20191230 BOD Notes

Maker Station BOD meeting Dec 30, 2019

Attendees:

BOD: Tanju B, Alex B

Members: Chris G, Bret L

Guests: Sean M

Agenda:

Quick financial update and then we discuss lots of things regarding the upcoming year like potential of expanding/moving increasing membership rates. (fyi Decatur Makers also raising their rates in 2020)

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Discussed

Board of Directors status update

Tanju is currently the CEO and CFO, with Joshua as the Secretary. Joshua will be stepping down in Feb 2020 and Chris Keeling resigned as CFO back in Apr 2019. Annual corporate registration is due next spring and will need to update the names listed.

• The state of GA requires minimum of three officers but does allow same person to hold multiple roles
• Tanju asking for help, needs more than just him for all the roles
  • Chris is willing to step up for the CFO, has experience with this and also has the time to do it.
  • Alex wants to discuss potential for Secretary role offline.

Tanju shared a draft document specifying Board Member responsibilities, seeking comments offline.

Review of financial statements for the entire 2019 year period

• The previous financial spreadsheets have been transferred over to GnuCash accounting software and able to upload checking account transaction into GnuCash. We only have approx 10 transactions per month
  • We are ending the year with ~$4300 in the checking account
  • For the year, total income was $38.3K and total expenses $36.5K with the majority of expenses being rent and utilities

Review of Membership numbers

• Currently have 60 members for Dec, with 2 additional (not tallied below) in a state of changing credit cards and intending to renew
• Discussed asking Steve for report of rfid sys log to assess active door swipes

Consideration for expanding the space

• 2020 starts the 3rd year of our current 3 year lease, good time to explore options
• Tanju is not interested in cosigning another 3 year lease, potential to be moving back out west within the next 3 years
  • Alex asking if Tanju would consider cosigning for another 1-2 yrs and then transferring over to Alex
• Landord confirmed today that the space next door, unit2, is available but not able to provide a cost quote due to the holiday. They will be following up with a proposal and provided a copy of the floor plan. Reviewed sqft layout and assessed potential estimate of increase rent, looks doable. Our current unit is 3400 sqft and the unit next door is 2060 sqft.

Other topics:

• Scholarship membership (financial support) membership in exchange for cleaning and maintenance at the space.
  • We currently have two former members pursuing this on a verbal agreement but we need to get a formal process and agreement in place

• Member additional storage
  • There are a couple of members taking up excess space with material storage beyond active projects.
  • Discussed the need to impose a charge for additional sqft... members can rent additional storage
  • Concern is that we don't really have the space. We can get creative about making the space, in particular the industrial shelving near the back door
  • Charging for the limited space will also motivate people to be more careful and selective about when they need it
  • Tanju cautioning that the challenge is management oversight is needed to manage paid storage, can set up an additional option on gumroad to manage renting extra storage but will still require someone to be monitoring the usage on a continuous basis