Common Ground Board of Directors Minutes- April 2018

April 23, 2018

Present: Bob Parker, Wendy Battles, Babz Rawls-Ivy, Betsy Sneath, Michael Doolittle, Melissa Spear, Liz Cox, Beth Klingher, Monique Frasier, Joel Tolman

Staff: Brian Springsteen, Henry Chisholm, Elena Augusewicz

Regrets: Claudia Merson, Frank Mitchell, Kerry Lord, Jane Lee

Public Participation: N/A

Wendy called the meeting to order at 5:30

Business Requiring Approval

March 26, 2018 Board Minutes, Michael moved to approve
Beth Seconds
APPROVED

Executive Director’s Authority to Sign Contracts; The board would like to adopt a resolution allowing the ED to sign contracts up to $40,000.00. That would cover CDBG and most grants. Bob moved to make a resolution
Babz Seconds
APPROVED

Melissa presented the current budget. The Board will vote to approve the budget either in the next meeting or the June meeting if things change significantly.

Organizational Updates:

Bob said that he and Wendy talked to Jesse about scheduling a meeting with Z and the Youth Activist Club students to move forward with the student board representative elections.

Joel just wanted to update the board on Rock to Rock. The weather is looking good. Current Financials are on the dashboard but it doesn’t include what will come in this week. As a whole, the entire event is up in fundraising compared to last year, especially thanks to the bonus matching fund. The goal is $250,000 (we’re at $150,000.). Common Ground is not fundraising at the same level as last year. Currently have $10,500.00, last year we raised almost $15,000. Overall, we made a little less than $25,000.00 net last year. Joel encouraged board members to join and fundraise or support the existing riders. Board members can also help by emailing 3 friends to ask for peer-to-peer donations.

Strategic Issues:

Liz stated that there’s a lot going on with the curriculum. A temporary teacher ended up staying on and helped to develop the additional curriculum. There was a lot of progress with 10th grade core over spring break. The Barr Foundation Grant is helping us look at how some of our existing pieces could look difference. Liz’s priority is figuring out what the summer institute should look like. On the community building side, we wrapped up the justice PD that was scheduled and it had very positive feedback. We’re trying to figure out our Restorative Justice next steps.

New Business

Potential Board members; We’ve had some good progress with the list we had handed out last meeting. Bob wants to know how people want to time the onboarding. He has met with two people who are interested and ready to join, one has previous board governance experience. There are two more meetings set up with other potential members. Bob is ready to ask three individuals.

Bob has also been thinking about Critical Friends board advisory and has spoken to one individual about that so far.

Melissa said that she told the two people that we would discuss their positions and potentially have them sit in on the June meeting then start in Sept. She would like to know what additional info the board would like to see from these individuals (i.e. resumes, documents, etc.). Three candidates have submitted applications. We should vote on the candidates in May then bring them on in Sept.

Liz said that she sent the application to all parents but did not get a response. She hasn’t followed up with Tupac yet but Wendy is following up with him, Z and Jesse. There’s more work to do on the student front.

Monique was wondering what the June meeting would be like? She would like to make it more of a social/celebratory occasion to get to know the new people who are joining.

Joel would like to know how this affects the composition of the board?

All three current candidates are white, and over 40.

Babz stated that we need to be conscious of the composition and reinforced the point that board members should be reaching out to diverse candidates.

Wendy said that we should also consider methods of on-boarding to get the new people accustomed to the organization

Executive Session

Bob moved to go into executive session
Michael Seconds
APPROVED

2018-09-17T13:10:15-04:00

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