Organization for Transformative Works – Board of Directors
Minutes of the meeting: August 30, 2020 18:00 UTC
Present
Claire P. Baker
Danielle Strong
Jessie Casiulis
Kirsten Wright
Lex De Leon
Natalia Gruber
Rebecca Sentance
Guests
Alex Tischer
Ania
Arcadion
bella
Capi
Clark
coaldustcanary
Dasha
Distopian
Dorottya
Emma
Frost The Fox
i_dwell_in_darkness
Ioana
IZZY
james_
Jess White
Jessica
Kati Eggert
Kaysa
Kira
LP
lydia-theda
mags
Marion
Morgan
mumble
Nonnie
Oniondip
Ori
Paula
Rhine
Ribbon
saltbright
Solovei
Stephanie Godden
Sveritas
tread-softly
Yuechiang
Zixin
Decisions taken since the last meeting
Administration
- Approved meeting minutes for the 2020-03-08 & 2019-09-08 meetings.
- Approved payment of the first billing for services done for the 2019 audit of OTW financials.
- Approved various state filing fees from CSC and the District of Columbia.
- Approved the updated 2020 budget for Board.
- Approved the OTW’s participation to the ’44 Retro Hugo Awards.
- Approved dates for the October Drive: it’ll take place on October 9-11, 2020.
- Approved final cost for the election.
- Approved the OTW’s Vision Statement for Strategic Planning.
HR
- Approved new volunteer staffers for AO3 Documentation, Communications, Fanlore, Legal, Open Doors, Policy & Abuse, Support, Systems, Tag Wrangling, Translation, Volunteers & Recruiting, and Webs.
- Approved new chair appointments for Elections, and Strategic Planning.
- Approved a contractor Scope of Work document for Systems.
Infrastructure
- Approved payment for 4 new servers for front ends, 3 new servers for databases & an additional rack for Systems and approved the decommission of old servers.
- Approved a payment request from AD&T to contract for a substantial amount of work regarding admin roles on AO3.
Open Session
- Meeting officially began with welcoming the new members of the board, Alex Tischer, Kati Eggert and Jess White, whose terms will begin October 1.
- That was followed by thanking outgoing members Claire P. Baker, Danielle Strong and Jessie Casiulis for their service and hard work while on the board.
Board Officers
- Elections were held for President, Secretary, and Treasurer.
- Since the Treasurer is held by the chair of the Finance Committee, that will remain Yuechiang Luo. The vote to approve was unanimous.
- Kirsten Wright was nominated to take over as Secretary, and again the vote to approve was unanimous.
- Rebecca Sentance was nominated to be president, and again the vote was unanimous.
Finances
- We currently have 1.8 million in cash, including our reserves, because we have had very successful drives since 2017, especially our April 2020 drive. As a result, our next drive will only be three days and will focus on membership, not fundraising.
- We are slowly planning projects to use up our excess cash. However, since this relies on volunteer labor that is difficult. Possible projects include server expansions and paid employees.
- The Finance Committee is looking into opening accounts at other banking institutions as we are over the FDIC limit of $250k. We have been considering the benefits of opening an account at a regional bank (something we avoided previously as we can’t guarantee that the next Treasurer will necessarily be in the same area) but regional banks allow for personal relationships and other benefits.
- Finance is currently in the process of interviewing candidates for a new investment specialist role, and is looking into creating a viable investment portfolio.
- We recently received our first restricted donor contribution. This was the first time we were contacted about this type of donation, and it came from a Harry Potter reading group, who donated their remaining assets with the restriction it be used for Francesa Coppa’s book on vidding, to pay for video hosting expenses.
- We have spent $190,507 so far this year. AO3 is our most expensive project, costing $126,709. Also, fundraising was more expensive this year, costing $44,772, mostly because of donation transaction fees. We have one large purchase of database servers that will cost us around 130k coming up next month, and additional planned systems expenses, including VM servers and front end servers that will cost roughly $30k.
Other Topics
- There was a discussion on the video the OTW made for the 44th Retro Hugo Awards, as people wanted to know if/where they could watch it.
Closed Session
No items
The meeting was adjourned at 19:30 UTC
Minutes approved by the Board on 08/09/2020