March 2020

March 26th 2020, San Francisco

AGENDA

Prior to the meeting, please add items for discussion here:

  1. Review Agenda [Ben]

  2. COVID-19

  3. Quarterly Board Meetings [Amanda]

  4. Committees [Amanda]

  5. Board Recruitment [Amanda]

  6. Performance evaluation recap [Will]

  7. Evaluation process and format [All]

  8. General BFF.fm has been doing! [Will]

MINUTES

Scribe: Ben Ward

Present:

  • Amanda Guest, General Manager

  • Ben Ward, Secretary, Technical Director

  • Will Craven, President of the Board

  • Tom Tierney

18:09 - COVID-19

  • Studio is closed

  • No impact as yet on donations or dues. We’re on track with where we were last year.

18:12 - Quarterly Board Meetings & Committees

  • Noted in the feedback cycle that we need more people involved to help us scale.

  • We’re falling behind on the strategic initiative to establish committees:

    • Important as it creates a pipeline for future board members

    • Important as it gets more people involved.

  • If we shift the board schedule to quarterly meetings, but we’d expect the committees to meet monthly and send notes around to the board, and review committee goals/objectives at the board meetings.

  • We should put a board member on each committee to kick start the process, reducing board meetings makes time.

  • Next steps:

    • With each committee, review goals for the committee chair and Amanda.

    • Board votes to establish quarterly schedule in Q2.

    • Board members to be allocated to committees to chair:

      • Ben: Tech (already serving)

      • Will: Marketing

      • Tom: Fundraising

      • Amanda: Board Oversight

  • New job descriptions for each board member have been drafted. Will review and vote to ratify at the next meeting.

    • Proposes to adjust the structure to reflect the reality of our roles: Amanda would assume the new title of “President”, Will would become “Chairperson” to split the conflicting aspects of the old President role.

18:42 - Board Recruitment

  • Amanda worked with Josef to create a board matrix, mapping members, roles, and skills.

  • Recruitment job description put together.

  • Shortlist created of possible candidates, approaches pending.

  • Goal to get 2-3 new people on the board by end of 2020

  • Will and Tom’s terms expire this year. There are no limits on the number of terms.

  • All board members to take an action item to consider people they might nominate to the board.

  • Amanda reviewed the current shortlist and outreach status for each.

19:14 - Performance Evaluation Recap

  • Will & Amanda met last week to deliver her annual report. Positive review.

  • We have an open question on Amanda’s raise and how it fits with annual budgeting.

19:32 - Performance review process

  • Noted that this process felt cold/alienating, could have included more personal/less formal contact.

    • Board were concerned at trying to find representative input and prioritised separating this process from personal friendships

    • But, communications with Amanda were confusing, tonally cold.

  • The process took too long to execute — especially after kick-off, such that progress was unclear.

  • “Possibly the process was overly thorough.”

  • Parts of the requests for self-feedback lacked clarity, and weren’t clarified during the process.

  • Disappointing level of engagement from those asked to provide feedback.

  • Goals of the process weren’t clearly enough laid out to start, nor clarified during the process.

  • Need to consider how organizational goals and personal goals are captured for measurement.

    • We lacked objective goals for this first review as none had previously been established.

What will we do next time:

  • Have a kick-off conversation with Amanda to review the process.

  • Amanda should have 2020 goals set by the end of April, which will then correspond to the review.

  • Next review will correspond to setting the 2021 budget in Q4 2020 — so likely planning the process at the end of Q3.

  • Salary-review wise: We need to be all educated in the budgeting process to ensure alignment over the method of calculating salary.

  • We’ll consider alternative approaches for getting community feedback.

20:23 - Spring Fundraiser

  • Going ahead as planned, despite COVID-19: Fundraising will kick off on April 15th, run through May/June. Split the target into two stages, with a second round in August.

Any Other Business

  • Calling out how great the community has been under the pandemic situations. Keeping broadcasting, financial support to other DJs, and so on.

ACTION ITEMS

  • All

    • Review board job descriptions in advance of next month.

    • Consider people to nominate to the board — suggestions due June 1st; email Amanda as you go.

  • Amanda

    • Have meetings with each committee lead to set goals.

    • Set your own goals for review next month.

    • Meet with Paul & Vicky about Google AdWords project

  • Ben

    • Share previous minutes with the board for ratification.

    • Fixing shared access to the board drive.

    • Check out KBOO’s minutes for comparison to ours.

    • Meet with Amanda about tech committee goals.

  • Tom

    • Meet with Amanda about Fundraising committee goals.

    • Watch for real estate opportunities.

  • Will

    • Meet with Amanda about Market & PR committee goals.

20:45 — Meeting adjourned.

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