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Mentor - Volume 33, Issue 298, July, 2022
MentorThe Newsletter of Arisia, IncorporatedVolume 33, Issue 298, July, 2022 519 Somerville Ave #371, Somerville, MA 02143 + 1-917-7ARISIA (+1-917-727-4742) |
ContentsAbout the MeetingJune Meeting Summary Announcements Treasurer’s Report Membership List Executive Board Committees Storage Keyholders Subscription and Dues Information Calendar |
About the Next Meeting
The next corporate meeting of Arisia, Inc. will be held on July 17, at 2:00 PM via Zoom, using the link that has been distributed over the corp-announce list for previous meetings. The quorum for the July corporate meeting is 13, based on 51% of the average attendance of the last three meetings (Apr:33, May:26, June:16)/3×0.51)=12.75 ).
Please send all proxies for the July corporate meeting in advance by email to corp-proxies@arisia.org, and CC the proxy holder.
Meeting minutes for Corp meeting July 17th, 2:00 PM
Attendees
Nicholas “phi” Shectman
Joseph Andelman
Jan Dumas
Vivian Abraham
Kelly Fabijanic
Sharon Sbarsky
Lisa Hertel
Rachel Tenenhaus
Ileen Tatroe
Ken London
Inanna Arthen
Elliott M
Richard Scheeider
Rick Kovalcik
E.J. Barnes
Jenifer Fitzsimmons-G
Proxies
Danny Miller to E J Barnes accepted
Nightwing Whitehead to Jan Dumas accepted
Corrections to the minutes
Meeting called to order at 2:06pm
Eboard reports
We had a meeting and discussed improvements to the MENTOR publication process that we hope will prevent backlogs in the future.
We authorized Rick to spend the $3000 accessibility grant money on Assistive Listening Devices and microphones, and we voted to lend these to Albacon or Philcon to help tech crew get familiar with them.
We still don’t have a lease from the landlord, though we have agreed on the terms of one and that is probably legally binding.
Jodie is stepping back from IRMC to focus on A23. MOVED to appoint Vivian Abraham as chair of the IRMC.
We are accepting nominations for conchair for A24 and A25.
President’s Report
MOVED to set the October meeting to Tuesday, October 25 at 7pm via Zoom.
We have many religious holidays in October. We could do Tuesday the 25. There is no conflict with the NESFA calendar on that day.
Sharon explained that we could do Tuesday the 13th.
Vivial suggested Straw Poll
Tuesday the 25th was the clear winner
Moved to set the October meeting to Tuesday the 25th
Vivian seconded
Votes to approved 14 to 1
Phi asked if there were any questions for presidents
Vice President’s Report
None
Treasurer’s Report
Shared screen. See document at the end of this mentor
This report is in the structure of the non profit mode of reporting making sure everyone knows what the numbers mean. In the past we have said here are all our assets lumped together. For example we have tried to keep money in reserved accounts and money in
With interest rates going up it is important to keep funds in savings accounts. Currently we keep account in CD accounts to get better interest rates
We have gotten away from having multiple bank accounts and not having to print more checks for more bank accounts Lets list all the money is set aside for each bank account
We can also try to set up bank accounts for how much we assume Arisia will cost but that is hard. Sometimes tens of thousands of dollars will accumulate before we move it to the Arisia account
This spreadsheet does not have all the money for A23 yet we don’t have A23 budget or corp budget. This is an end of year corp report have been accounted for and we don’t have budgets past for future or past years no bud for
I would expect that in future years that this account will look different
Money that A23 has collected is mostly stuff that A22 rolled over and the Corp can’t spend it until the con closes its books
If the con did not happen (like the hotel burned down) this is money in line 19 and 20 that we would have to pay back so it is in the liabilities column.
You could take the bottom line number (708.09) as the only asset the convention has. To do it otherwise is to just rearrange the deck chairs. We are not clear of all the iceberg, but we are not the titanic
In some conventions would do it other ways but this is What I am not doing is breaking out individual bank accounts two reasons
First, We are in the process of moving accounts in BA to OU and there are odd numbers in the account. We are not using PP to move money between the two accounts because we have done so in the past and were burned.
Also People are starting to renew dues and that is corp money, and people are starting to pay for con and that is con money. That is true also of some of the BA accounts and will soon be true of the OU. Trying to limit accounts in OU because not all of the accounts are free. Se we are trying to limit accounts there
We have some money earmarked and some money we can play with
I added credit card cash rewards don’t know how liquid that money is? Can we turn it into the bank account, can we use it toward the credit card. This money is not bank account money liquid and we should be aware that money exists and we should not close that account without being aware that account exists
As part of our master bill we paid last year after we canceled the convention it is easy to wind up with a master bill of 10 thousand or more. This is money we will get the benefit of in A23
We have a credit with ASCAP for 100 of dollars that we can use as a vender credit
We also prepaid the mailbox. We have a credit that is an expense that is already taken care of. We should also budget the 10 dollars for the mailbox even though we have it as a credit.
Our web hosting is also paid forward
I don't think we need to worry right now because the 10,000 is already there so we are solvent
I have a line for refundable or returnable expenses so that we can turn back into cash after the con and also the impact of the con being canceled and in order to know the answer to those questions we must know what we can get back. Right now the number is 0 and once it stops being 0 thet document will change
Finally I am counting as an asset we spent some money in A22 that teams have decided will be used in A23. Team Arisia services made the decision to not put a year on Arisia swag so we could use them in the future
We have boxes of tshirt it have a small logo of A22 on volunteer printed dark gray on black we could print a 3 over the 2 but that would cost money so they might also count as an asset. But not until we decide what to do with them. Many places there are
It looks rosy with 95,283.11, in the total assets but only 708 in net. Because all that money is money that we will have to spend in A23 it belongs to the con .
And then we owe some money as part of the lease negotiation. We missed billed a little bit for storage rent that we owe 22 and change because they have not given us paperwork for a lease; it does not get us out of owing them to them. We owe sales tax at the end of the month and some expense reports that have not been paid yet.. Those are a liability that carries over from 21 to 22 and we will need to pay that.
Those are directly accounts payable that we need to send them a check or send PayPal to
Next liability is unspent MCC funding; some of it had specific things we needed to spend it on. And when we went to spend it on training it turned out the places we wanted to spend on were booked up (mel king) and so it's’ due to covid that they were not doing training and lots of groups wanted to do trainings We might have to return this money because we did not use it. I have asked for an extension and have not heard back. We can not spend it on anything else other than training. The 22 dollars we have to return to the state because we bought as much of the assisted devices as we could and that is the leftover monies.
We could spend training money on anything we were looking for DEI training specific. We could have spent it on any training If we reapplied for this money they might let us keep the money we have now. There is some thinking about how we do money around training. This decision doesn't come until half way through the fiscal year. We might think about doing the training and then asking for grants to cover the training. So that does not get to be counted in the net bank account
Then we have reserved funds; these are funds where we agreed to only spend money in these funds on specific things. I thought that our financial situation was such that the eboard could not use these funds
The grant fund - when we are flush we like to spread it around we put money in the grant fund to the amount that we are sending. The money earmarked for grants needs super notice with voting. You also have to be careful when getting grant money from the state that you can’t use that money to give other grants. That is the accounting reason for keeping grant funds separate. Put grant money in the fund when it is easy to document it is not state money.
Snow fund. We are supposed to keep funding for 2 years of con in the snow fund. There are things that go in the snow fund like PP fees that are paid by corp and reimbursed by con. And do you mean corp expenses or con expenses if there is no con
I have included a separate spreadsheet with what is in the snow fund i.e. rent liability, insurance, server hosting, dreamhost. This number could be larger or smaller if we did not have a con. We had 2 years of expenses that we are saving in reserve.
The only reason the snow fund is so high is we got lots of unrestricted grant money from the city of Boston, and the state and some fannish grants that gave us this cushion.
In the funds I promised I would talk about training funds. I have not gone back and said let's use this for training, We for example want to give money to MICE.I have not do that because if we have trainings that cost much more to send people to
Maybe we want to figure out a training we want to do and spend it and then ask the grant to pay us back. But we have to be ready to not get that money back from the grant. I am not talking about taking the money out of the training fund to move to the grant so that we can issue a grant
None of these question have to be decided today we thought about doing trainings in advance it turned out to be harder than expected
What do these column mean each column is an aggregate of the oe to the left the things that get grouped together
Net is one way of saying how much money we have flexible
Other organizations might have counted differently than i did
So I wanted to make sure everyone had that information because we are going to start considering grants, and training again.
We only have $708.09 but we also have $42,092.86 in our snow fund but we are not in a situation were we are not fairly close to the edge we can have a con and while there is a small chance that there is a problem, there is a 3% chance that things might go bad.
Kelly F - A few con treasurer I did not break PayPal fees out separately so that was buried in the income I just added up the members it was easier for me to ask if I needed money to ask for a PP account. Or money in the bank account. Then I made a budget skeleton for A23 so I have added a column called exposure that I am unsure if it is going to be a post con expense. This is an expense that we might not have to carry. Put a note in if you think this might be refundable.
Phi happy to answer question in slack or email
Innana curious of refundable account
Phi mostly people were registering at the 55 dollar rate which mostly came in before sept 2021 for the ‘22 convention then 71 student members then 2 baby sitting members that we will have to refund if we don’t do babysitting might have been bought in ‘20 and has been rolled over We should look and thing about giving $150 dollar back. Then 1 that has come in since the end of fiscal year. Don’t have breakdowns for when these came in. How does this compare to pre pandemic con it has been a while the big variability in year ahead it is not a correlation between year ahead and end of 55 dollar rate in September Not until you get to end of Sept do you have an idea when comparing 0 to 1 I don’t know how many rollovers we granted for ‘22 that also will be rolled over in ‘23. We would accommodate them in the future. If someone is not eligible for babysitting we would reimburse for babysitting now.
It is more that I could make a guess. There was one time a formula that said equal parts adult pre re comps plus at con we once believed that if you had this number on July 1st you would get double at con. Don’t know if that was cause and effect or just anecdotal . Think we have to go on faith here, and just add these numbers up it is 615 paid members. At the time the con was going to happen was also had 300 comps sw we were looking at 1000 members
This was a good question so I could put that number in here.
Iinanna That also it’s tied into room block numbers
Phi - our contract is unusual in that if we don’t fill our room block, a lot of things that we might have gotten for free we don’t get for free. Like we don’t get power (electricity) for free or a tech room for tech meetings. If we don't fill our room block we might not need those things.
If we can’t fill our block we might have a smaller con but then do we need those things? Like we pay to keep Starbucks open for the entire con. We are “lucky” on that account. We are not on the hook for lots of money if the con implodes.
Good to have numbers so people can judge for themselves.
The checks we ordered have arrived.
Clerk’s Report
Jan will finish these meeting notes and then work to get the remaining Mentors out to the corporation.
Member at Large Reports (if Needed)
None.
Arisia 2023 Con Chair Report
Committee Reports
IRMC
We have not gotten many reports. We will have an open working meeting shortly just to clear up what open reports we have. After the 2023 convention we might have a request to ask for more people
Sharon asked how many IR were in the que
Vivian and Jodie agreed there were less than a dozen
Rick - asked if there were things in the que that they have no information on are they ever going to act on the IR
Vivian - if we have an email we might send an email to someone asking for further information or asking the head of an area who might have seen something. If we do not get any further information we just leave the comment in the que as non actionable
We decided that since there was a pandemic on we were giving people more time to respond. Now we ask people to respond within a month.
Kelly F asked how many had banning as a possible consequence
Vivian thinks there may be one but also thinks this person might not attend anyway. There is nothing that will affect staffing or the election in any way.
Lisa H congratulations on getting it down it appears that having a virtual convention is good for IRT
Vivian gave a shout out to the people who ran IRT and discord during the last con
Ilene 1 question I have if there is any person who is a panelist who might be named in an IR could that be done quickly
Vivian Is there any vetting process that IR can help programming with. Doing one for CHicon that is intense, we could do something like that for Arisia
Old Business
New Business
Lisa asked if we are shipping anything to Worldcon
Phi says nothing that needs a truck
Rick says the con is trying to trying to avoid expenses of shipping items Ben who is in charge of exhibits says they can not afford shipping
Phi says they might want to borrow things that people can carry in luggage
Rick - I would. I don't think there is anything they want to borrow from NESFA or NCFI. We would ask for some of their profits. Suggesting that if Chicon borrows from we should protect US fandom
Phi I don’t know if they have asked to borrow the assisted listening devices - we might not have the ability to rent out those devices and can only loan.
Announcements
Albacon - Sept 16 - 18 2022 www..albacon.org
Meeting adjourned at 3:46 PM
Chat Log.
From Jennifer (she/her) to Everyone 02:02 PM
I'm more likely skip if there isn’t an
From Rick Kovalcik (he/him/his) to Everyone 02:06 PM
What's the quorum?
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 02:06 PM
don't know without minutes
From Ilene Tatroe (she/they) to Everyone 02:06 PM
13
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 02:12 PM
Thu Oct 20?
Oct 13?
From Rick Kovalcik (he/him/his) to Everyone 02:13 PM
I prefer the 25th.
From Ilene Tatroe (she/they) to Everyone 02:14 PM
Thursdays are usually rough for me.
From Rick Kovalcik (he/him/his) to Everyone 02:15 PM
Yeah things come up on Thursday for me at the last minute.
From E. J. Barnes to Everyone 02:16 PM
Thursdays are usually bad for me, and the Thursday before MICE worse than most.
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 02:21 PM
Added Oct Corp & MICE to calendar
From E. J. Barnes to Everyone 02:21 PM
👍
From Inanna Arthen (they/them) to Everyone 02:27 PM
Sorry to hear that they're in such tight straits :-(
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 02:29 PM
It's not the first time Chicon has done weird things with the profits
From E. J. Barnes to Everyone 02:35 PM
How unsavory.
What is a snow fund? In case we cancel due to blizzard?
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 02:35 PM
yes
or other emergency
From E. J. Barnes to Everyone 02:35 PM
OK, tx
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 02:36 PM
Boskone has one too. It's prudent given where/when we are
From Inanna Arthen (they/them) to Everyone 02:36 PM
Is the refundable convention income for 2023?
From E. J. Barnes to Everyone 02:45 PM
Corp dues! Oops!
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 02:48 PM
Due 9/1 https://corp.arisia.org/membership
GAAP = generally accepted accounting practice
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 02:55 PM
We may be able to "update" those shirts, I have ideas
From E. J. Barnes to Everyone 02:57 PM
How many such T-shirts are there?
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 02:57 PM
500?
probably less?
From E. J. Barnes to Everyone 03:02 PM
Sorry, cat jumped on my computer's power button.
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 03:17 PM
Training fund covers barcc, smofcon scholarships etc
From Rick Kovalcik (he/him/his) to Everyone 03:19 PM
Giving money to other groups when we have little money ourselves seems like a bad idea.
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 03:36 PM
Past budgets:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1etwFQS5uFCNzizE4ovlcMB7RyWTgLgiF...
They may not need babysitting by A23...
Skip said in the 90s that we had 51% on 12/26, but that's irrelevant with COVID effects
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 03:42 PM
$1000 is like 7 urns of coffee
From E. J. Barnes to Everyone 03:43 PM
Each urn is about $142? Really?
From Ilene Tatroe (she/they) to Everyone 03:43 PM
For THAT coffee? I sure hope not.
From Lisa Hertel (she/they) to Everyone 03:43 PM
With plus plus, yes (tax & tip)
From Rick Kovalcik (he/him/his) to Everyone 03:44 PM
That would not be the way to use the money.
From Inanna Arthen (they/them) to Everyone 03:44 PM
Yes! It was!
From Rick Kovalcik (he/him/his) to Everyone 03:45 PM
The IRS changed the rules so that no one really needs depreciation anymore.
From E. J. Barnes to Everyone 03:45 PM
30 years ago -- maybe the 2nd or 3rd year of ARISIA.
From Rick Kovalcik (he/him/his) to Everyone 03:46 PM
Most stuff can now just be expensed in the year purchased.
Even NESFA expenses everything now.
From Inanna Arthen (they/them) to Everyone 03:56 PM
Bye, everyone!