Organization for Transformative Works – Board of Directors
Minutes of the regular meeting: July 10, 2016, 20:00 UTC
Present
- Alex Tischer
- Aline Carrão
- Atiya Hakeem
- Katarina Harju
- Matty Bowers
Guests
- A. Corbett
- alamerysl
- Amanda Furrow
- Anne-Li
- Ariana
- Claudia Rebaza
- doughtier
- Enigel
- james_
- L Adams
- LittleMousling
- ns
- Oriontsuki
- Priscilla Del Cima
- Rebecca
- Sarah
- syllic
- Trey C
- Zsuzsa Gábo
Decisions taken since the last meeting
- approved Systems training
- standardised domain renewals
- approved Legal signings and filings
- filed taxes
- approved DevMem premiums
- approved new server purchase
- finished work on Strategic Plan
- Guest Posts
- new accounts policy with comms
- numerous reimbursement
- met with committees
- Elections FAQ
- approved Abuse form and ToS change – no more anonymous reports
- approved staffers for Elections, Webs, DevMem
- approved Annual Report
- working on contractor issue
- working with CPAs to find a useful setup
- approved accessibility training/documentation
- approved software for Election chats
- approved Webs name change
- approved Elections Tumblr account
- approved timeline for Election dates
Open Session
- The Finance committee is being revived with three internal recruits and should be opening for external recruiting next month
- The new committee’s first tasks will be to get our bookkeeping regularised and finish setting up up with a CPA if necessary
- Finance update:
Account balances: Checking account $382,083.25 CD $10,149.32 PayPal $89,450.99 Recent notable expenditures: Servers $37,240 Contractor $3,134.98
- Vote to change the name of the committee from “Financial Committee” to “Finance Committee” – approved
- Vote to change the bylaws in the following places (last two requested by the Elections committee):
- Article V Section 2: Number and Qualification of Directors. The authorized number of Directors of the Corporation shall be at least one (1) and fewer than twelve (12) members.
- Article V Section 3 to read: At least two (2) Directors shall be elected yearly, and if the Board has nine (9) or more Directors, at least three of the Directors shall be elected yearly.
- Article V Section 2: A member of the Board shall not be eligible to stand as a candidate for election until the year following the expiration of their term.
- Article IX Section 2.4: No modifications to these bylaws or any policies impacting an election shall affect any elections taking place with ninety (90) days of such modification.
– approved
- Vote on request from Systems to renew the license for their firewall and a new support agreement for the web server that talks to the unicorns – approved
- Short explanation about the Election date changes:
- To prevent Elections and the membership drive and other events to overlap and cause problems we’re moving the Elections further forward in the year
- This year the election will take place on September 23-26. – detailed timeline on the Elections website http://elections.transformativeworks.org/timeline/
- The plan is for next year’s election to be held in August, which should be the new permanent date for the time being
- This means Board turnover won’t be at the end of the year any more but a few months earlier, it also means all current Board members terms will be slightly shorter than two or three years, but there were no votes against it.
- The main goal here was void the conflict we had last year, where people donating in the October drive weren’t able to vote in the elections a few weeks later due to the cut out date for voting being 30 days before the election – by moving the Election to August, the drives will be held in April and October as they always have been and donating in any of them will allow people to vote in the subsequent election in August
- Having new directors start at some other date than December/January when everyone is busy is an additional advantage
- Some brainstorming on voice/video chat replacements for the retreat was done, Board will have a voice chat meeting soon and work out a schedule to meet with more committees that way too.
Closed Session
No items
The meeting was adjourned at 21:15 UTC.
Minutes approved by the Board on 16 July 2016