April 5 2009 Collectivecouncil

Agenda¶

Non-proffit status (discussed, action items below)¶

• Where do we stand on this?
• What deadlines do we have?
• Who is interested in being involved?
• What outside help do we need to seek and what resources can we use?

Check-in on new procedures (not discussed, too few people present)¶

• review of how things have been going with new procedures
• any remaining action items to fully implement new procedures
• review of EAB (to clear any confusion)

Staff Training! (not discussed, too few people present & ran out of time)¶

• Review protocols and get this settled so we can get more staffers , which we need.
  • Open Shop Greeter
  • Monday Drop-in teaching
• Plan training sessions or facilitate them to happen on a regular basis
• Communicate both the need for staff & process for being trained

Lease (discussed, action items below)¶

• How can we move forward with settling this issue?
• Action items to to move forward.

Committees (not discussed)¶

• If time permits/brief disscusion: Which committees are going to be active, and how often they should meet?
• Form plans to meet (tentative or concrete) and then communicate in advance

Minutes¶

Next meeting may 10th 1 pm at RBR office.¶

Youth class update¶

There are many classes scheduled with different organizations this year, and some still being scheduled. See crabgrass, they are listed. Scott estimates that we will need to hire 2-3 more people to take part in some way in teaching the classes.

We discussed what we would need to do to get to a point where we can pay these additional people.

First we clarified our internal policy on hiring. It has not changed.

* Must be collective council member
* Everyone is hired as independent contractors.
* People must submit an invoice (form already exists) for their work once a month. Rachel can set the date she wishes this to be. Rachel cuts them a check at that time.
* Must complete appropriate training. For youth classes, shadow one entire session. Co-teaching will be incorporated into your shadowing. People can be paid half-wage for training once you actually teach a class.

All present agreed we wish to proceed with hiring additional people as necessary for the new youth program contracts.

Scott G. will approach Bike Pittsburgh about getting some more independent contractors signed on.

Scott G. also raised the issue that he would like to pay people to do outreach events. Decided to wait for budget.

Lease¶

We have a boilerplate draft. Presumably it has what CJ wants already, since they gave it to us. We need to consider what we want in it (bathroom, safe entryway, lease termination clause, appropriate noise levels during open hours, security that we will not be asked to move, etc.)

* We agreed we will start an internal process to get input. Will will send email, set up crabgrass forum.

* Need to tell CJ that Bike Pittsburgh has asked us to get our own non-profit status soon. – Jessica will do.

* Need to ask the lawyer (Dave Korman) what is involved in transferring the lease once we become independent – ask the lawyer. Morgan will set up a meeting with Dave Korman to discuss the lease.

* How can we sign a lease – we need to approach BP about the issue since they have to sign. Morgan will do this.

Non profit status.¶

Morgan: summarized process as he understands it, from a book he has read. Trademark name to reserve it. Create a PA state corporation. File for non-profti status with state, fed gov, local municipal government. To become a corporation, we need to write bylaws and have a board. Morgan is willing to start paperwork.

Group agreed to proceed with filing for independent nonprofit status, with Morgan starting things off. He will be out of town over the next two months but will have a computer and email access pretty much throughout. He will post progress on the wiki and seek group input at major junctures.

Group approved $500-600 for filing stuff.

Group requests for Morgan as he goes forward:

* new volunteer Jake seemed knowledgeable about this and perhaps interested to help out.
* Clarify questions around accounting. Are accounting records reviewed during nonprofit application? What info do they need, what will get our application accepted? Someone (Kitty?) suggested keeping good books for a year, then applying. Find out if this is so, why, etc..
* Keep us updated on crabgrass about what is happening.
* Do some consultation with people who have experience with this, since we are all novices, multiples eyes catch mistakes, etc..

Some discussion about how we will do books in the future and who will do them. Morgan: we need to get an accountant to come in, set up a good framework, do the work for us.
Scott: it needs to be someone intimately familiar with our operations. We should pay an accountant to take care of the accounting.
Jessica: we already have a framework, it is the quickbooks accounts, and the accounting policies we have in place. Kitty helped create this framework, told us what to track. This year she told us there were a few loose ends, we have improved the framework to clean those up this year. Concerned about ability of accountant to do the work for us, since much of it is moving stuff (money, records, etc.) from shop to appropriate places. May still require substantial effort from collective.
Will: concerned about how much does an accountant cost, can we afford it. We should carefully consider what we pay them to do. Should get a new register, not pay them to do manual data entry.

Group – Rachel is not here, we don’t have any financial reports, we don’t have enough information to have this discussion about future accounting right now.

Trainings¶

At this point Will had to leave, and the remaining three people decided not to discuss it with so few people present. All agreed it was an immediate need however.