December Meeting Minutes 12/15/2009

Meeting Minutes from 12/15/2009

The Chicks met at Anne's house.

The meeting started at 7pm promptly.

In attendance: Amy T, Amy B, Anne, Soozin, Tara, Gaea, Sharon, Malia

Shelley sent a note saying she was having a bad day and would not be able to make it.

We went through the following agenda:

1. Check in/ set the date for next meeting.
2.Who can be a chick? ( proposed by Amy T.)
3. Brief Roller Girl Update (Amy T.)
4.Banking Update/ Non Profit discussion ( Sharon )
5. Jan Costuming Making weekend Jan 8-10 (Amy B)
6. MRAC Committe Update ( committee: Gaea, Anne, Soozin, Tara)
7. Website Committee Update ( committee: Gaea, Malia, Amy T., Soozin)
8. Summer Gigs (soozin/all)

1. Check IN:

Everyone went around and checked in... most people refected that they were glad that we were having these regular meetings and that we would working toward the organizational sturucture. Folks also reflected that they are feeling a bit overwhelmed with the holidays and all that they bring.

Next meeting date:

We set the next meeting date for Jan 12th @ 7pm at Anne's House.
Gaea will chair the meeting and will send out a request for agenda items.

2. We decided to table the who can be a chick item and combine it with the MRAC Committee Update.

3. Roller Girl Update - Amy T. updated everyone on the status of the Roller Girl event.

The date of the event Amy T. is organizing is Saturday March 6th.

Amy took a poll of who is interested in performing in this event.
Anne, Soozin, Sharon, Gaea, Tara, and Amy T. are interested in being in this event.
Amy T. has also asked Deb to be in this performance.
Amy B has offered to be ground crew. Depending on her travel plans...
Malia has offered to veido tape.

Anne will continue to mentor Amy T on this project.
Amy T will find out about possible site for rehearsals, she would like to rehearse twice a week in Jan and Feb.

Anne is organzing the North Star Roller Girls gig/ with musical accompanyment by the Brass Messengers. This gig is set for Feb 20th.

Soozin has two proposals for dance numbers for this gig... we did not have time for this discussion.

4. Costume Making .

We agreed to have a costume making day at Amy B's house. The costume making will take place on Jan 10th starting at 1pm. Please, bring what ever project you are working on. ie... bring your own fabric...

5. Banking Situation - Sharon and Tara gave and update on the status on the Checking Account.

Chicks now has a new account at TCF Bank.
The new bank account was opened on November 30th 2009.
This is now our offical bank and all future Chicks Gigs should be made out to Chicks on Sticks. Tara and Sharon are presently the signers for this account.

Sharon brought the bank balance statement to the meeting.
We presently have $605.00 in the bank account.

This update then moved to a discussion regarding dues owed and the spread sheet.

Soozin reported that she has not finished the spread sheet yet, but is working on creating it on an excell spread sheet as a google document. To have a accurate way of tracking our yearly gigs.
Soozin will have this update to all members soon. This led to a discussion about dues owed.

The group decided that once the spread sheet is created each member owes 1/2 of the dues for 2009 gigs and should pay them at the next meeting. Please, make checks out to Chicks on Sticks.

We also discussed the updates from the last meeting regarding our new fees for gigs.

Chicks will now ask for $100 per hour for gigs. For each $100, $25 will be spent in the following ways $10 to Kitty, $10 to organizer of the gig, $5 to check writter/treasure.

There was some discussion around the $5 and wether or not it should also go into the Kitty, for now we will stay with this as a Provisional Plan... which could change...

Non-Profit Status - Sharon brought information about what it takes to become a nonprofit, members of the group thought we should table this discussion and save for our upcomming OD retreat. Sharon was asked to share a link to the Non Profit website, so that all members could read this information and become more familar with what it might take to become a Nonprofit. Gaea said she would help Sharon share this link.

6. MRAC Committe Report -Anne updated everyone on the status of the MRAC grant.... The grant has been written to address the current status of the Mission of the organization.

The grant is for $1500 and we are proposing to have two 4 hour sessions with a paid facilator, the monies would also be used to rent a neutral space for the meeting, for food, and childcare stipends.

Anne read over what was written byt the commitee to the group, she will also send a copy to all of the members of chicks to read over.

The grant is due in by the end of the month of December.

The grant proposal was written for an OD retreat for all current members of Chicks on Sticks. The retreat will be held March 13 from 1-6 & 14th from 12-5 . We will work with a paid facilator to walk/talk us throught the current state of the organization and to help us clarify what we might want to write the larger OD grant for... non-profit status? professional gigs? marketing? etc... and also to clarify ideas of the mission statement, and who can become a chick, and how that happens...

The dates and times for the Retreat were scheduled and agreed upon by the members present at the meeting.

The MRAC Committee will meet with in the next few weeks to determine the locations and whom the faciliator will be. It was suggested that one location be in the city and one be in a natural setting.

Malia also asked if some fun acitivities be included in the Retreat agenda.

7. Website Update: Soozin reported that she had followed up with both Nick and Ruth regarding the website.

Nick said he would be happy to help switch over our current site to a Wordpress site and that he did not think it would be very difficult to do seeing as we already know what we want.

Ruth said she thought this was a good idea, and that it seemed really smart to make it a website that we could update more regularly. She gave her blessing.

We discussed the next steps... and made some decisions regarding money..

The committee will consult with Nick to find out how long he thinks it will take to switch over the site and how much he would charge us per hour to do so... the committee will then report back at the next meeting and we will make a decision about how much we can afford to pay make a formal proposal to the group for this expense.

8. Summer Projects now is the time to start thinking about projects and thinking about funding if we are planning to go after any....

Gaea would love to do more experiment play dates at the park this summer.

Soozin would like to propose a fashion show.... and have us work on creating small two and three person characters/ acts that we could advertise on the website and use for performance options...

Anne would like to propose the creation of a Chicks on Sticks Calendar...