September 2025 Board Notes

Date:

09/09/2025

Attendance:

Board Attended: Bruce Levine, Christina Kramer, Hope Kronen, Jeannette Wallen, Kevin Ehrler, Lori Fischer-Fairbanks and Nick Nelson
Board Absent:
Observers: Alli Cassel, Michael Nicchetta, Makaila Kozitza, and Sherilyn W. Brown

Notes:

Anime Twin Cities Board Meeting Minutes



September 9th, 2025
7:00 PM

Board Present – Bruce Levine, Christina Kramer, Hope Kronen, Jeannette Wallen, Kevin Ehrler, Lori Fischer-Fairbanks and Nick Nelson

Board Absent -

Public – Alli Cassel, Michael Nicchetta, Makaila Kozitza, 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
     
    • Ratify Rental Policy Vote
       
      • We voted on the new rental request policy by email, so we need to ratify that vote.
         

Motion to ratify the vote

Second - Hope

All those in attendance approved

Motion passes
 

  • Planned Discussions from scheduled visiting parties/ATC Partners
     
    • None

       

Coordinator Updates
 

  • Finance – Jeannette Wallen
     
    • Fiscal Year End
       
      • If there are any more receipts for the last con cycle please send to treasurer@animedetour.com our year end is at the end of September then we start the new cycle and the receipts start for next year.
         
    • Dollar amounts:
       
        • Business Checking: 332,773.33
        • Education Fund: 3,098.50
        • Business Market Rate Savings (Community Fund): 14,507.87

 

  • Anime Detour – J.C. Horvath (Michael Nicchetta Filled In)
     
    • Big Detour announcement, budgets are due next week for all departments so then the chair team will meet and go over all the budgets and then the finalized budgets will be sent to the board which will be before the next board meeting so we can go over it and the approval process.
       
    • Nicchetta and Buttons are going through the staff handbook policy; it should be done by the end of this week.


 

  • Charities – Jacob Warner (Absent, Christina filled-in)
     
    • JASM Gala
       
      • We offered tickets to be in the silent auction so we should at least do the tickets again, would love the charity coordinator go, but he has stepped back a bit, but we will see if someone else can go. It is November 15th.
         
      • Hope could potentially go and Makaila said she could help
         
    • Still need to work on the spreadsheet to get the donations sent out, Christina and Nick will work on that for Jacob.


 

  • Communications – Makaila Kozitza
     
    • Nothing new to update, been doing communications for the events in September.
       
    • Bruce, thank you for getting the updated logo on YT that was the last thing we needed to get switched over.
       
  • Special Events – Alli Cassel
     
    • Toshocon (Christina)
       
      • We donated to Toshocon a while ago and we had a date but everything evaporated what happened was the cities computer system got hacked, so they were not able to do anything for a long time but it has now been rescheduled for October 4th, we should be able to have a table to represent Detour, could help out/volunteer, don’t know if we have anything else on October 4th. This will get up into the special events server shortly, so we have information on that to help out.
         
    • Anime Fargo
       
      • We could use at least one more person for the table there, 26th through the 28th that same weekend.
         
    • Otaku Fest at Brühaven
       
      • Brewery day, for those in the Special Events group Alli just sent a form for the table we will have there. She will let that go out to the greater ATC staffing group after those in Special Events get to that. Will need some volunteers to help with the event, waiting on that before putting it out
         
    • AUSM Jigsaw Puzzle Event
       
      • Is the 27th, we will be manning a table for a few hours. 1 person signed up in the morning and we probably need two people for each setup. That is on the 27th, it is the same day as the meeting.
         
    • We are looking for more people to help directly. Those in Special Events can get first come first serve to help then it goes to broader ATC/AD team, we get to do cool trips and stuff for these events sometimes.
       
    • We did have Obon last month that went awesome, got a little wet at the end but it was oaky, we got our new event tent that went great, and we also had a small team who went to Excalibur con and seems like that went awesome too, thank you to Hope and Spencer thank you for taking that on and making it awesome. Come join the Special Events team


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 besides Lori)
Motion Passes


 

Current Month Board Topics

 

  • Jourdan V Request
     
    • An Anime Detour staff member passed away he was on the table top team we saw from DJ a request to do something for his family, the request was very nonspecific, we have been discussing what we can do, we cannot donate something from the community fund that is specifically for non-staffers but that doesn’t mean it cant come out of our main budget.
       
    • Hope – not sure how to best go about it in support of his family, she is supportive of doing something just not sure the best way of going about it.
       
    • We could check if the family has some sort of crowdfunding effort.
       
    • They might run a card tournament.
       
    • We could do a donation to help offset some funeral costs.
       
    • Nicchetta - If he does a card tournament we could raffle off badges or something to be auctioned off at the tournament to support him that way.
       
    • Hope - We need to check with the family/DJ to see if they are okay with something coming from us, we could check how best we could support them. Like Hope’s job when her mother passed away unexpectedly did a gift card for a subscription meal service, so they didn’t need to think about that sort of thing.
       
    • We want to do something but in a way that we can and the family will appreciate.
       
    • Christina will shoot an email to DJ to let him know.
       
  • General Policy Review
     
    • We went through this last time and Hope has cleaned up some of the policies.
       
    • Hope – She thinks we can update the ones we kept but since we can’t move the old items to the bottom due to the programming on the site, there is only a small handful of things that we need to potentially review or create a new format for. This is something we do in the off cycle since they are already on the website, and we are not changing them just reformatting them.
       

Motion to update the formatting of the policies on the website

Seconded – Bruce

All are in favor

Motion passes
 


Open Session (up to 30 minutes)
 

  • Any members of the community can bring new business to discuss with the board
     
    • Nothing
       

 

Open Board Projects/Future Meeting discussions
 

  • Policy Updates – Still need to finish the general policies
     
    • Board Training – Looking into more specialized ones


 

7:22 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.