Board of Directors Meeting
Doubletree Portland Hotel
February 3, 2014
ATTENDING:Several people stayed over from the Annual General Meeting, including all of the Board members: Beverly Block, Car Bostick, Jason Bostick, .Aaron Curtis, Jacob Engstrom, Rick Lindsley, John Lorentz, D. Stephen Raymond, Lea Rush and Debra Stansbury; as well as Sam Justice (OSFCI attorney), Debbie Cross & Paul Wrigley (Susan Petrey Fund administrators), and Ruth Sachter.
The meeting was called to order at 8:19.
I. Minutes of Previous Meeting
The minutes from the previous board meeting were accepted unanimously.
II. Election of OSFCI Officers
The current officers were re-nominated:
- President: Beverly Block
- Secretary: John Lorentz
- Treasurer Rick Lindsley
Car asked if there was anyone who could not be nominated. Beverly explained that anyone holding similar offices for an event could not be nominated for the equivalent OSFCI office therefore a chair of an upcoming event could not serve as OSFCI president, and a treasurer for an event could not serve as OSFCI treasurer. Debbie: And officers must be OSFCI members. (Not only OSFCI board members–any OSFCI corporate member could serve as an officer.)
Nominations were then closed. Paul moved to accept the nominations by acclamation, which passed unanimously.
III. Continuing Business
Rick mention that OSFCI did lose about $400 last year (in that the corporation overall had $400 less at the end of the year than at the start of the year), because OryCon 34 lost money.
Insurance:
Aaron has read through the 103-page insurance policy, and discussed with our agent (Oak Tree Insurance). They automatically added employee liability coverage in 2012. This covers things like OSFCI employees suing the corporation for discrimination or harassment. This would protect us from that liability. Then the question comes up: “What is an employee?”. The answer back was “Volunteers could be considered employees.” Oak Tree gave Aaron two figures, one with zero employees and one with 80 “employees” (volunteers). This coverage, for that many people, would cost us $2500 to $3000 more than what we have been paying.
Aaron’s opinion is that, as an organization, we’re not really in a position to discriminate against someone (that is, the entire organization discriminating against someone). Individuals, yes; the entire organization, no. Sam said that his opinion is that the chances that we’re going to have any claims falling under this coverage are slim to nil. It would take some volunteer claiming to be an employee, and then claiming harassment–which seems pretty unlikely. So we don’t need this coverage.
Aaron suggested that we decline this coverage (which would mean we’d get a rebate from the premium we paid recently). The board voted unanimously to drop this coverage.
Aaron proposed that we give Sam his annual payment. This was passed by acclamation.
IV. New Business
A. Adjustment to the OryCon 35 Budget (Car Bostick)
Car asked that the previously-approved budget for OryCon 35 (which was held last November) be modified to reflect some actual costs–namely the cost of replacing the stolen laptop and the missing games from the Games Library. OryCon 35 would also like to raise the amount for concom reimbursements from $500 to $1600, to cover everyone. Rick asked what would constitute “con com” for this purpose. Lea: Everyone who received OSFCI committee credit. (About sixty-four people).
Rick mentioned that he’d traded email earlier in the day with the OryCon 35 and OryCon 36 chairs to start the discussion on making sure reimbursements like this had some consistency from year-to-year. (Committee reimbursements have been made in the past, going as far back as OryCon 11). The requested changes were unanimously approved by the board.
Rick: Car asked earlier if we allow a convention to give money to another convention (a future OSFCI event). Rick said he thought that we’d discouraged this (but hadn’t forbidden it). What is the memory of other people? John: We discussed this sometime back , because GameStorm used to do this every year. We discouraged groups from doing that, but decided that a concom can pass money forward if it’s for a specific purpose–such as sponsoring a special guest (like when an OryCon provided the money to bring Terry Prachett to an OryCon two years later)–but not just to roll money forward year after year. Rick: The problem with just rolling the money over is that it makes it a lot more difficult to determine if an event had a surplus, and it makes the accounting a little harder for the corporate treasurer.
Lea said she’d started this discussion because there are two conventions this year that have financial threats against them: OryCon 36 because of the hotel change (OryCon moving to the Marriott next year), and World Horror because of the large room block they need to fill. Lea would like to use some of the surplus from OryCon 35 to help prevent these possible problems. Aaron: It’s not the job of an individual convention to protect another convention from a financial risk–that’s what the corporation is for. The reason to help other conventions would be to help pay for expenses that the other convention could not justify budgeting for (like a special overseas guest).
Debbie: Are you talking about giving the money from the surplus before it’s split with OSFCI, or out of the 50% of that surplus that you have control over? Lea: This would be out of my portion of the surplus. (It wouldn’t affect the money going to OSFCI.) John: What had prompted the previous discussion was a practice of rolling the money over before determining what the surplus was (and thereby cutting down the surplus). Stephen: If you are worried about some convention breaking OSFCI, you can simply roll more money from the surplus over to OSFCI. Rick said that we already have a considerable amount of money in OSFCI right now. What concerns him is that if we tie more money in OSFCI, then that takes money away from other charities that might have benefitted.
It was pointed out that, under the management agreement, OSFCI couldn’t stop Lea from giving her portion of the Ory35 surplus to Ory36 or WHC, but it could (try to) discourage her from doing so. John: You also have another answer–there’s nothing wrong with sponsoring a guest at one of those events.
Jason mentioned that GameStorm will have fan tables this year, and he suggests that there be an OSFCI table (or tables for the OSFCI charities) there.
V. The Date of the Next Board Meeting
It was decided that the next Board meeting would be Tuesday, February 25th, at 7:30PM here at the Doubletree. (We’ll ask the hotel for the room to be set up in classroom style.)
VI. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 8:43PM.