. Kim is currently the VP and Treasurer, and her votes rights would split to go to the VP role and ideally the Treasurer would then not have voting rights as an appointed position.
      • It would be nice to have a coordinator or position like chairman or vice chair come in to be the deciding vote if it comes to that to break ties. We discussed if there is a point to coordinators that are appointed not having voting rights and if that is something we should change when we next update the bylaws.

Planned Discussions from scheduled visiting parties/ATC Partners

  • None

Coordinator Updates

  • Anime Detour - Troy
    • We are pushing towards the end of the deadlines.
    • The largest item is getting stuff ready for the program guide to do final proofing and get those guides to the printer and have them ready.
    • We are working on having items in place before being on site, final deliveries and communicating between departments to put together schedules.
    • Continuing to put together 2025 and beyond we are plugging in those pieces for other year events.
       
  • Communications - Brittany
    • Brittany has no official updates, she just started posting content this meeting on Facebook and the Detour staff chats, and she’d like to promote these monthly meetings a week in advance as a reminder. Please send anything you have or items from other parties/orgs for her to share on social media. There should be a lot of Anime Detour content to share on the ATC platform.
    • Kristen noted that we should also promote any other events that we help with whether it is events that we sponsor and donate to or events where we are attending/volunteering as representatives of the Board. This would be a good opportunity to share these events on social media when there is more downtime after Anime Detour.
    • Brittany is also planning on having the ATC page follow a lot more relevant groups, orgs, and non-profits since there is very little that ATC is currently following.
  • Finance
    • The total dollar amount in each of our accounts are as follows:
      • Business Checking - $398,290.24
      • Education Fund - $3,098.01
      • Business Market Rate Savings - $14,505.58
         

15 Minute Break (If the preceding topics take little time, the board may vote to skip this)- skipped

Current Month Board Topics

  • UPS Box
    • Alli shared with the Board a map of the local UPS locations since we need to decide on a new PO box address with our current box expiring this summer and since it’s not in a very convenient area. It would also be nice to have a stable street address for the Board.
    • There are 3 different sizes, small would be $32, medium would be $40, and large would be $50.
    • If we bought up to 6 months, 1 month would be free. If we had the PO box for a year, 3 months would be free. We are unsure if there is a bigger discount for terms longer than a year, which could be better since we wouldn’t need to bring up renewing the PO box that frequently.
    • Sky as our incoming treasurer should be set up with a key and we should use our treasurer card for the PO box, and for additional members we can get an additional key each for $5.
    • There isn’t much mail going to the current PO box, and with us now using Eventeny we do not utilize our PO box for group registrations anymore.
    • We will be reaching out to Sky on which UPS location would be the most convenient for her and then will target next meeting to have our decision on the PO box.
       
  • Alcohol Policy
    • We have revised our Alcohol policy, which will now be:

      “Alcohol may be provided by ATC for approved events, including the industry mixer and other similar industry events. When alcohol is provided by ATC, no member or attendee under legal age may take part in consumption of any alcoholic product. Those who choose to consume any alcohol take full responsibility for the consumption and their own actions. Further policies and limitations surrounding events where alcohol is provided will be under the scope of the coordinator running said event.”
       
    • This will give coordinators more autonomy for events like industry mixers to make their own decisions on alcohol and won’t require the coordinator to get express permission from the board to allow alcohol at appropriate events (e.g. the industry mixer or future possible adult events like a sake tasting).

      Motion to approve
      Seconded
      Motion passes

      This policy change will get updated on the ATC website.
       
  • Future Board Topics
    • Coordinator discussions (updating or consolidating positions) – Brittany volunteered to help with the open roles / partially filling a single vacant role if needed.
    • Bylaws update should take place in April or later if people are too busy/exhausted right after Anime Detour.
       

Motion to adjourn
Seconded
 

7:08pm meeting adjourned.
 

Please contact atcboard@animetwincities.org or atc_secretary@animetwincities.org if you would like to be added to the agenda for discussion items.