Board Minutes: April, 2010 Present: remmers, mary, gelinas, unicorn, tsty, denise, and kentn [by phone]. Called to order at 7:08pm -Meeting frequency: We ve been meeting monthly for the past several months; do we want to continue this frequently or stretch it out to every 8 weeks? Compromise, will meet next in 6 weeks. Next meeting will be May 23rd, 6pm, at Denise s. Tsty has posted a list of other possible places to hold meetings, he will look into finding something with no or low cost. -Treasurer s report: aruba and tsty have met to start handing over treasurer duties to tsty. Will be meeting this week to change signatures for the bank account. Aruba may be willing to be a back up signature on the account. The balance is about $3,000; the phone and provide.net bills will be paid this week. Will have access to PayPal. Membership list with expiration dates is being worked on. -Tsty motioned for unicorn to be reimbursed for gas used to attend meetings [120 miles round trip]; denise seconded. Motion passed; unicorn will be emailing tsty about this. -Staff report: remmers has set up a FreeBSD machine to do hourly backups for the bbs. Root has access to this virtual machine [can do the things that root can normally do]. -USB drive has been working correctly. -At the recent staff meeting, was increased disk space quota as well as future location discussed? No. Opening up the database still continues to be discussed. Staff will keep board informed about what it does/wants to do. Can we allow the board/staff to do something without a vote? If discussed in meeting minutes and approved. -What are the parameters for the grim reaper deleting old login ids? To be discussed by staff. -Mission: Does it need any changes or updates? Mary will post the mission in an item in coop for members to discuss. -It was recently asked: what kind of system do we want to offer [machinery, services, etc]? What are people currently using Grex for? STeve has reported in the past on various things being used by members; email will be sent to STeve to get an update. -The first Grex meeting was at a picnic; a lot was decided there with feedback from the users? It may be a good idea to have another similar gathering to discuss various issues. -Do we need to continue providing dial-in lines? It was determined in March that the phone lines the month before was used for a total of 24 minutes. We need to find out who s using the phone lines and how often, then phase out. Mary will enter an item in coop as a place for discussion. 8:25pm Denise moved to adjourn the meeting, tsty seconded; motion passed.15 responses total.
"Tsty motioned for unicorn to be reimbursed for gas used to attend meetings [120 miles round trip]; denise seconded. Motion passed;" "A charity's ability to reimburse volunteers for expenses incurred while volunteering plays a huge role in nonprofit organizations abilities to recruit and retain volunteers, especially as gas and energy prices continue to soar. Currently, charities may reimburse volunteers, on a nontaxable basis, up to the charitable mileage rate of 14 cents per mile. That rate has not changed since 1997 and no longer covers the price of gas. In addition, if charities reimburse their volunteers more than the 14 cent mileage reimbursement rate, volunteers pay taxes on the additional amount because it is treated as income thus, taxing individuals for donated services." http://is.gd/brP5I However all the non-profits (501(c)3) with which I have been associated have not done this, primarily on the basis that that is not what members' dues should be used for, travel not being a specific purpose of the organizations. Volunteers are encouraged to just deduct their expenses on their income tax returns. In one national organization while I was president, the officers met in alternate officer's homes and the officers all shared each others expenses (mostly airfare), even the person at who's home they met. This way officers in more remote locations did not have higher travel expenses.
so .. you wanna aoll go to filnt for hte next borg meet? [ed: sorry for the sarcasm] ... we ru nour own ship. i like the current sailing. tax crap says $0.50/mi for decuctoins. $60>$20 .. so we are geting a 'deal' imnsho. and i f rcurl were in grand rapicds i wouild declare identical posotion.
if rcurl were on borg and drove to a meeting ....
It does seem rather odd to reimburse someone to attend a meeting, especially considering there are alternatives to driving there if he still wanted to attend virtually. Certainly there are tax benefits and the mileage can be written off as a donation, assuming unicorn uses itemized deductions. Either way, this just seems odd to me. Maybe it's just me.
I think if we ever managed to get a really good conference call setup in place having board members attend, remotely, would be great. But we're not there and I feel the meetings are suffering because of it. It was helpful having Chuck present and not adding to the connection issues. It also feels unfair to ask him to drive, two hours, round trip, AND pay for gas. There are obviously limits to what we can do to facilitate remote board members being physically present but this one seems reasonable. For now.
All the board members had expenses to attend (and probably for a meal too). I presume all the other board members paid their own ways. One way to equalize this is for all the Board members to chip in so everyone has the same expense, and it won't be money donated by members in general. Please note that in #1 I gave both sides of the argument. My *preference* is affected by my experiences, which is that all donated monies serve all members.
unicorn is a freeloader. If he can't afford gas or his own membership dues then he needs to resign from the board.
resp:7 STFU
I've known other Cyberspace Directors to keep their receipts and deduct the expenses of the Board meetings from their taxes. I voted to reimburse unicorn. I don't think the Board should rescind that approval.
I'm thankful we have good folks willing and able to serve on Grex's board. They shouldn't have to pay to attend meetings and reimbursement should extend to paying for long distance telephone charges to connect, reserved meeting space and gasoline when a reasonable distance is involved. I'd also like to see membership dues waved for those serving on staff or as board members.
I'm absolutely thankful to everyone who volunteers to be on board and staff here, but I think that they also need to remember that they are volunteers, and this borders on unicorn being a paid volunteer. I realize that the amount is small, but unless he's not itemizing deductions, I'd think he'd get a better deduction by writing off the costs associated with volunteering and donating to be on board and staff than the $0.14/mi grex can pay him without writing out a 1099 (at which point he owes taxes on it too).
I would like to point out to everyone (and especially to lar) that I didn't *ask* to be reimbursed, and abstained when the vote was taken. When I drove down, I fully expected to cover the cost myself, and was surprised when tsty made the motion to reimburse me. I didn't even so much as complain or otherwise comment on how long the drive was or how much it cost, or make any other mention of the trip. Although board meetings have been more frequent lately than in the past, I just didn't consider them frequent enough to consider this a major expense, and I expect their frequency to drop again in the future.
That's worth noting, Chuck. I can certainly appreciate your willingness to continue attending in person.
re #10 but how can grex reimburse anyone for anything if it doesn't have any money coming in? Hadn't Grex agreed at a previous board meeting not to require dues for membership for some period of months until the viability of continuing the board had been assessed? I would think under the circumstances Grex needs to be rather stingy with its resources so as to not deplete its existing funds anytime soon.
This is making a mountain out of a molehill. Grex has literally *thousands* of dollars in the bank; throwing Chuck a few bucks for gas isn't going to be what shuts us down. Also, the board never agreed to suspend the collection of dues, but rather, to suspend membership status as a requirement for a recent board election because it wasn't clear who was a member anymore.
You have several choices: