Board of Directors

Regular Meeting -- November 17, 2013

The Board of Directors held its regular bi-monthly meeting at 2007 Bert Avenue, Austin, TX 78704, starting at 2:30 pm. The following directors (constituting a quorum of the full board) were present at the meeting: President Kathy Lee, Secretary Pam Chambers, Laine Morales and Treasurer Penny Chambers (by phone). The following directors were absent: Vice President Tamara Vogt. Robert McGarey, Executive Director was also present at the meeting.

Reading of Mission Statement and Approval of Minutes

The Mission Statement was read aloud at the beginning of the meeting. Minutes from the previous meeting were read aloud and approved as read.

Executive Director's Report

Volunteers and Connections. Lots of volunteers coming up. Margaret Chandler will be coming for training on Monday. She will be working as an Executive Assistant. James Williams will be here from ITT and will do anything that Bob needs to do.

Wheatsville Coop is now open south and Bob is thinking about doing something in collaboration with them.

Finances. Bob is almost ready to send an application to Wells Fargo for the mortgage.

Bob finally got life insurance for himself as a key employee, which lists the Center as its beneficiary. Rate is $53.43 a month for a 15 year $100,000 policy.

The Scholarship Fund fundraiser did well, bringing in around $2,200. We will now get something back for each scholarship that we give out, and the fund is refillable when we do another fundraiser.

We got a check for $32.85 from the GoodSearch people, so keep doing searches on GoodSearch.

We rented the Cottage to Dr. Keith Keenan. Dr. Keenan did a lot of work with Bob's help refurbishing the Cottage, and Bob thought Dr. Keenan was volunteering to do the work. It turns out that apparently Dr. Keenan thought we were going to give him a break on the rent, and he asked about that after they were about 3 weeks into the work. So Bob asked Kathy to talk with him about what he wants, and then brought the question to the Board. The Board decided that we offer Dr. Keenan $2,500 worth of services from the Center in exchange for the work he did on the Cottage, which is about $30 per hour based on the time he logged working.

Bingo. For 4 quarters we didn't get anything, as it has been low time at the hall. The bingo commission jumped onto our bingo hall due to it producing low income. So Sonny had to figure out how to get more for the charities, which meant his salary being cut.

Board Involvement. Bob talks about the vision of the Center and he realized that the Center is not living up to its potential. He figures that he can't do it all by himself. He has a lot of good ideas, and can't do them all himself. He has run into some non-profits lately who require different things from their board members. One requires board members to give or get $5000 per year. Another requires board members to volunteer 10 hours a month to the organization.

Then he hands out the Center vision he wrote in 1991 and a list of possible board tasks. He says there is a lot that could be done that could make the Center a better place if other people plugged in and took an active role in creating improvements here. Since were nearly out of time, Kathy suggested that we take the list of possible board tasks home and decide what we each would be willing to do, and the board agreed.

Decorating the Center. Pam brigs up the graffiti artist Nathan 'Sloke One' Nordstrom. She wants to set the Center up as a permission wall location. The board suggested that we don't want anything dark or Goth like, but something more in line of what we are all about. The discussion was tabled until next meeting.

Google. Lesleigh brought up the topic of what shows up when people search for the Center on Google. Laine suggests that we try not to hide the unusual topics that happen here at the Center, but let it be OK and then the people who are attracted to the unusual topics can bring all of their normal friends.Bob said it would be hard to delete or un-link unusual topics from the web site. Bob points out that the Center is a place for emotionally healthy community, and so we want that to be the primary thing that draws people here.

Since there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at around 5:00 pm.

Minutes submitted by Pam Chambers, Secretary, November 17, 2013