MnStF board meeting Oct 29, 1pm, at Linda's house. Attending board members: Matt Strait (recording), Aaron Vander Giessen, Linda Lounsbury, Isaac Schneider, Scott Raun. Other attending: Stacey Lam. == Ratify approval of previous meeting's minutes == Aaron, Matt, Isaac and Linda approved by e-mail. Ratified! == Review TODO list == * (2022-08) Scott will make sure Carol knows we'd like confirmation each month that our bank statement has been reconciled. Scott is not sure if he's done this. Leave it on the list. * (2021-06) Scott will correspond with ASCAP to tell them we had no events in the last two years. Still hasn't happened. Will probably happen Thanksgiving week. * (2022-09) Isaac will try to access to the online banking. Isaac has been failing either to get to it within the 72 hours, or US Bank sucks and it doesn't work anyway. * (2022-09) (Matt?) Let's see if we can get the same mailing address on all our checking accounts. Matt has done nothing. Postponed until after other banking tasks. Done: * (2022-08) Aaron will do the new org form for Vanguard and get the appropriate people to sign it. Happened, and Vanguard has acknowledged receipt. * (2022-09) Aaron will to ask GPS to properly credit us on their website. Isaac will send him the details. Happened. * (2022-09) Matt will announce the next meeting to officers and chairs. Happened. * (2022-09) Matt will call US Bank to get access to the online banking. Worked, but now he has two accounts, one which can see the main account and the Minicon account, and the other which can see the new checking account. That's awfully annoying. * (2022-09) Matt will attach the final Minicon 55 financial report to these minutes [the last meeting's minutes]. Happened. == Review recurring task list == Scott reported prior to the meeting that the annual PO box fee has been paid, and a check written to Carol to reimburse her for it. We should solicit for a fallcon. Return to this in the "cons" agenda item. We want preliminary Decongestant 5 finances. See farther down agenda. We should confirm our Give-To-The-Max account so that we can get our donations. We should move this reminder a month earlier. Scott will do the renewal. We should get a report from quartermaster Isaac. Isaac reports that the storage locker is still there and the stuff is in it. We loaded back in from Decongestant in an ok, but not ideal, way. He'll go back and organize some more. We should try not to pack things away after Minicon all the way in the back of the locker if they might get used for other events, like how we needed a roaster for Decongestant. Isaac took pictures of the insides of most of the bins. The pictures are on his phone. He'll make a spreadsheet and e-mail us a link to all the photos somewhere. We should send bills for past due accounts. TODO for Matt. We should discuss covid policy and affirmatively either keep, modify, or end the policy. We take a look at it. There's a motion to change "fully vaccinated" to "up-to-date". Matt notes that it was a pain for Minicon to require boosters because 2nd boosters had been approved days earlier and it was very unclear whether we were requiring 2nd boosters for eligible people when we just said "boosters". Is it now easier for ordinary mortals to know if they are "up-to-date"? Others: yes. No one wants to change anything else about the policy. We approve this change, effective a month from today (i.e. we're not changing the rules for today's Halloween meeting!). It is noted that, as implemented by all recent meeting hosts, this is on the honor system. So we really need to advertise the change or it will have no effect at all. Isaac will let President Sharon know, and will announce it at the business meeting today if he's there. Matt will update the policy on the website and ask Osce to announce in the Einblatt that it changed. == Banking == Matt and Isaac would like us to move from US Bank to a credit union. US Bank's customer service and tools have both been terrible. The pain of switching, besides the obvious setup of the new accounts, is that we'd have to relink Vanguard (annoying), relink PayPal (easy), and get new checkbooks. That's pretty much it. We don't have any other linkages or automatic payments or anything, nor any debit or credit cards. We'd have to choose a credit union. Spire, Wings, Royal, Hiway, Sharepoint have been mentioned. We prefer a small organization. Let's make a subcommittee. Tasks: make a list of criteria, look into some credit unions. Report back. Who is the subcommittee? Those of us who have been dealing with the bank are Matt, Isaac, Carol and Irene. So we can make it Matt and Isaac. Maybe we can ask around at the Halloween party tonight to see if someone else would like to participate. Matt and/or Isaac will announce it at the meeting today. == Should we buy hard drives for archival? == We think we don't have the money right now. We already kinda didn't and now we lost a bunch of money on Decongestant 5 (see below). == Book donations == Looks like we spent $705.07 at Uncle Hugo's and $517.54 at Dreamhaven, total $1222.61 and all the books went to schools: Washington Technology Magnet School and Central High, both St Paul (we did Mpls last year). Maybe next year buy more books from Dreamhaven to even it out. == Rune 92 == All copies have been sent out, and the first LOC received back. Guest editor Linda has given permanent editor Matt back the artwork file, and old and new LOCs. $336.31 spent total, roughly 50/50 printing and postage. The board authorizes reimbursement. == Conventions == * Minicon 56 No report. Everything is fine and proceeding apace. * Minicon 57 Aaron has reached out to the Crowne Plaza and the current DoubleTree. Apparently the RadishTree has reached out to some anime cons, so maybe they are interested in having us again. So hotel search is proceeding. Everything else is also fine. We should probably start thinking about making thoughts for other GoH. * Decongestant 5 Preliminary finances report from D5 treasurer Isaac: Things were broadly the same as for Decongestant 4, except we had less membership income (15 fewer members, and also less paid per member on average). We look to be about $1500 in the hole. Hotel has been paid, but we haven't reimbursed Clay yet for paying the hotel. Matt's commentary is that we planned the rooms and rates before covid, and if we had had 15 more members and those had mostly paid for a whole weekend instead of various lower rates, we'd have roughly broken even. * A possible fallcon for 2023? There's a rumor that someone is thinking about it. We should formally solicit. The board would like us to have a fallcon kinda like the ones we've had before if someone wants to do that sort of thing. * A different kind of convention by Isaac Sept 2023 or Jan 2024. He'd like to do a con that might be in the fall and might not be, not a relaxacon. He has a co-conspirator. He's hoping this con would be large enough to have a dealer's room. The focus would be science fiction and fantasy, interpreted broadly, including various media, like video games. We support Isaac investigating this possibility and coming to us with a proposal. Mainly we want to see a budget backed up by a proposed contract from a venue. Also a list of who would work on it. Isaac expects to bring in some new people who aren't already committed to Minicon tasks. * Minneapolis in 2073 Going to run a party at Windycon in two weeks, nominally two nights; we'll see. Just bought 2500 ribbons, about a decade's worth, still have about $180. == Next meeting == 6pm Friday December 9th, on Jitsi. == New TODO list == * (2022-08) Scott will make sure Carol knows we'd like confirmation each month that our bank statement has been reconciled. * (2021-06) Scott will correspond with ASCAP to tell them we had no events 2020-2021. * (2022-09) Isaac will try to access to the online banking. Scott will get Irene to generate a new invite for Isaac. * (2022-09) Matt will see if we can get the same mailing address on all our checking accounts. * (2022-10) Matt and Isaac will work on researching credit unions so we don't have to do the previous US Bank items. * (2022-10) Matt will announce the next meeting to officers and chairs. * (2022-10) Matt will move the Give-to-the-max reminder one month earlier in the year. * (2022-10) Scott will do the Give-to-the-max renewal. Matt will try to remember to bug him Wednesday if he hasn't. * (2022-10) Matt will send bills for past due accounts. * (2022-10) Isaac will let President Sharon know of the change to the covid policy. * (2022-10) Matt will update the covid policy on the website and ask Osce to announce in the Einblatt that it changed. * (2022-10) Scott will let Carol know that we approve reimbursement for Rune. * (2022-10) Isaac'll make a spreadsheet of the storage locker bins and e-mail us a link to all the photos somewhere.