Members in Attendance: Mandy Walker-LaFollette, Tendai Muparutsa, Heather Steele, Maria Minnaar Bailey, Janis Weeks, Alex Weeks, Adrienne Stewart, Alyson Quinn
Members Absent: Chris Halaska, Daniel Lockley
Non-voting members in attendance: Claire Jones
Meeting lead: Alex Weeks
Notes taker: Mandy Walker-LaFollette
Was a quorum of Board members present?: Yes
November Minutes/Synopsis
Approved over email
Review Suggestions Document from Claire (Claire)
Top two notes are about fundraising and online workshops.
Adrienne suggests focusing on an annual appeal message for donations now, and later when we know more about what we’ll be offering over the summer we can do a membership drive. Board agrees. Maria will write a blog post draft of “annual campaign.” Alex will be responsible for this being sent out in the next week. Include a tease of online workshops, and a mention of memberships, but the focus is donations.
Note: we always miss Giving Tuesday, let’s try not to in the future.
We will look into having online workshops next summer.
Review Output of 2 Year Plan Meeting (Alex)
The Board reviewed the proposed timeline produced by the committee and made some changes.
Review Presidential Nomination Committee Process (Janis, Alex)
As discussed in previous minutes, Alex is stepping down as Board President after 4 years (2 terms). Everyone contacted so far has said no (or “no for now”).
The current list of nominees will be contacted with a short job description.
TechComm Report (Janis)
Some pain points of the OC have been identified and will be worked on. Volunteer tech environment (signups, reminders, etc.) will be tackled first.
Other things they are looking at include the Zimfest website, Regfox, and tech committee membership.
Board Membership (All)
Briefly reviewed the list of current and potential board members.
Renew/Revise Festival Coordinator Contract (Alex)
Updated the contract to reflect a decreased salary for 2023-2024 with no in-person festival, but the contract will be renewed given the work Claire will still be doing, including potentially online workshops.
Reports on Zimfest Site Research (Claire, Adrienne)
- Adrienne has reached out to the coordinator for WWU, who has several departments involved and hopes to get something back to us soon.
- Claire: CWU has been successfully contacted. They are working on getting back to us. Note that campus is in the middle of town so there are typically the same kinds of curfews we’ve seen previously, but there may be a way around them.
- Ellensburg Rodeo is within walking distance, so we can look at that for RV/camping at least.
- Claire spoke with Heather Ward, who is going to contact WSU in Pullman, EWU in Cheney, Gonzaga in Spokane, and she asked about Idaho in Moscow which Tendai will look into.
- Claire also reached out to the WOU head of conference services (looking at 2026).
There won’t be too much more movement on these until January.
WA State Annual Report for 2024 (Claire)
Alex did this for 2023 but as will be stepping down in 2024, we should reassign to the treasurer. Alex will show Heather how to do this.
Media Curation Volunteers and Project (Claire)
A couple people were interested (who got in touch via the website form). One is interested only in audio, and the other has not responded again.