Exec Minutes 2011-11-11
Minutes for Exec briefing on 11 November 2011, 4.00-5.00pm, held via telephone.
Present:
- Mike
- Jon
- Andrew
- Roger
- Fæ
ACTION: MP and RB to identify a better way of doing calls in the future.
Apologies were received from Chris, Steve (although not required).
Agenda
ACTION: Jon to produce a standard agenda.
Jon's report
- WMUK now has charitable status
- Arranged hotel accommodation for board meeting
- Would like to present draft papers on governance and financial protocols, plus actions/report.
- Met 5 trustees face-to-face this week. Continuing to meet loads of volunteers; met Jimmy again this week.
- Outside organisations - problems, would like to meet Open Rights Group but can't work out who they are. AT to provide contact details. Also to meet Open Knowledge Foundation.
- Report on Germany visit - not had much feedback.
- RB and Jon have arranged trip to San Francisco - 25 Nov to 2 December. Roger returning via Indianapolis Chuildrens Museum.
- Train the Trainers - talking to Steve about. Needs to have modules, training for workshops, etc. - thinking about this.
- Communications - need to work on communications strategy and implementation. Jon met with Gemma to talk about how this was done in the past.
- Plan B - should think about this, particularly given how things are going with Eurozone. AT: paying staff etc. can be covered whatever happens, rest is mostly discretionary and new projects such that they can be scaled back relatively easy. End of November to see how the fundraiser is going; will have a much better idea of what the budget will be.
- Need to make a decision about pensions. On the agenda for the next meeting.
- Premises - have 4 spaces. £2k budget means office will be equipped quickly. Employers and third-party insurance is the current hold-up, due to what sort of flat roof we have. Best quote £250/year from Co-op. Also trustee insurance, which comes under the same thing. Jon to send to AT for approval. Recommendations of other insurance organisations? JD to ask CK for help.
- Software - waiting to get Sage from AT.
- Staff - Fæ and JD are looking at the shortlisting on Monday, with view to interviewing on Wednesday. Final candidate CVs and recommendations to be sent around to the Board prior to decision.
Fundraiser, from JD:
- Tom Morris working on API.
- Gift Aid form sorted.
- PO Box and freepost sorted; this can be used for the direct mail shot.
- Negative press risk - will be keeping an eye on this all of the time
AT Question: tech resource. TM now on board, only working 3 days on SmartDebit. Not agreeing to a technical support job. Richard to ask TM about his availability in the future if problems arise. Optimising pages - can make a big difference whether people are clicking 3 times or 1 time. Following WMF approach here with minimizing clicks for donations. Gift Aid extra clicks. Also need to find general sysadmin support for a more general solution to managing the technology systems.
Info on how well acknowledging cheques, responding to emails, etc. - Richard's on top of this at the moment. One cheque bounced today as it had been written wrong. JD has been sending thanks for large donations. Report at weekly meetings. List of things that would be good to know - email, cheque, paypal, direct debit, bank transfer acknowledgement backlog length. JD to talk to Richard about this. AT will be uploading a file with the latest bank transactions each week; Richard can cross-compare that with emails and acknowledge people on that. Last year, 30k donations in 8 weeks, ~500 a day. But most are batch-processed.
Train the Trainers - Roger (and Martin) talking to one of the leads from the WMF about this after this call.
Next week's events
Room for all day Sunday. Possibly hotel. Or office space. RB and JD to sort out.
Sue's visit - preparation for other things? Event with Imperial on 13th; Fæ attending, plus WMF employees and some Wikipedians. Advertising - only 8 people likely to turn up? Fiona talking to college authorities to say that staff can also turn up.
Sue meeting Board - asked to talk specifically about media. Board are not keen (RB has cancelled)
JD not going to the wikimeet; talking at media interview, and evening meal with Jon. Also National Archives visit with Roger (and Fae).
Needs some work on the agenda, reordering. RB to do this.
QR Codes - lawyers have drafted letters and protocols, shared with authors. JD to also send these to MP and AT. May not be ready to be signed next week. Can discuss as a board without RB and TE in the room; can decide whether it can be signed as-is or not.
Expenses policy - JD has also been working with this off-wiki, in a more general sense. Not clear how this links with MP's document. Draft for comment and discussion at the board meeting, but not for approval.
Governance link with Fæ's workshop - should dovetail well. JD will present on Saturday.
AT - 30 mins to talk about broad topic of trustee recruitment, relation to skills gap, any pro-active work we want to do.
AOB
None.
Next call
Next meeting in two weeks when Jon + Roger won't be around on the Friday.
Thursday 24th, 4pm.
Where should minutes go?
On office wiki; to be moved to public wiki at the time of the next meeting sans confidential items as raised in between the meetings.