IMC General Membership Meeting 10/3/2002 7:05pm Paul Riismandel Facilitating Zach Miller taking Minutes. Summary of Proposals Adopted (massive details to follow): 1) The general membership agreed to moving forward with buying a building and empowered the finance and steering groups to move forward with starting a capital campaign. A specially called General Membership Meeting will be called to give final OK on a specific plan to buy a specific building. Steering will decide when the membership meeting will be and the steering group can authorize earnest money be put up before this at a well publicized steering meeting. Finance and Steering will publicly announce via email, website, and bulliten board all meetings on this topic where major decisions will be made. Concerns can and should be addressed at any of these open meetings. 2) At next regularly scheduled membership meeting we will consense upon language defining membership and incorporating it into structure. Paul R. will draft some language on his own if no other caucus or group has drafted any by then. Intro The IMC is accountable to the larger community and this is how we make good on that. We aren't under a time pressure, there are other meetings where we can pursue these things. Attending: Paul R, Clint, Sascha, Kate, Charlotte, Zach, Mike, Ron, Emily, Danielle, Will, Nancy, Jason, Sara, Alex, Darrin, Sandra, Jay, Russ, Paul M, Cope, possibly some others showed up late and didn't get added to this list. Next General Meeting: Saturday April 5, 2003 Old business Concerns about anti-discrimination. Caucus was formed. The Caucus published some minutes after a single meeting. Those minutes were read by Zach. The people with concerns didn't actually show up to the first meeting. We have a conflict resolution system now. Training women in audio production has happened. Need a volunteer to coordinate consensus procedures formalization. Anti-discrimination language was delegated to the steering group. The steering group passed something. Clint will find the language from the notes and help communicate it to everyone. Zach found and read the non discrimination statement. "The IMC is committed to creating and maintaining an open and fair community. Meetings are open to all without regard to age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, citizenship, or any other applicable basis proscribed by law. Every participant will be treated fairly and equitably." The structure document lives until April. A brief overview of customary consensus procedures was given by Paul R. Financial report We are now formal fiscal sponsors for a lot of organizations. We manage their money. Foundations will only deal with non-profits so we can function as a conduit for these kind of organizations. Foundations are using us as a conduit for dispersing grant funds. We've been applying for grants. We got $7000 from Robeson Foundation. This is the first big grant that we've gotten for our specific kind of work. We've been running a deficit, we are now breaking even. Our operations were not affected but this was a warning. The financial health of the organization is currently good. We have a $4000 endowment. We have enough money in our accounts to cover our expenses. We have no co-mingling of funds so we know when we're broke vs. borrowing from other organizations that we fund. "It is really wonderful that we've got this set up the way we do. Are the people who signed the 501c3 sheet legally responsible? Should we get bonded?" As far as Sascha knows the responsible people if someone else got sued would be _that_ organization. The contract was written by a collective of progressive lawyers. If the IMC gets sued the people who are liable are the board of directors. The Board's assets are at risk. We should visit getting board of directors insurance. Zach says this thing about board liability may not be true, talk to WEFT BOD (Paul M was there). Most groups cost money. Rent is our major expense. The shows group is keeping us alive. Why are we breaking even? Re-upped memberships and shows. We've made about $2500 on fiscal sponsorship fees. Sascha has donated his entire cut back to the IMC. Sascha negotiates this after finance agrees to sponsorship. Steering does not interact with this process because steering empowered us. Sascha supplies an annual financial report which gets posted on the bulliten board. Send questions to finance@ucimc.org or come to the finance meeting. Paul R talks about membership. Membership should become/remain a major portion of our budget. We must be able to say we have a community that supports us. Paul is putting in work to make sure the membership records are up to date and good. Paul needs someone to take over the membership management and more people to think about expanding membership. We need to keep in touch with our membership. Danielle says: We should have official membership signup things at all our events. People should come Tuesday at noon at University Y to help danielle sign people up. New Business Discussion on buying the building. Rationale - 2/3s of the money we raise goes into rent. That money disappears. That is huge. What WEFT did was very smart, they own their building now. This building will be sold starting next spring. If we can put a down payment down they will sell for us first. Current price is $300k. We need to raise $60k for down plus $40k for incidentals if something goes wrong we could fix it. We need to raise $100k. Sascha has run the numbers about cost to operate the building, with laser's edge and apartments rented we would pay less per month than we are paying now. Overhead of overseeing the property, paying a manager, giving space or reduced rent for being a manager. Post office is only asking $250k we should compare cost. One thing this building has that postoffice doesn't is that this provides income, the postoffice does not provide income, there are no apartments there. Paul M wonders what we'll do with that $40k, keep it as cash or pay down the mortgage and then take equity? Mike L says we may have to work on accessibility issues. We may have to get some insurance. Bringing the building up to code. So we wouldn't just bank all the money, we'd spend it. The details we'll work out in other groups. Jason, one reason to keep this space involves PR. We'd have to restart our PR from zero if we moved. Since our major income is shows we'd lose that for a while if we moved. Sandra says Kevin is amazed at the high price of this building. The buildings on the street by WEFT are only $150k. Mike L says those buildings have major problems. As we explore we shouldn't be married to staying in Urbana. When talking about a 30 year investment you don't go by what you've done for the last year. Mortgage on a monthly basis would be about $2700 to $3000 in total. Laser's Edge is thinking of signing a 5 year lease. We aren't just buying the building but buying the infrastructure and history. This is for a 30 year mortgage. But this is all guestimates, we may be able to get a 15 year mortgage. Alex - is it reasonable to think we can raise $100k in less than a year. Sascha's proposal - This meeting should be about deciding whether we want to try to buy a building. We can't wait until the next membership meeting to decide this. Proposal - Empowering the finance group to make a decision which will be finally approved by steering. Concerns - Sandra believes that this should come back to the full group. Danielle says there should be a special meeting. The meeting should be announced the way we announce a general membership meeting. Danielle wants a special membership meeting be called by steering. Sascha accepts Danielle's recomendation. Dan wants people who can't make the meeting to be able to proxy. Others think this won't work with consensus. Dan is concerned because we are not a majority of membership. Paul R shares Dan's concern. One meeting can be missed. Jason P - what if someone gets a flat tire, do we reverse the decision? Paul R. perhaps we could have 2 meetings. Clint - the logistics of having a meeting where everyone can attend is hard. the meeting has to be had at some point. if we let a decision not happen that is scary. Mike - this is a process, not a single meeting. If someone makes it clear that they have some strong issues with this they shouldn't wait until the end of the process to block. There will be plenty of opportunity for input. Trying to get consensus from the membership is a lengthy process. Sascha - the proposal we have here is to have the meeting early next year, between now and then we'll have biweekly open meetings of finance, after that there'll be a steering group meeting to set up the membership meeting, the final step is going back to the membership to look for overarching concerns. But this meeting is the last component of a very long process with dozens of meetings. Paul M - The membership meeting should be the kick off of the capital campaign rather than the end of the process. We can make that meeting large. Danielle - Both Paul's raise a good issue, a new proposal brewing. The issue is how do we go about buying a building. How do we transform the IMC by buying a building? Danielle supports having 2 meetings. 1 kick off/celebration/press conference meeting and 1 final meeting to sign off on all the details, buy in and sign off. Clint - Agrees with kick-off. The initial response wasn't "if we can buy it we should" but rather "the IMC shouldn't be landlords, it is a contradiction". Mike L - If this meeting authorizes going forward then it authorizes going forward with fundraising. Don't call the kick off a meeting, we should have a kick off though. The kick off is a party. Paul R. - convinced by Mike and following, view this as a process, we must keep the process open. As long as there are a lot of other venues rolling up to a big meeting this could be fine. Proposals - Empower finance and then steering to fundraise and authorize buying the building. Danielle - Final meeting, and kick off party, send things out to the entire IMC list any time you are going to have concrete proposals to discuss. Final meeting is the only actual "meeting". Sascha - I can't fundraise unless he has permission for targetted fundraising. Clint - Do we need a unresolvable block resolution mechanism for the final meeting? Zach - If we pass today's proposal are we guaranteed to buy a building IF we raise the money and the final meeting will decide which building? Synthesized proposal: The membership gives its ok to buy some building, begin fundraising, authorize fundraising/finance group and steering to negotiate and raise funds, final OK at membership meeting. We will publicly announce via email, website, and bulliten board all meetings on this topic where major decisions will be made. Concerns can be addressed at any of these open meetings. Final signoff on the plan will be at a specially called membership meeting. Danielle - are we making it impossible to buy this building. Sascha - as long as concerns are raised in time. Mike - define that last meeting Zach - is the final meeting before we negotiate or before we close Sandra - as long as it is completely publicized, wouldn't have a problem with the final meeting being a steering rather than meeting Zach - Allow steering to decide when it is ok to have the final OK meeting. Paul - The steering group will call a meeting before we make a commitment of X dollars. Sascha - we have to trust that the process will be done well. Zach and Danielle - Steering will decide when the membership meeting will be and the steering group can authorize earnest money be put up at a well publicized steering meeting. - This was added to the whole proposal. yay consensus Fix the structure document - Paul K's proposal submitted. Mike - right now we don't let money get in the way of people becoming a member, finance has let people in who could not pay. Quantifying like this makes money _more_ of an issue rather than less. The issue of members being revoked is pretty weird, membership should be more explicit. We've got policies to deal with conflicts and anti-discrimination. Waiting 6 months to straighten out a membership question is a little problematic. Jason - This document is so broad as to be almost completely meaningless. Sandra - It takes getting used to the idea that to be a member you have to pay but you do get used to it. The fact that we have a hardship procedure already addresses this. What is the difference between being a member and a non-member. Paul - the only difference is who can be in the steering group. Sascha - non members get rental benefits and can borrow from the production room. Paul - I would like to see some definition in the document. Membership should be defined. Mike - We should put the current membership definition. Zach - withdraws proposal Paul R - At next regularly scheduled membership meeting we will consent upon language defining membership and encorporating it into structure. Paul R. will draft some language if no one else has drafted any by then. consensed. -- Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://wolfgang.groogroo.com/ IMSA 1995 - UIUC 2000 - Just Another Leftist Muppet - Ya Basta! Social Justice, Community, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Feminism, Sustainability, Responsibility, Diversity, Democracy, Ecology