Minutes
Organization
December 2021
December 13th 2021, San Francisco
Agenda
Opening Items
- Review Agenda & Vote
- Vote to approve previous minutes
Discussion Topics
- 1.Committee Updates
- 1.Events
- 2.Marketing
- 3.Fundraising
- 4.Tech
- 5.Board Development
- 6.Music
- 7.Finance
- 2.Review Action Items
Closing Items
- Open for public comment
- Any other business?
Minutes
Scribe: Ben Ward
Present:
- Erika Delgado, Events Director
- Amanda Guest, Chair, Executive Director
- Caryn Kesler, Vice Chair, Creative Director
- Jenn Lemon, Treasurer
- Clair McDevitt, Chair of Fundraising Committee
- Ben Ward, Secretary, Technical Director
Absent:
- Brandon Paski, Chair of Marketing Committee
18:06 — Convene, Vote on Agenda & Previous Minutes
Vote YES to approve the November minutes.
Vote YES to adopt the proposed agenda.
18:06 — Committee Updates
Events
New SF mask guidance coming in, so no expectations that we’ll host events at the Secret Alley soon.
Amarasu worked with us and ended up doing an event at The Complex; off the back of that we’ve been invited/encouraged to create more events there. We’ve opened it up to the DJs to see if there are people interested in putting together events for that. Noting however that we don’t have unlimited funds to pay bands; could be something to consider a grant application for in 2022.
Make Out Room BFF.fm night will have a few changes; most successful part is having 2x bands come in. Looking to continue into 2022, but we don’t want to be in the role of being “the booker” for this event. MOR will have someone be a point person for organizing the shows.
Fundraising
We did great work this year! Terrified of next year, but great job!
We applied for 12-15 grants and received 5; more than $40,000. Not something an org usually achieves in only the second year of grant writing. Some holdovers from this year that we’ll wait to hear responses on in 2022.
Most of our success was with COVID-relief funding. Not clear yet what of those same grants will be available next year. Setting expectations that we shouldn’t expect to get the same level of grant income next year.
While grant income has been successful, individual fundraising is down. We’ve lost some Besties. The Winter fundraiser went well, but we didn’t run a Spring fundraiser at all. Has limited our expansion. Need to be careful; if we continue to trend downwards on individual donors and the grant income does reduce next year.
CA Arts Council sent us the feedback from our grant application. Some contradictory information from how we’ve been assessed. One comment that recurred is that we are considered an “at risk” organization, which may be why we’ve done well with COVID grants, and likely due to our budget being so small.
Next grant will be a federal application.
Fundraiser hit goal: DJ fundraising via Butter was very successful, leadership fund not so much.
Raised $1600 w/ leadership. $380 from t-shirt sales, $10K off-air fundraiser, and some merch sales/“donations for donuts” at a Slow Streets event.
Facebook Giving Tuesday is more painful every year. Possibly less active use of Facebook, didn’t reach our fundraising goal on Facebook for the first time, but did raise $605 there.
$400 in corp matching so far. $13750 raised so far. Next outreach is to try and lure back expired Besties.
Ben: In terms of the Leadership Fund falling short, was it just that we didn’t do as much outreach, or did we get less response from the outreach we did?
Amanda: Both. Some leadership outreach happened late/at the deadline, so was less time for follow-up and reminders. The Off-Air fundraiser was then more visible, which may have taken attention away; we saw some people donate through the Off Air fundraiser, who were on the leadership list.
Clair: Not sure that outreach with lack of name recognition from the station is very effective, some element of people having less to give this year.
Tech
App development continues. Running slower than initially hoped but no need for alarm. We have running code, but lots of data still needs to be wired up. Hoping for beta distribution before Christmas still, but don’t have enough visibility from the vendor into exact dates. Have asked for a schedule.
Action item: Discuss marketing/launch plan for the app at the January board meeting.
Board Development
No updates this month.
Music
No updates this month.
Finance
Our business license got mailed to the studio! Hooray!
Jen & Amanda to sync about the 2022 budget. Aiming for completed 2021 financials by Feb/March.
We actually need a signed resolution to complete giving Jen access to the accounts, which will streamline a few things. Will set that
Marketing
Brandon is starting to roll out ticket giveaways again. At some point we’ll need some new volunteers to help operate them.
18:45 — Review Action Items
All: Think about Ferry Building space use.
Eddie: Could we host comedy events? Or acoustic/solo shows at the space?
Would need speakers outside the booth in order to run events from the booth, which we don’t currently have.
Clair: If we hosted events there, would we be able to record it?
We have the technology to run a second audio stream if we wanted to. And the archiving we use for Studio F could be repurposed to record events there.
Ben: I like the two suggestions from last month about using it in collaboration with other stations or podcast recordings, as both of those uses can be scheduled to make booth usage visible during Ferry Building hours, and that visible use seems most beneficial to promoting BFF.
Jen: Agree that we should use the space for things that create visibility; more app downloads, more donations.
We’d like to figure out what to do with it by March, when most DJs likely to have returned to the Secret Alley.
Next step is that we need to flesh out any of the ideas to better understand the logistical needs.
Short term improvement on “why are we there” type queries: Get a QR code made for the window. Action item for Caryn.
Brandon: Share committee documentation with the board.
Brandon is absent today, but shared the Marketing committee meeting notes.
Amanda: Julie PR follow-up
Carry over; didn’t hear back yet.
Amanda: Turntable Cabinet
Working with Dykes with Drills to get one made, first group who seem like they’ll actually be able to follow-through on getting this built. Measurements have been sent.
Amanda: Job Functions
Carry over. Maybe a conversation for Jan/Feb once the budget is done. Have found some existing job descriptions in other orgs that are good templates for the sort of functions we’d want.
Ben: Share App design mocks with the board when available
Screenshots shared in the #project-app channel in Slack.
Caryn: Meeting in Person before December 15th.
Womp womp.
19:15 — Public Comments
- No public comments this month.
19:15 — Any other business?
- When do we want to meet in January? Resolved for January 20th, 6pm in person at The Secret Alley.
19:27 — Meeting adjourned.
The next meeting of the BFF.fm board is scheduled for 6pm on January 20th 2022. See https://board.bff.fm for more information.
Action Items
- All: Discuss marketing/launch plan for the app at the January board meeting.
- Caryn: QR code for Studio F
- Amanda: Julie PR follow-up
- Amanda: Job Functions
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