Mn-STF board meeting, Sunday Jan 11, 2026, 7pm, by videoconference. Attending board members: Matt Strait (recording), Scott Raun, Hershey Harris, Delia Ihinger, Linda Lounsbury. Others attending: Diversicon chair Scott Lohman. == Approve previous meeting's minutes == Approved! == Review TODO list == The remaining TODO list is: * (2025-06) Delia will work on the Minnstf directory. Progress has happened. Plan to send out some more e-mail queries. Then will collect info at the pool party. Then will publish to the membership. It will be a CSV file that people can get by request (not publicly available). * (2025-05) Scott will ask Carol if the books are balanced for 5/31/2025, 6/30/2025 and 7/31/2025. Is 5/31 discrepancy found? Scott hasn't asked. * (2025-06) Scott will look to see if we still own unused ISBN numbers. Scott is still working on this. * (2025-05) Scott will look into Discord - what is the status? Does Laurel have control? No progress. * (2025-06) Scott will ask Laurel about the "Mn-StF" Twitter account. No progress. DONE: * (2025-08) Matt will ask our list of potential treasurers. Did that, and Drew Jensen accepted. == Review recurring task list == December, June: Ask the treasurer for a semi-annual report of our income and expenses for the preceding half year. Scott will ask Carol. June, December: Send notice to concoms reminding them how voting member status works. January, April, July, October: Get our bank and investment account balances. Matt and Scott will do this. Nowish: need to set nominating and voting meetings. Scott will work with President Sharon on this. January: read this list into the minutes so we have a recent copy if the wiki goes down. Here it is: *** begin full recurring task list *** Every month: Scott will contact Carol to remind her to report to us whether the bank accounts are balanced. January: read this list into the minutes so we have a recent copy if the wiki goes down. Proposals for future Minicons: Solicit starting 18 months prior to the desired Minicon, requesting that bids be in to the board by January 31 (approximately 14 months before the proposed convention), with earlier being better. Proposals for next year’s fallcon: Solicit at and immediately after the current fallcon, if any, or sometime in the fall if we're skipping a year. Due to the board by February 15, approximately 8 months before the proposed convention. Convention preliminary finances: Due to the board one month after convention. Should include gross income, gross profit, and amount given to the board. Final finances must be done "within six months of the convention or by thirty days prior to the deadline for filing Society tax returns for the tax year in which the convention was held, whichever is earlier", as per the bylaws. ASCAP: Due maybe March 31 for previous year, although they are not very clear. To be done by the MnStf Treasurer at the direction of the board. Voting meeting: The membership secretary and outgoing president should make arrangements for nomination and voting meetings. The board should check over and update the information for new board members. The voting meeting must happen before March 31, typically before Minicon. There are two nominating meetings that must happen before then. At the first meeting of the new board, review the mailing lists and forwarding addresses: The board-chat mailing list is currently administered by Scott Raun and DD-B. Currently the board-at-mnstf forwarding address goes to Scott. Remember to switch the president-at-mnstf forwarding address sometime between the voting meeting and Minicon. Officers: Chosen by the new board at the voting meeting or as soon as possible thereafter. Names and positions of officers should be submitted to the MnStf webmaster. Convention incident info: More than a month before Minicon, and other cons, forward any relevant information about incidents at previous cons to the upcoming con. Taxes: Due May 15. At this point, since we gross under $50k, we only have to file the 990N “postcard.” Scott has been doing this. Scott reminds himself to do it with Chrome to make PDF generation easier. https://sa.www4.irs.gov/epostcard/secure/home/ is the IRS page to start on. With the taxes (actual deadline Dec 31): Renew Minicon assumed name (as of 2020, must be paper filed). https://www.sos.state.mn.us/business-liens/business-forms-fees/assumed-namedba/ is the SoS page to start on. Start by looking up Minicon, the annual renewal can be done online from there. With the taxes (actual deadline Dec 31): Annual renewal with the Minnesota Secretary of State for Minnesota Science Fiction Society. Here's where we do it: http://mblsportal.sos.state.mn.us/Business/SearchDetails?filingGuid=5c18cf48-aed4-e011-a886-001ec94ffe7f May: If we want to continue annual book donations (done in 2020-2024, at least), get it going. June: Annual domain registration renewal and contact information verification through GANDI. Current domains are mnstf.org and minicon.org. GANDI sends notifications to the address they have (board-at-mnstf), who needs to confirm information. December, June: Ask the treasurer for a semi-annual report of our income and expenses for the preceding half year. September: Confirm Give-To-The-Max account so we can get our donations. October: Pay the rent on the PO box. We are notified of this by e-mail to board-at-mnstf-org on the first of the month for a bill due at the end of that month. Possibly we also get a paper bill in the PO box. As of June 2021 (and still as of Oct 2024), this is an automatic credit card payment. Every December (timing is arbitrary): Review what address we have on file with the state of Minnesota or whoever else won't use the PO Box. As of 2024, this is Scott and Irene's house. Feb/March-ish, July-ish, Oct/November-ish: Get a report from the Quartermaster. January, April, July, October: Get our bank and investment account balances. June, December: Send notice to concoms reminding them how voting member status works. *** end full recurring task list *** == Discussion of Treasurer position(s) == Let's have Drew be "Treasurer" with all the duties, with Irene as backup "Assistant Treasurer". (Not the old arrangement where the duties were split between Carol and Irene.) Scott will let Carol know that Drew is taking over. How will we manage bank statements? The two goals are (1) get paper statements, landing anywhere, that help us remember what accounts we have (2) Let Drew balance the books. Let's see what strategy Drew likes before we decide how to manage this. Linda asks, should we take this opportunity to switch over the main account to Blaze? Yes, we all approve. We should change the Blaze "membership controller" from Matt to Drew and open a new checking account. Scott will ask Irene to ask Blaze how to do that. == Adding officer positions for computer accounts == If we have finished figuring out who controls all the accounts, or finished as well as we're going to, we'll send the list to Aaron and ask him to keep it up-to-date. We'll still make them all "officers", which will trigger the board to ask them each year if they'll continue. We'd also like Aaron to make sure that we can keep control of all the accounts if any one person disappears (we'll say this once we have the list for him). We decided that we're close enough to done to take the next step. Matt will talk to Aaron. == Officer reports == VP Hershey Harris: No report. Correspondence secretaries Linda and Hershey: PO box was checked last week. Got a Minicon registration and newsletters. Linda will buy stamps and envelopes. Membership secretary Scott: Things are in good shape. Recording secretary Matt: He is doing it. Rune editor Matt: He is not doing it. Archivist Matt: Finally cataloged Rob Ihinger's binders. Also cataloged all of Minicon 28. == Conventions == * Diversicon 32 Profit check? No, it has not been sent. Very old outstanding registration check from Matt? They haven't found it in their PO box. Scott will check again soon. * Diversicon 33 Waiting to hear from (live) GoH we invited. Then they'll figure out dates. Posthumous guests: Hugo Gernsback and some classic Greek person. Maybe last weekend of July or first in August. Working on PR1. Please stop using the old SF Minnesota PO Box, Matt says. But Linda says that if Clay is not handling Diversicon registration, they why not have them use a different box. Matt says that it seems like both solutions are awkward in their own way, but having an extra box costs more money and is harder to keep track of. Matt proposes that Clay not run Diversicon registration at all. All approve. Scott Lohman has taken 19 memberships so far and none should be with Clay. One may have been collected by Clay and then re-mailed to Scott, which works. We agree that Diversicon should advertise the Minnstf PO Box (8297), Scott L should not renew the old SF3 box when it expires, and we will re-mail Diversicon mail to Scott L's house. The club will reimburse the correspondence secretary for mailing expenses. Delia collects Scott L's info for the MNSTF directory. * Minicon 58 Matt needs to see if there's still lingering money for one stale check. We told the artist it was too late. * Minicon 59 Things are going well. * Minicon 60 Matt asks Clay to have online reg working by Feb 1. He says "Oh. Fine." * Minneapolis in 2073 Will have a party at 2D Con the night before the pool party. == Next meeting == 7pm Feb 22, online. == Review new TODO list == * (2026-01) Hershey will let Clay know that we've decided to stop trying to have him run Diversicon registration. * (2025-06) Delia will work on the Minnstf directory. * (2025-05) Scott will ask Carol if the books are balanced for 5/31/2025, 6/30/2025 and 7/31/2025. Is 5/31 discrepancy found? * (2025-06) Scott will look to see if we still own unused ISBN numbers. * (2025-05) Scott will look into Discord - what is the status? Does Laurel have control? * (2025-06) Scott will ask Laurel about the "Mn-StF" Twitter account. * (2026-01) Scott will ask Carol for a semi-annual report. * (2026-01) Scott will ask Carol for our bank account balances. * (2026-01) Scott will let Carol know that Drew is taking over. * (2026-01) Delia will send notice to concoms reminding them how voting member status works. * (2026-01) Matt will ask Aaron for our investment account balances. * (2026-01) Scott will work with Sharon to set the nominating and voting meeting dates. * (2026-01) Matt will invite Drew to the next board meeting (if we don't talk to him at the pool party first). * (2026-01) Scott will ask Irene to call Blaze and ask how to do our changes. * (2026-01) Matt will talk to Aaron about the computer account positions. * (2026-01) Matt will make sure the Minicon 58 bank account is cleared out.