April 2025
April 8th 2025, San Francisco
Agenda
Review Agenda & Vote
Vote to approve March minutes
Resolve Previous Action Items
Discussion Topics
Discussion Topics
Board Term Renewal: Amanda Guest
Trademark point of contact
Shifting to governance from working board
Create infrastructure so that this board can provide strategic guidance to steer operations
Draft additional policies to guide day-to-day operations
Deleting the BFF.fm Facebook page
Mosswood Meltdown
Volunteer month celebration
Closing Items
Public Comment?
Anything from committees not covered?
Any other business?
Minutes
Present:
Amanda Guest, Chair, Executive Director
Clair McDevitt, Chair of Fundraising Committee
Irving Pham, Treasurer
Kerri O’Malley, Vice-Chair, co-Chair of Marketing Committee
Absent:
Mark Pearson, Board Member
Erika Delgado, Board Member at Large
6:00 pm — Convene, Vote on Agenda & Previous Minutes
Vote YES to adopt the proposed agenda.
Vote YES to approve last month’s minutes.
Review Previous Action Items
[Amanda] Share access to DJ join form with appropriate committee group
[Amanda] Confirm if Loomly account is registered to her personally, status of paid plan.
[Clair] Contact Alan, ask about payment method, share [email protected] contact, please reach out to us before taking any add’l action ✅
[Irving] Look into setting up a BFF.fm Venmo Charity account
[Kerri/Christa] Next committee leads meet-up: discuss committee leads at board meetings ✅
[Mark] website terms of service work ✅
Discussion Topics
Amanda - Board Term Renewal
Amanda returns as Executive Director, board member ex-officio 🎉
Amanda returns as Board Chair with a TBD term limit (~1 year revisit), vision of making room for another Board Chair when interest arises/board grows
Trademark Point of Contact
Mark will become the point of contact for continuing work on the BFF.fm trademark
Mark notes: Current Office Action for the USPTO must be responded to (or we can apply for a 3-month extension to respond) by no later than June 17, 2025.
Amanda to connect with Alan to discontinue trademark work, continue relationship for LPFM
Shifting to governance from working board
Vision:
BFF.fm board to become a governance board, focused on financial solvency, setting the budget, setting strategy (led by Exec Director with feedback from board), setting any policies as needed
Board to become a group that can focus solely on long-term strategic vision, while committee leads become station leadership to manage day-to-day operations and execute strategy
Board members who are committee leads would step down from the board; need to plan off-boarding while not changing entirely too quickly
Restructure board meetings to be more of a “dog and pony” show for Exec Director and committee leads to share what’s happening at the station in the context of how the committees are making good use of finances, inspire giving from the board, discuss strategic/high-level issues that need board guidance
Open question (to be added to next meeting’s agenda for Mark to weigh in on): what does the board want to hear from the Exec Director and Committee Leads to meet this goal?
Clarification: Committee Leads do not need to present/be present at every board meeting; Exec Director would curate those presentations based on committee needs, board questions, relevant strategic initiatives
Next steps:
Form a working group to think through the timeline and recruitment needed to transition to this model
@ next Committee Leads meeting - discuss vision, including:
Committee Leads group to become Station Leadership
#station-leadership Slack channel to become public area for day-to-day operations conversations/questions (still have a private channel too) - remove board members from this channel
Defining goals, strategy, outcomes and reporting to the board
Annual goal setting/strategy planning with Exec Director
Is there anything that, in the interim, needs to be flagged for the board immediately, especially from a committee without board members in them currently?
Exec Director to join committee leads/station leadership meeting as an observer/helper/context provider
Strategic initiatives mapping
Fundraising (#2 - Fundraising) and Marketing (#3 - Audience Connection) currently mapped to strategic initiatives, Programming to similar
Tech, Operations, Programming Committees need initiatives assigned - the following seem to fit:
Programming = #3 - Audience Connection
Operations & Tech = #1 - Collaborative Model
Policies needed
Amanda to work with related committee leads/volunteers to talk about policies, bring to the board for approval: programming guidelines, purchasing, partnerships, brand guidelines, etc.
Specifically re: purchasing, committee leads should know what the budgets are related to their work; Irving to create a snapshot more relevant to committee leads and develop a purchase request system for easier tracking; purchases under $1,000 at discretion of Exec Director and over comes to the board for approval
Mark posted policy drafts in Slack for website: privacy policy, terms of service - interested board members to review and comment, Amanda to follow up
Delete BFF.fm Facebook page
Marketing Committee fine with removing, Amanda to delete it
Mosswood Meltdown
Discussed and decided not to partner with The Complex for the stream again this year; Clair to reach out to George, Kerri to explore a booth or press pass
Biggest benefit is sending DJs to attend - can explore other ways to attend for a smaller cost this year
Volunteer Month/Celebration of Volunteers
Had the idea of celebrating our volunteers during Volunteer Month (April)
Suggested we push back to another month: June Town Hall to share where we are now, where we’re going, give awards/appreciation to people (committee chairs, volunteers on committees, etc.) in a more collaborative presentation of appreciation
Committees to give a quick intro who they are, what they’re doing
Create more opportunities for people to gather: consider twice annual town halls, with perhaps a mixer in-between
Other Business
Studio Swap - are we on track? Forrest is on top of it (though currently out of town) and working to train Lonnie and Alicia on how to swap; some work is happening offline.
Point of contact for Secret Alley going forward - TBD, opportunities for improvement (required Alley Cat training for all committee leads, people interested in hosting events in the space)
Charm School - all committee leads contribute to curriculum, Sean point
Other Avenues - $75 donation to the next Listening Party for snacks
Applied for and declined for a grant for the Listening Parties
GTFA - still waiting on money, check PO Box, transfer money out of Givebutter
Public Comment?
No public comment.
Any committee highlights?
Transition Working Group met briefly to talk about Doorbot operations; looking to add multiple people to the fallback call list for accessing the studio.
7:40 pm — Meeting adjourned.
The next meeting of the BFF.fm board is scheduled for May 19th 2025. See https://board.bff.fm for more information.
Action Items
[Board] Further discuss and form the Board Evolution Working Group
[Amanda] Connect with Alan to end work on trademark negotiations
[Mark] Take over trademark negotiations
[Irving] Break out budget by committee to make a snapshot view, create a purchase order form OR system for purchase requests to better track
[Amanda] Begin work on drafting policies (not to be done by next board meeting!)
[Amanda] Delete Facebook page
[Clair] Reach out to George from The Complex re: Mosswood
[Kerri] Research booth/press passes for Mosswood
[Irving] Transfer money out of Givebutter for everything except the LPFM fund, check the PO box for pending funds
[Kerri/Clair/Amanda] Next Committee Leads meeting - include relevant topics here (new structure shared, evolution of the board, reporting to/sharing with the board, new policies work, Charm School curriculum, etc.)
[Kerri] Follow up on event committee meet-up to collaborate on line-ups, DJ-driven Listening Parties
Last updated