February 2025

February 11th 2025, San Francisco

Agenda

Discussion Topics

  1. Publication of Redacted LPFM Meeting Notes

  2. Board Secretary Redux

  3. Volunteer General Manager role

  4. Draft Budget 2025 for Review & Approval

  5. Listening Parties

  6. Secret Alley update

  7. 2025 Gala

  8. Website terms of service update

  9. Slack usage proposal

  10. Setting replacement dates for computing hardware

  11. SF City FC partnership opportunity update

Closing Items

  • Public Comment?

  • Anything from committees not covered?

  • Any other business?

Minutes

Present:

  • Christa Hartsock, Secretary, Chair of Tech Committee

  • Clair McDevitt, Chair of Fundraising Committee

  • Irving Pham, Treasurer

  • Kerri O’Malley, Co-Chair, co-Chair of Marketing Committee

  • Ben Ward, Co-Chair

Absent:

  • Amanda Guest, Executive Director (Leave of Absence)

  • 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 the November 2024 minutes

Vote YES to approve the January 2025 minutes

Review Previous Action Items

  • Group: Divide and conquer to get past Board Minutes published on board.bff.fm (thanks, Ben!)

  • All: Please review your contributions to BFF.fm and ensure you are giving at an appropriate and viable level.

  • Christa: Take over Board Calendar event; set up new recurrence rules.

  • Christa: Will update Doorbot phone to Studio Phone. Liaise with Programming Cmmt to socialize DJs knowing how to use the phone. Update documentation.

    • Door bot points to Forrest’s phone for time being, will be discussed at next transition working group meeting

  • Irving: Pull donations from GiveButter in 2024

    • Deferred for next meeting.

  • Clair: send revised secretary responsibilities to Christa - DONE

  • Clair: Reach out to Amanda via BFF email to resolve the mystery grant, add to agenda for next board meeting

    • Confirmed grant was from X for the Arts

  • Kerri: Reach out to Brandon to see if he has partnership policies that we could adapt, work with Mark on partnership/greylist policy

    • Nothing existing from Brandon. Will take second half as new action

  • Christa + Ben: Check in with Brandon about changing email from @bff.fm -> @[email protected]

  • Christa: Send reminder and call for participation to Slack the week before next board meeting

    • Decided to wait to invite people explicitly until more stable

  • Update board terms on website, including Amanda (which requires setting board term expiration)

    • Ben updated existing known board terms; need to check in about Amanda’s board term end when she returns

  • Update website with board meeting frequency and upcoming dates.

    • Ben: Did this!

  • Remind people that #station-leadership is a resource (thanks Clair!)

  • Consider a general membership survey and/or town hall to reintroduce leadership. Possibly do a survey in advance of town hall to shape agenda.

    • Kerri to create comms plan for station leadership things

Publication of Redacted LPFM Meeting Notes

During the early stages of our LPFM application, the board held some closed session discussions about the process. Since the LPFM license is now granted, we should publish the redacted minutes:

Vote YES to approve the publishing minutes of previously redacted LPFM discussions.

Board Membership & Secretary Redux

Christa has decided to step down from the board, vacating the role of secretary.

  • Expectation of being on a committee as well as on the board is a lot: Is that a reasonable expectation?

    • Expectations for being on the board have changed with the transition—much more work now.

    • What are models of boards where board members aren’t in committees?

      • A difference between being on a committee and leading a committee, which is where we’ve been recently.

Christa to stay on through end of March.

Board development processes - believe that Amanda has been in conversation with board candidates. Want to wait for her return before discussing new board members.

  • What do we want to have set in place before Amanda returns?

    • Be able to say: here’s how the station is operating now, here’s what’s working. Then upon return: here’s where we see the board fitting in to support that.

    • Day-to-day operations / committee structure seems to be working well - goal to make it a success by end of March.

    • Board may be the thing in need of transition now—thinking about sustainability, etc.

  • Secretary: leave spot open for now, at least until Amanda comes back

    • Collaborate on notes during meetings. Ben & Kerri to shoulder through transition.

    • Intend to recruit someone.

Volunteer General Manager role

Amanda drafted a job description for a volunteer general manager position, and we reviewed and discussed based on how things have been going past few months.

  • Things seem to be going well day-to-day (operations committee & day leads, programming committee, etc). Better than we had expected / hoped!

    • Are there things we don’t realize we’re missing? May be able to understand through a membership survey

    • Places where we’ve felt friction: doorbot fallback, some communication. But there has been more open communication, so net positive

    • Currently we do not feel that there is a void in absence of a GM

    • Desire expressed not to step in to change things that seem to be working and emergent. Serious concern that promoting a GM could actually undo the decentralized direction we’ve been heading in, or even undermine new committee leads and volunteers who’ve stepped up.

    • Collective energy is giving more people visibility, encouraging more trusted relationships.

  • Discussion around events coordination responsibilities:

    • Coordinating with Alley needs to be board accountable, but may not require being a board member specifically.

    • Could also be a member of a committee, which fits into existing structures.

Decision: NO to this, for now. But keep an open mind and check in again in future. Note that the transition is far from “done” and gaps may yet be exposed for which this would be appropriate.

  • Noted that we’d like to see any future version of this be drafted from the perspective of what we are becoming, rather than what we were before.

Draft Budget 2025 for Review & Approval

  • Not guaranteed same amount of funding that we’ve had in the past from the city (X for the Arts)

  • How should we think about budgeting for equipment requests?

    • Expenses under $1,000 don’t require board approval

    • Example: how do we think about replacement dates for computing hardware?

    • Could we budget for in-studio consumables vs replacement / infrastructural investments? These sit in different committees, so may want to budget accordingly.

Vote YES to approve the 2025 budget

Listening Parties

  • What do we remember from our last discussions and how to proceed?

    • Think we discussed scaling them down - e.g. no videographer, smaller snack budget

  • What committee do they fall under and what protocol should we follow for planning them?

    • Currently events being planned, but not within committee structure. Previously in fundraising, but an odd fit

    • Events at BFF are a range of commitment - hosting and publicizing but not handling money and all money goes to bands; vs listening parties where we are hosting, facilitating, handling money and expenses.

  • We think Listening Parties are great! How do we bring costs down to make sustainable?

    • Listening parties are currently only event where we are involved financially

    • Free or cheaper venue?

      • Expect that Alley won’t be available through end of year, at least. So will continue at Stable Cafe

    • Work with Lead around venue, finding sponsorships, etc.

      • Ideally - find two underwriters to cover venue, money for the bands.

    • Currently for events: $150 venue fee, $50-100 for snacks, >=$100 band, $? photographer / videographer

      • 6 events last year

      • Feel we can cut videography budget until we build capacity to use the footage. Also, shrink snack spend

  • Need to give guidance for Teddy going forward, especially with upcoming dates

  • Would love to partner with someone that does photography / videography in future.

Decision: $300 cost / event, 6 events, $1800 for 2025 budget. Enough to work with to keep program going, and we can revisit in future

  • $300 = $150 venue + $50 snacks + $100 bands

Proposal: Fit into events subcommittee, which becomes a joint between marketing and fundraising.

Secret Alley update

Secret Alley will be doing an immersive Halloween installation; 2025-early 2026. Mostly on third floor. Prep will likely begin in June. There will be construction, limited live music (by permit.)

  • Opportunity for BFF.fm community to get more involved with the Alley - as a board we should communicate this out, including potential construction disruptions for DJs.

2025 Gala

Proposal to not have a gala this year—can’t host at the Alley (as per the above) and hosting elsewhere financially not viable. Unsustainable level of effort shouldered by limited volunteers. Not meeting fundraising goals.

  • Fundraising and Marketing collab raised more than $6k in rent party - think there are more sustainable ways to raise the same amount of funds.

  • Gala has been a great party and way to introduce new people to BFF.fm, who may not go to other types of events. Would be great to think about how to continue doing that, more effectively and with less effort

    • Ideas for BFF.fm birthday month fundraising: theme karaoke, popup round, bar fundraisers, show of BFF.fm bands, etc.

  • Would like to think about ways to get people to gather without centering around fundraising, like the Townhall

  • Silent auction component

    • For organizations that have donated to auction in past, is there a different relationship that could make sense?

    • Possibly reach out to for pop-up locations, likely too small for underwriting.

    • Could still do silent auction online if we wanted—possibly at pop-up, on-air, etc.

  • Explore match campaigns for larger donors

Website terms of service update

  • Ben gathered privacy policies of our third party services

  • Mark will draft by end of month

Slack usage proposal

  • Decided:

    • All #form-x correspondence channels to be private to protect data of submissions, with a plan to manage.

    • Begin using #announcements for critical information

  • Zapier integration for new DJ volunteers was broken because Ben’s access was removed from the Slack channel, and Zapier’s authorization depended on a token connected to his account.

    • TODO: We should create a “service owner” account that can exist in these private channels and not be tied to an individual person.

  • TODO: Related to internal comms

    • Create a user group for Slack that can post to announcements

    • Lock down who can post to the announcements channel - try out with board and leads

    • Announce the announcements channel

    • Remind about the #station-leadership channel

Setting replacement dates for computing hardware

  • Discussed as part of budget conversation

SF City FC partnership opportunity update

  • Going ahead with having BFF.fm logo on SF City FC training shirts

  • Opportunities for building more partnership with them.

    • Aligned as two volunteer-run organizations

    • Team is particularly interested in partnerships with LQBTQ orgs, design yearly pride jerseys

    • Intend to drop into #general-chatter to see if membership has ideas

  • Want to announce partnership of some kind, reviewing with Mark

  • Shirts can be pre-ordered here! https://sfcityfc.com/products/2025-training-top?variant=42026441769021

Public Comment?

  • No public comment.

Any committee highlights?

  • Nothing to report this month.

Any other Business?

  • Q from Ben: Are any of our grants going to be affected by federal government instability?

    • All grants supporting BFF.fm are from City of SF or State of CA sources. We don’t receive federal money and don’t anticipate any impact from the current federal government instability.

  • Delay discussion of executive sessions to next session

8:33 pm — Meeting adjourned.

The next meeting of the BFF.fm board is scheduled for March 11th 2025. See https://board.bff.fm for more information.

Action Items

  • Ben: Publish previous redacted minutes.

  • Ben: Create a Zapier “service owner” account that can exist in these private channels and not be tied to an individual person.

  • Irving: Check for a Loomly annual subscription (attached to [email protected])

  • Kerri: Create comms plan for station leadership things

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