May 15, 2014 Meeting Notes

Chicks on Sticks Meeting – May 15^th, 2014

Deb: brought 2 agendas, the original and one that is shorter in topics – which should we use?

Discussion: We're all stressed but let's go ahead with the long one

Add to agenda: Tonya/Gaea: Chicks Play Time

                        Soozin: C4 Grant

Attendance: Anne, Soozin, Tara, Deb, Malia, Tonya, Sharon, Gaea, Nicole

Faciltator: Soozin

Notes: Gaea

Agenda: Agree to original – if time, add on 2 above items

Finances: Sharon – 2013 Taxes paid

                                    Jessie will do last 3 years of taxes – probably 2 hours of work

                                    CoS balance: $3997.95

            Everyone agrees. Thanks Sharon! 

Quorum/Voting Members:

Soozin – Current proposal says:

                        a. establish “voting members” for the year

                        b. make the meeting calendar for the year, including annual meeting

Tonya – when is annual meeting?

            Soozin and Co – winter makes sense

Soozin – Anyone heard from Amy B about follow up with absent members?

Soozin – Who is interested in being a voting member?

            Yes: Anne, Soozin, Tara, Deb, Malia, Niccole, Tonya, Sharon, Gaea

                        Amy, Nicole and Kat wrote in yes

                        Shelley, Gabrielle = ? - Deb will follow up

                        Becca – No

Deb/Gaea: Can we start a new email list? - Anne started list

            Gabrielle's current email: gbajuscik@gmail.com – we think

Soozin – 11 members means quorum is 7 members

            Deb – This might change once we hear from Shelley and Gabriellle

            Sharon – And if we add new members

All agree that this is good.

            We have quorum!

           

Calendar:

Tara - 2^nd Thursday of every other month

Deb – June, July, September, November

Malia – June 12, July 10, September 11, November 13, January 8 (Jan maybe)

            Soozin/Sharon/Anne – Early Jan is bad, maybe move it to the end

Soozin/Sharon – Let's not do April, October and December

Anne – We don't need to plan to next year

Deb – We need a secondary proposal

Gaea – Do we?  Why?  This seems to be working for everyone.

Tonya – Weekends aren't great

Soozin – Shelley said weekends aren't great

Consensus = weekends aren't great

Soozin – We have 9 of 11 members, can we put this forward as a strong proposal and if there are no major conflicts we use it?  Or we propose the 4^th Thursday instead?

General agreement

Malia – Fourth Thursday falls on T-day

Sharon – exception for Nov. to third Thursday

Soozin – Proposal: Meeting the 4^th Thursday of every other month except November, which will be on the 3^rd Thursday between 7-9 pm.  Every other month is January, March, May, June (for 2014 only), July, September, November.

            Tara – I propose this thing

            Anne – Amen Sister!

            Deb – Second

Dates for 2014: June 26, July 24, Sept 25, Nov 20, Jan 22 – Annual Meeting = January 22

Quorum vote – All in agreement

Soozin – If the other 2 have strong feelings, we can revist/change this.

Deb – This should be good for the majority

Flower break

4.     Recruitment of new chicks!

Soozin – What's our process for inviting?  What's qualifications?  We were all supposed to think what we wanted in future chicks and what makes a good chick.

We could go around or just popcorn – Twinkle on all agree rather than repeat

We flip the order and get an idea of what we want then talk about the process of inviting

Gaea- Yes!

Anne – If you want to be part of CoS and get th goodies like performance or gigis, you need to put your skill set to use including costumes, meetings, etc.  Let people select what their strengths are and use them

Sharon – Before that, we need to want CoS to be and identify tasks that we need so that people can volunteer

Anne – sent out list in last email: Costumes, secretary, admin,

            Other ideas: grant writing, committee work, financial,

Sharon – if we want to teach, we need to have teachers/people coordinating teaching

                        How many hours do each of these tasks need

Anne – you mean to create accountability

Sharon – sort of, but more so that everyone is participating

Gaea – what about people who don't have skills yet?

Anne – We should have a mentorship program and mentees get a pass for a certain period of time

Sharon – That's a larger conversation that we need to have about unpaid teaching/service things

Soozin – The coop has 4 major committees that everyone has to be on.  What if we use this model:

Membership Committee: Mentorship, playtime, community support, confidence building, costuming, character development, public perforamnce

Stewardship/Admin Committee: Setting up gigs/admin tasks, notetaking and uploading to blog, contracts

Finance Committee: Taxes, grant writing, accounting, insurance

Outreach Committee: Paid and unpaid gigs, teaching, marketing, new gigs/opportunities, website, archiving

Malia – isn't setting up gigs paid? 

Soozin – There is pay, but it isn't always enough for small gigs

Deb – It feels like active participation, because the compensation isn't quite enough

Soozin/Deb – Issues with Mr. Fun – general agreement that he is NOT good to work with

Soozin – bakac on task

Anne – Can we put a mentorship position in the admin stuff?

            Twinkle!

Malia – What does outreach mean?  Are we actively trying to seek out new stuff

            Shared story about group of boys in Powderhorn

                        Large group of boys and police officers, Malia, Laney and friend went to go stilt.  They spoke with the boys and invited them to stilt.  The boys did trust falls and stilted.  Powerful experience for Malia.

            Is this outreach?  Are we focusing just on girls and women? 

Tara – This is maybe a larger conversation.  For me, we have this skill and it is with CoS, but we also work outside.  Niccole and Tara are teaching at Nicollet for the joy of it.

Deb – For today wants to see blank canvas to general wash and hone from here: this is a good starting place

Soozin – New members that we are looking to recruit should be willing to participate in: admin, finance, outreach, performance

Anne – If you get injured/life happnes/whatever, can we put a piece in place about finding your own replacement – is there a word for that?

Deb – Professional responsibility?

Soozin – notifying coordinator or whatever, committement to the gig

Malia – what is insurance?  Liability insurance?  Do we need to have our own helath insurance

Soozin – Yes, we should probably have that on the list of new members

            New members will be expected to be on 1 committee, have health insurance, etc

Gaea – Can we go back to the difference between paid positions in admin vs the active enagagement of being a part of CoS?

Sooin – There is/could be a position for the overall person and still have unpaid assistants

Gaea – I still think there can be a conflict here

Tara – I think we need to get back on track for this meeting.

Sharon/Anne – Can we table this for later?

            Yes

Anne – Proposal: Can we vote on the 3 people we've been talking about?

tonya – Do people need to be able to stilt?

Deb – there is a position in roller girls for people who can't skate. 

Anne – An Allies position!  Dicks on Sticks!

Soozin/Anne – Pople ask to join,  this is a place that we could use mentorship

Tara – This is mentorship and we lead them in gently

Sharon – some pople just want to get paid to walk on stilts

Deb – Proposal: Under the umbrella of being part of Chicks as a paid performer, an individual needs to have sufficient stilting experience and the ability to put together a costume.  New Chicks need to be recommend by X number of sponsors, including 1 person who has stilted with them, who say their skills are sufficient to keep up the reputation of the group.

Soozin – Need to have a committment to the organization of CoS

Lots of discussion about cultural fit, what does this mean?  Supportive/non-aggressive, collaborative dcaretive process, consensus decision making

Soozin – Maybe cultural fit is something we decide on before we invite a person, vs put on the list of things that are part of membership.  This might make some people not a part of the quorum?

Sharon – We've talked about having 2 tiers before.  1 tier that is full voting/gig tkaing, etc, but a second wider group that doesn't take gigs but is learning and building up skills to work towards the first tier if they want

Anne – We want people who are clear, kind and positive.  The bigger group is open to anyone (more or less) but then to join as a member they have a conversation about what that really means

Deb – People will be voted to be: performing/non-performing and voting/non-voting

Malia – like an onion

SHaron – The inner core is going to need to be supporting all of the outer group

Soozin – Vetting: we've already vetted some people – they have skills because they've come from barebones or mayday.  These people we are asking to make a committment to the greater upkeep.  They've alreayd been aprtially vetted

Sharon – Those people would be the supportive layer

Gaea –   If someone can no longer stilt, are they out?

Anne – They'll be emeritus. 

Malia – Do you have to be a performer to stilt?

General agreement that No, but...

Soozin – Most people want to be paid, but they also want to stilt

            Are we a board or a professional organization? - If you aren't performing now, would you still be a voting member or part of a board?

Tonya – There is a long history of people being in and out of the organiation as stilters or not

Soozin – People need to be invested

Malia – It sounds like people need to have been a stilter to really understand how CoS works.

            Let's not make a hard and fast rule, but we're aware of this now.

Sharon – There's money available on the kitty for paying if we need to.

Gaea – Propsal: To be a member:

                        Confidence stilting

                        Ability to create a costume

                        Participate in meetings

                        Be a part of one committee

                        Expectation to see a mediator if there is a major conflict

                        Cultural fit – be a part of consensual decision making and creative collaboration

                        Signed waiver about insurance

Malia – Second

consensus twinkle

Soozin – The process for inviting.  Proposal: We don't have a complete process for inviting all members but that we have had enough conversation about the three initiates that we invite them in as members now and continue to work on the process for membership.

Malia – Someone goes and talks to each person between this meeting and the next and lays out these membership rules to each person.

Deb – This seems like a bad idea.  It seems like we aren't getting organized enough yet to give them the respectful entrance they deserve.

Malia – The next big thing is values and missions, which is would be good to have fresh people

Gaea – We had this conversation 4 years ago.  I would like to have new energy sooner and making sure they are brought in politely and officially among the group.

Tonya – The energy is special in the summer and it would be good to have that energy with new people, epseically because the new people bring positive new energy.

Soozin – I don't think people will be counter to this.

Deb – Not comfortable making this decision right now.

Tonya – How are people feeling about that?  The three who we're looking at inviting.

Tara – I pologized to them last week because of this slow process.  They were gracious about it.

Soozin – Maybe we don't invite them to be members now, but we invite them to be a part of gigs this summer. 

Sharon – Give them a list of what we want in a member and they can have an idea of what the proces looks like.

Tara – I think we need to do this before people get bored an dleave.

Soozin – That kind of happen with Kristen Wegeman

Malia – A proposal: We take these criteria to the individuals and then we look at voting in July.  They will be in the vetting process and then in July we vote.

Tara – This gives us information and gives them the chance to decide if they want to do it.

Sharon – And do you want to take gigs.

Malia: Proposal: We take the information about the criteria to be a member and three Chicks talk to the three women.  We bring this information back to the June meeting.  They're first meeting is a July meeting.

 Twinkle passed

Sooin – Proposal: We will formalize the process in the June meeting.

Twinkle passed.

Tonya – Can we have play time?

            Agree to doodle poll to get a time for everyone.

Soozin – Little Mekong is having night markets in St. Paul.  1 a month.

            Lisp is funding 15-25 $1500 art events along University to help businesses

            Will CoS help?

Twinkle  Vote YES! 

Gaea and Soozin to write proposal

Deb – Should she write a proposal for the process for inviting members?

Anne – Can we pay the Beast for the space?