November 2020

November 18th 2020, San Francisco

Agenda

Opening Items

• Review Agenda & Vote [Ben]

• Vote to approve previous minutes [Ben]

Discussion Topics

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

1. Committee Updates

   1. Events

   2. Tech

   3. Board Development Committee

2. End of Year Fundraiser [Amanda]

3. Review 2021 proposed budget [Amanda]

4. Executive Performance Review: Sign off and execution

   1. Review & approve Caryn and Tom’s report outline (shared in advanced) [Caryn/Tom]

   2. Resolve how information will be gathered for all items in the outline

   3. List actions for completing the review report by the deadline

Closing Items

• Open for public comment

• Any other business?

Minutes

Scribe: Ben Ward

Present:

• Amanda Guest, Chair, Executive Director

• Caryn Kesler, Creative Director

• Tom Tierney, Vice Chair

• Ben Ward, Secretary, Technical Director

• Erika Delgado, Events Director

18:17 – Convene, Vote on Agenda & Previous Minutes

Vote YES to approve the September minutes.

Vote YES to adopt the proposed agenda.

18:18 – Committee Reports

• Events

  • Slow month! Thinking about what to do for the fundraiser.

  • Considering putting on Zoom DJ nights that could be a basis for events to accompany the fundraising period.

  • Besties Bash, about flat attendance, gained a few followers. Might consider streaming to multi-platforms to maximise reach, but focus the community on Twitch.

  • Bandcamp have launched a streaming platform with integrated ticketing. Needs investigation as to whether there’s an opportunity for us there.

• Tech

  • We’ve had two new people interested in getting involved.

  • We ran the first two Community Hours, decent involvement, need a bit of structure but don’t want too much.

    • Leads should share things in the Slack channel to create a lightweight agenda.

• Marketing

  • Possible nascent committee activity there working on the fundraising email.

18:34 – 2021 Proposed Budget

• 2020 in review:

  • Major loss in terms of grants: Invested money in, but didn’t get a single grant. We’ve discussed that a lot under the heading of the pandemic over the past months.

  • We had to dip into our emergency fund.

• 2021

  • Try to keep things as flat as possible, because we expect the year to be a weird one again.

  • Would like a small increase in recurring donors.

  • Dues have dropped a bit, especially under COVID, so conservative estimates for income there.

  • Grants: We should still have a goal to get some grants, but under the circumstances it is not clear that we should actively invest money in it.

  • Expenditures: People costs should be unchanged. Bands/events should be lower due to virtual-nature of the ongoing Besties Bashes.

  • Provisionally including investment in grant writing for now.

Next steps: Everyone should review the draft budget and consider it “pending”. There is some information still to gather relating to possibly Ferry Building costs, and effectiveness of fundraising income. We’ll look to ratify the budget right at the end of the year based on those costs.

19:13 – End of Year Fundraiser

Goal set at $25,000 by December 31

• Similar playbook to last year, starting behind the scenes ASAP for a December 1 (Giving Tuesday) launch of public campaign.

• Josef wasn’t particularly excited about the idea of doing a virtual gala...and neither am I due to the amount of work it will take! But, I have some ideas in motion, and depending on where we are money-wise by November 20 will make the call.

Each board member should name at least one person they will be soliciting for a donation. It could be a new person, or if there’s an existing donor with whom the board member has a good relationship, the goal should be upgrading the gift.

• Big emphasis on anything we can do up front to get closer to the goal before the fundraiser goes public in December is of import.

• The major note is that without the gala, we need to make up that major influx.

19:44 – Executive Performance Review

• We reviewed & approved Caryn and Tom’s report process; and resolved our understanding that the process will end with a discussion review with Amanda.

• Actions for completing the review report by the deadline:

  • Answers to the questions posed by the process will be gathered by December 15th.

  • The board discussion and final Amanda review discussion should happen before the end of the month.

• The outcome from the end of month discussion should be draft goals for 2021, with a view to ratification at the January meeting.

20:32 — Meeting adjourned.

The next meeting of the BFF.fm board is scheduled for 6pm on December 17th. See https://board.bff.fm for more information.