April 2025 Board Notes
Date:
04/08/2025
Attendance:
Board Attended: Alli Cassel, Kevin Ehrler, Alyssa Johnson, Hope Kronen, Christina Kramer, Bruce Levine and Nick Nelson
Board Absent: Jeannette Wallen
Observers: Evan Miller, J.C. Horvath, Jeremiah Keohen, Jessica Silver, Lori Fischer-Fairbanks, Makaila Kozitza, Michael Anderson, Samantha Cozort, Sean Cooper and Sherilyn W. Brown
Notes:
Anime Twin Cities Board Meeting Minutes
April 8th, 2025
7:00 PM
Board Present - Alli Cassel, Kevin Ehrler, Alyssa Johnson, Hope Kronen, Christina Kramer, Bruce Levine, Nick Nelson
Board Absent - Jeannette Wallen
Public – Evan Miller, J.C. Horvath, Jeremiah Keohen, Jessica Silver, Lori Fischer-Fairbanks, Makaila Kozitza, Michael Anderson, Samantha Cozort, Sean Cooper and Sherilyn W. Brown
Agenda is available in the link in the description of the livestream, these meetings are counted for attendance for voting rights please comment your name in the chat and fill out the google form in order to gain voting rights.
Agenda
- Recap off cycle board actions and votes
- We voted to donate duplicate board game inventory to Anime Fargo for their charity auction.
- We voted to allow that to happen.
Motion to ratify the vote
Hope seconded
All in favor (All present board members voted in favor)
Motion passes
- Planned Discussions from scheduled visiting parties/ATC Partners
Coordinator Updates
- Coordinator Position Open: Charities
-
- Christina sent a reminder email to AUSM, we signed up to do an event in May and we haven’t heard back on that yet.
- Coordinator Position Open: Special Events
- Cherry Blossom Festival May 3rd
- Anime Detour – J.C. Horvath
- We had a convention, his experience isn’t the most objective one being the chairman, but from what he has heard from staff and attendees it seems to be a great success, very proud of what everyone did, and we have a year to prepare for 2026.
- Bruce – If we do go into negotiating for additional space just to get it on the radar can we get the cost difference on having it Thursday – Saturday versus Thursday – Sunday, for the second venue if we do that?
- J.C. – We can, there are a lot of questions right now so he can’t give a good answer at the moment, but he is well aware of the benefits of extending our days if that is a possibility.
- Finance – Christina (since Jeannette is out-of-state)
- Next month we will do our annual financial report.
- Dollar amounts:
-
- Business Checking: 345,341.79
- Education Fund: 3,098.37
- Business Market Rate Savings (Community Fund): 14,507.26
- Communications - Makaila Kozitza
15 Minute Break (If the preceding topics take little time, the board may vote to skip this)
Motion to Skip
Seconded – Hope
All in Favor (All of the present Board)
Motion Passes
Current Month Board Topics
- Election Preparation
- We want people to email us by May 1st if they would like to run for the board (atcboard@animetwincities.org)
- Postmortem discussion
- Meeting attendance is how we determine if you are a voting member or not. Around five years ago the elections took place at the postmortem so it wouldn’t count for attendance rights but that changed a while ago since we have it so they cannot be held at the same time. We were not given attendance last year from the postmortem.
- We had a discussion on whether it would make sense to include the postmortem for attendance purposes. Initially we leaned towards including it but after further discussion and looking into the bylaws and it not fitting the criteria we decided against it and that it will not count towards attendance.
- Bruce – if we aren’t streaming what deadline would the chair team like any feedback sent by?
- J.C. – Standby on that, we would like to have a remote option, but we are figuring out the logistics.
- This would be more of a private meeting like Zoom.
- J.C. – Sending an email to the chair team around that time also works for providing feedback.
- For applying just state that you are interested and then we will follow-up for more information, we have three spots open. Please reach out to atcboard@animetwincities.org
- Coordinator Review Progress Update - Nick
- This is a work in progress, last Monday I sent out an email for self-assessments and goals for the following year from the Anime Detour Chairman and the ATC Communications Coordinator, I also sent out emails asking for peer reviews from the appropriate parties (department heads, the chair team, board members).
- I have gotten a fair number of responses back so far and will continue to reach out and collect feedback until April 14th at which point we will work on putting together our comprehensive assessment.
- Christina – For Department heads sending a response is optional, for Board members it is not, since this is the job.
Open Session (up to 30 minutes)
- Any members of the community can bring new business to discuss with the board
- We have started a new rule, if you have a question, please state your first and last name and then ask your question.
Open Board Projects/Future Meeting discussions
- Policy Updates
- Annual Financial Report (May)
- Board Training (In Progress)
- Bruce- Do we want to put any prioritization into getting training done to have a better understanding of fundraising and also working towards potentially seeking grants to help offset any budgetary increases or with the current political situation any money we can get to help offset costs which is always a good thing, and I know the non-profit ready where we did the essential training has classes on those topics.
- Christina – Feels weird applying for grants since we donate money so why are we accepting donations to then donate it out but maybe that is not the point.
- Bruce – The point is to help to put on an even better event and maybe there are other organizations that support ATC’s mission.
- Christina – We were going to write a board training policy after we had everyone take the essentials training.
- Hope – Totally onboard looking into and seeing what the non-profit ready website has.
- Bruce – Going into the next fiscal year if there is anything we want to put on a wish list or would like to develop that would be great to have listed.
- Hope – They have fundraising essentials and grant seeking essentials, this seems like a good resource for us, we could follow-up in June which would give us time to figure out which modules we would like to go through.
- Rental Request
- There hasn’t been any additional feedback or information sent on the rental request policy, but the notes that have the detailed conversation on the rental request policy from a couple months ago have been resent.
Motion to adjourn
Seconded (Hope)
All in favor (All of the present Board)
Motion Passes
7:24 pm 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.