Minnstf board meeting, 1pm on Jan 14, 2017 at Clay and Hershey's, 3601 Towndale Dr, Bloomington. Attending board members: Scott Raun, Hershey Harris, Matt Strait, Aaron Vander Giessen. Lydy sent her regrets, and said she could be reached by phone if needed. Others attending: Kevin Austin, Emily Stewart, Irene Raun. == Approve previous minutes == Approved! == Review TODO list == * (06-2016) Hershey will continue to nag Dean about going to the storage locker, updating his contact information with them, and give them the new desired list of authorized people: Joel Phillips, Patricia Zetelumen, Dean Gahlon, Jim Porter, Kelly James. Hershey has not nagged Dean any more, but will! And it really actually matters that this gets done before we bring in a dozen people for Minicon! * (06-2016) Scott will talk to Beyond Conventions about their total amount due and their payment plan. They owe us $1165 out of an original $1265. Scott pinged DD-B by e-mail again, and got nothing back. He keeps forgetting to ask in person at Mnstf meetings. Hershey notes that there is a meeting here this weekend, and probably they'll both be there. * (2016-12) Scott will do the taxes for fiscal 2016 by March 2017. Yup, he will do this. * (2016-12) Lydy will get some response from some professional archivist about the Scott Imes tapes. Lydy reported by e-mail that she had not made any progress. * (2016-12) Hershey will talk to Patricia about her interest in helping with inventory and related topics. Hershey has talked to Patricia and Terry. Patricia does not want to be in charge of anything, but she will totally volunteer for others who are in charge of things. Terry is willing to be in charge of things, such as being Quartermaster. Incidentally, Alice took down an inventory list in her notebook while the storage locker activity was going on last summary. (This is the report we were hoping to get from the Quartermaster some months ago.) She and Patricia have a plan, as of last night, to type that up and send it to the board. Matt will negotiate with Joel about who is Quartermaster. Done: * (2016-12) Aaron will make sure that Emily is up on the timing for nominating meetings. Clearly OK from e-mails sent to natter. Voting meeting is March 18. Incidentally, when are the concom meetings (not during the voting meeting!)? Scott is going to bug Ann. (This is a Minicon 52 matter, not going on the board's TODO list.) * (06-2016) Scott will move all our money from Ameriprise to our checking account. Carol got the check from the PO Box, and plans to deposit it on Dec 23. The money appeared in US Bank on Jan 10! Matt does a dramatic reading of excerpts of board minutes from this 9 year saga. == Review Recurring Task List == We try to figure out when annual ASCAP bill is due. ASCAP envelopes are opened. It's not very clear. Probably March. Scott is on it. == Finances == Now that we have our money, someone gets the TODO of reinvesting it a Vangaurd account as we planned, right? Aaron will read through the forms and get this done. The board will decide how much money is going in. Matt suggests an even $30k, since we just got $31.9. Scott asks how liquid the fund will be. Aaron says that we can get money in under a week. When you withdraw money as an individual, you pay capital gains tax on however much more it is worth now. Aaron will investigate how this applies to us as a 501(c)3. Scott will tell Carol what our plan is. Matt asks if we should get some sort of froo-froo liberal fund that has an ecologically conscious basket or whatever. The board is luke-warm-plus on this. We are willing to make slightly less money on something like this. Aaron will investigate. == Archivist == * Dehumidifier was recalled. Matt owes Minnstf. Matt has passed a check for the money to Scott for Carol. * Progress consolidating archives. Aaron and Emily are excited about putting the archives in the GPS facilities. The board should collectively get a tour of it. There is also the possibility to use this facility for our address for the MN secretary of state. * Jeff has reminded Matt about the various videotapes. Matt will tell Jeff that we know about the tapes and everyone agrees about their status. == Conventions == * Minicon 52 No report from Scott other than our discussion about concom meetings above. Emily: Do we have a costuming head? Others: looks like no. Do we need a "head", or just programming people that will take care of a costume contest? Discussion ensues. Last year we had a kids' costume contest. Emily suggests just expanding that a little to include adults. Well, she'll work on it for Minicon 53, maybe. * A fallcon in 2017? Hershey is going to call the hotel to try to stake out a weekend and get a preliminary contract. Once this gets going, Matt will make a proposal to the board. Kevin and Emily try to rope Hershey into working on hotel for Minicon 53. * Minicon 53 Kevin and Emily report that they have just found a hotel head. The hotel is pushing for a two year contract, which is what they always do. Kevin and Emily are not M54 co-chairs. They aren't yet sure if they want to be. Emily says they are 80% sure. The board approves Kevin and Emily signing a two year contract because we are pretty sure that M54 will be quite similar to M53 in space usage and so forth, even though we don't have M54 chairs approved. Matt makes a point of emphasizing that we are locking in the not-yet-selected M54 chair(s) into this contract, but he does approve. So the contract will be for conventions on March 30-April 1, 2018 and April 19-21, 2019. * Minicon 54 As per above, will have a contract signed by Kevin and Emily, waiting for a chair. * Back to the fallcon Hershey wonders if we should get a multi-year fallcon contract. The board would approve this if there were chairs lined up, but not otherwise. Probably the hotel will not bring it up, and we won't bring it up with them. * Minneapolis in 2073 Everyone has read and appreciated Matt's report, which is here: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In 2016, the Minneapolis in 2073 bid took in $413.11 in cash, including 12 Israeli Shekels and half a Euro, which I converted to US dollars. We also received 5 grams of silver wire and at least $20 worth of cheese (then eaten). Based on my reading of IRS form 990 instructions, Appendix B "How to Determine Whether an Organization's Gross Receipts are Normally $50,000 (or $5,000) or Less", I think that the bid's income for IRS purposes was $436, since one enters non-cash contributions, including food, in the various lines of line 1 of Part VIII which feeds into line 12, which feeds into the sum used in the test itself. Not entirely sure. Incidentally, my reading of the Form 990 instructions have revealed the answer to the question I put in the Minicon financial report every year, which is whether we are supposed to count the non-commission part of art sales as gross income, since we take the money, but don't ever really own it. I *think* the answer is no: Also in Appendix B: "Gross receipts when acting as an agent. If a local chapter of a section 501(c)(8) fraternal organization collects insurance premiums for its parent lodge and merely sends those premiums to the parent without asserting any right to use the funds or otherwise deriving any benefit from them, the local chapter does not include the premiums in its gross receipts. The parent lodge reports them instead. *The same treatment applies in other situations in which one organization collects funds merely as an agent for another.*" (emphasis mine) Anyway, the bid spent $376.31, for a net gain (in US dollars) of $36.80. The treasury current contains $256.20, tuppence, a Luna City or Bust medallion, the ghost of 2 half dollar chocolate coins, 8.02 Israeli Shekels, a silver dime, 25 Iraqi dinars, 5g of silver wire, a coupon with cash value 0.3 cents, a 1g silver coin, a Taiwanese dollar, a very short story on a business card, a medium-small rock from the southernmost point in Canada, two silver quarters, a button, a French Franc, a third of a penny, a small rock, an uncashable check for $2.073, and a Euro cent. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Matt would like to a have a one-night party at Capricon, for which the bid will pay for the room (so no one will be sleeping there), but he needs volunteers to make it happen. Herhsey make a firm commitment to clean up at night (not in the morning) for a one-night party. Hershey requires that we don't close later than 3am for her to do this. She will sometimes also be in the party. * No one proposes another convention. == Next meeting == Feb 25, 2pm, wherever the Minnstf meeting is, which is to be determined. == New TODO list == * (2016-12) Lydy will get some response from some professional archivist about the Scott Imes tapes. (Note, we are using this as shorthand for "all the various videotapes that are minnstf stuff, some of which was shot by Scott Imes, others of which just passed through his hands.) * (2017-01) Matt will negotiate with Joel about who is Quartermaster. * (2016-06) Hershey will continue to nag Dean about going to the storage locker, updating his contact information with them, and give them the new desired list of authorized people: Joel Phillips, Patricia Zetelumen, Dean Gahlon, Jim Porter, Kelly James. * (2016-06) Scott will talk to Beyond Conventions about their total amount due and their payment plan. They owe us $1165 out of an original $1265. * (2016-12) Scott will do the taxes for fiscal 2016 by March 2017. * (2017-01) Aaron will find out how to invest our money in Vangaurd accounts, and he will get it done. Aaron will investigate how capital gains taxes on the Vangaurd account apply to us as a 501(c)3. And about froo-froo liberal funds. * (2017-01) Scott will update Carol on the Vangaurd plan and get her the ASCAP paperwork and Matt's recall check from the dehumidifier. * (2017-01) Aaron will arrange for a tour of the GPS space.