January 2021

January 21st 2021, 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. Winter fundraiser review/2021 Fundraising Plan

  3. Update on The Secret Alley

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

18:11 — Convene, Vote on Agenda & Previous Minutes

Vote YES to approve the December minutes.

Vote YES to adopt the proposed agenda.

18:15 — Committee Updates

  • Events (Erika, Amanda)

    • We’ve set up a new form to take band submissions for future Bestie Bashes. (https://bff.fm/bands)

      • Q: How many people have submitted their work so far? 25 bands, so far.

      • We’ve promoted it in our social media, as well as email newsletter.

      • Tom will try to promote it to the Pops music community, too.

    • We don’t have a great sense of band availability right now

    • Taking submissions for a Valentine's Day event

    • We’re looking for ways to make more use of our Twitch channel with other broadcasts/content

    • We’re going to start sharing music videos that are submitted from like minded bands on our YouTube.

      • Q: What is an “unlikeminded band”? Bands that we don’t currently have a show for the genre: e.g. Jazz and Blues

  • Tech (Ben)

    • Automation reliability remains a bit wonky, but somewhat improved

    • Ben and BenGG met to discuss stats platform next step; we want to take over stream hosting so we can get raw stats data, but need to get a licensing reporting pipeline built first, which is a little complex.

    • Support Us page has been brainstormed, next step is needing to sync with Caryn to start on design process.

  • Board Development (Amanda)

    • We might have a treasurer? Amanda spoke to someone who was really keen and set up a meeting for them with Forrest.

    • At some point we’ll need a bookkeeper as well, trying to determine if those roles are something that our treasurer candidate could do.

    • Seems promising, but weren’t able to arrange introduction for this month’s board meeting. Will try to set that up for next month.

    • Will hopefully share bio and LinkedIn info with rest of the board soon.

18:46 — Fundraising

  • Amanda: We did great!

  • We didn’t meet the goal, fell $7000 short

  • We did better with corporate matching than ever before

  • We think that in the context of 2020, there’s a lot of competing fundraisers, “every business has a GoFundMe.”

  • Less engagement. Our email open rate was terrible, even high-profile targets simply didn’t open the email.

  • Especially in that context, moving to a model where we are less dependent on these two big peak events is important.

  • We finished the year in the red and had to supplement from our emergency fund. We need to look to raise $25000 more this year than last, in order to ensure we don’t do the same. We will deplete the emergency fund in 12+ months otherwise.

  • Q: Moving to ongoing fundraising sounds good as a strategy. What are the tangible plans for that?

    • Setting up a syncs with Josef to try and come up with a concrete plan, but there’s nothing immediately to show for that.

    • Seeking additional consulting advice.

  • We’ve formed a new group of volunteers to resume grant writing.

19:04 — Update on The Secret Alley

  • The discounted rent will be extended, but currently trying to figure out how that would be distributed with the other tenants.

  • If we can keep our rent at our current discounted rate it remains competitive with getting storage elsewhere. If it increases, we need to revisit whether we can keep two studios there.

  • Tom: Emphasise that we should consider what the absolute financial benefit is of us if we pull out of a studio.

  • We don’t have the financial resources at this time to consider moving/building out another space.

19:25 — Fundraising again

  • With trying to create a structure to have additional fundraisers throughout the year, considering the events we might organize around. Two big tentpole events, 3-4 medium events (e.g. the gala, birthday celebrations), and then a smattering of small one-off events (e.g. a video broadcast, Facebook fundraiser, home-hosted mini-event.)

  • Try to be flexible with time to fit around the schedules of people who would run each activities.

  • Tom has determined these will be named “Tinytivities”.

  • We want to try and fill out a schedule for these activities — each board member will try to come up with one.

  • How can we get more of the DJ community involved in this, especially to host Tinitivities?

    • Maybe use the board member ideas to kickstart launching it to the community.

19:39 — Annual Report

  • Report is drafted, all board members please read it and send feedback to Amanda before Sunday.

19:46 — Any other business?

  • Caryn: I’ve compiled all the feedback for Amanda’s annual review, the board just need to meet to finalize it. Booking time for Wednesday 27th to do that.

19:48 — Meeting adjourned.

The next meeting of the BFF.fm board is scheduled for 6pm on February 18th 2021. See https://board.bff.fm for more information.

Action Items

  • All:

    • Come up with a “tinytivity” idea, and when you’d be able to host it. Deadline: 2 weeks.

    • Review the annual report before this weekend so that it can be sent out next week. Feedback by Sunday.

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