April 9, 2017 Zimfest Association Board Meeting Synopsis
Members in Attendance: Rujeko Dumbutshena, Jacqueline Fallon, Chris Halaska, Claire Jones, Dana Moffett, Daniel Lockley, Evelyn Mukwedeya, David Simon, Alex Weeks, Janis Weeks
Members Absent: none
Review/Modify Agenda
Done by email
Report on 2016 Festival Financials (Janis/Alex)
The 2016 festival is estimated to have made a profit but final figures await completion of the 2016 financials. Discounts that WOU Conferences Services gave us helped. PayPal is challenging to track the money when crediting an account. MoneyMinder has been challenging to understand and follow, it doesn’t have all the parts that would help reconcile the money. Janis had Gary Spalter help her and he strongly suggests switching to QuickBooks, even though it is more expensive. Importing data from the bank account and other things would be easier and smoother. MoneyMinder $150 per year, QuickBooks – local hosting is cheaper vs online is about $300.
Update on Software Demo (Janis/Alex)
By next board meeting the tech. committee will hopefully have the top 3 programs to choose from for Zimfest registration software. They have to do a mock up festival to see how it works with the software. All of the programs are cloud-based. $3000 budget per year is a working price at the moment. PayPal fees and registration fees were added together to come up with about $3000. We weren’t paying anything before, but spending a lot of volunteer hours. We will know the cost ahead of time of the registration software. Good progress is being made. Nora Holmquist has been a big help with all of this.
Discussion on Building and Maintaining Sustainable Board-related Processes and Tasks (All)
- What structures are in place? Google Docs, MoneyMinder, David – while President would always orient new members to the Google Docs, timeline for festival
- What structures can be 1. improved upon: summary for new board members, technical onboarding process, Google drive is as organized as we make it, and 2. Added: calendars – treasurers, fundraising
- Recommended next steps: What should we do with the old hard copies? Should they be scanned into Google docs? There are a few boxes of old binders from past years. Create treasurer’s calendar and general onboarding guide for a new board members
Discussion on 2017 Priorities and Rough Milestone/Task Calendar (All)
Each sub committee will create a document with dates and tasks, proposals and timeline to submit to the board by June
Festival Structure (Daniel)
Breathing new life into volunteering, work more with the city of Monmouth and have a day concert in the park instead of on campus?, who is it that we want to connect with?, who are we serving?, need to see what the software is going to be and how that will determine what we will do. A list was put together of farmers markets and other events in the surrounding Monmouth area to try to connect with during the summer.
Financial Sustainability (David)
We were not able to submit the Tour West Grant by the deadline – we weren’t able to confirm an outreach in Monmouth, we had gotten some suggestions for Seattle schools but were not able to make contact and there wasn’t a prior connection, budget information was not readily available in time. Maybe try reaching out to the community for any fundraising ideas or grant writing expertise. Finding new sources of income – need brainstorming ideas. State grants are limited and restricted due to our location changes. A sense was that we are not attractive enough for the grants – we have to do more to be eligible. Do we want to pursue community outreach? Do we want to be dependent on grants or self-sustaining? Plan a calendar on campaign/fundraising. What are our top 3 or 4 things to raise funds for? Could plan through Go Fund Me
Volunteer Engagement/Marketing (Evelyn/Dana)
Some new things were recently posted on Facebook and the committee is planning on posting at least a few times per month. More things won’t happen until closer to the festival. Posting more frequently is better.
Tech (Janis/Alex)
A timeline was already created.
Next Meeting
May 14th, 7pm PST – hang outs for next meeting
Looks like good progress on several fronts over the past few months. I support the move to a commercial software solution for registration, largely because it has been so time consuming for the volunteers to manage.
Go Zimfest Board! We appreciate you!