Minutes 2011-10-11

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These minutes were approved at the Board meeting on 19 November 2011.

Minutes for Board meeting on 11 October 2011, 7.30-10.30pm, held by telephone and Skype.

Present:

  • Roger Bamkin (Chair)
  • Mike Peel (Minutes)
  • Andrew Turvey
  • Steve Virgin
  • Martin Poulter
  • Chris Keating
  • Jon Davies

The meeting started at 19.35.

Apologies for absence

There were none; everyone was present.

Approval of Minutes 27Aug11 and in-camera minutes

AT raised the point that the minutes are not yet complete - they are still in draft form. They currently include a number of items that were discussed, but did not result in a decision.

ACTION: MP to rework Minutes 27Aug11 for approval at the next meeting.

Review of executive meeting on 18 September 11, and approval of Minutes 18Sep11

The minutes at Minutes 18Sep11 were approved.

Review email decisions

The following decisions were reviewed and confirmed:

  1. Decision to offer financial assistance for up to 6 non-Wikimedians to attend the London wikimeet on 11 September (28 August)
  2. Decision to deposit £85k into a fixed term account with the Principality Building Society (30 August)
  3. Decision to send follow-up postal letters to donors, with a test of around 5,000 to be conducted in November and c.25,000 to follow contingent on satisfactory performance of the test. Total budget for a mailing size of 30,000, including artwork and set-up costs, of £27,850 (2 September; in-person rather than by email)
  4. Decision to offer sponsorships to enable UK wikimedians to attend WikiConference India 2011. £3k budgeted from the Opportunities Fund. (19 September)

On the third decision, the expenditure is currently not in the 2011 budget, although it is covered in the 2012 activity plan. The 2011 budget needs to be updated.

ACTION: AT to rework the 2011 budget to accommodate the costs of sending follow-up postal letters to donors (£27,850)

Actions and reports

The reports at Reports 11Oct11 were noted, with thanks. A number of points were highlighted by the board members giving the reports, and queries were raised by other board members.

RB:

  • On the action "to ensure that the job description for the office manager includes goals and assessment" it was noted that this action is with regards the current office manager. The action is to be passed on to Jon.
  • QRPedia - Terence has been invited to the next board meeting. Jon now has the action to put together the contract for transferal, with some legal advice (possibly from Burgess-Salmon; Steve has contact).

MP:

  • New ACTION: ask one of the India scholarship awardees to write an early blog post.
  • The three new members were approved. Membership approvals are to be moved to the office wiki in the future.
  • ACTION: MP to talk to Tom Morris about in-camera action.
  • Need to resolve the issue of Jon+Board having a place to share information. To be discussed at the next meeting.

AT:

  • The current expected underspend has been incorporated into the activity plan. This amount is likely to be an underestimate - GLAM and education will be particularly under this year.
  • Actions moved to Jon include travel agency, insurance (5, 7, 9)

Fæ:

  • ACTION: AT to send document around on VAT as it relates to the WMF grant.
  • MGS - money to be carried over until next year, will be added as a line item into the activity plan.
  • Decision: £3k allocated from the GLAM budget to support non-UK attendees travel to GLAMcamp.

SV:

  • Wikimania was discussed at length. SV to put together a 2-3 page document outlining what would be needed, and what is available, to host Wikimania in the UK in a few years time.

Matters Arising

New membership approvals

This was discussed above.

Pending grant applications and recently approved grants

This was briefly discussed above. No grant applications needed discussing.

CEO induction schedule (AT/RB)

This item was not covered in this meeting.

Discussions and decisions needed

Office space

We have had several offers of office space in the past, including from Swindon and Bristol. Given the location of JD, we have now committed to it being commutable from London, which rules out these offers.

JD has presented three different options for an office space in London. All options that Jon has come up with are aimed at being volunteer-friendly, with space to do training etc. in meeting rooms at the offices.

The Board agreed in principle with Jon's recommendation.

A board member will go see the proposed office prior to signing a contract with them. Jon will include information about the proposed office in his talk at the EGM on Sunday, and will send an email to the wikimediauk-l mailing list to see what members think.

Charity status progress (JB)

EGM: should have quorum even based on proxies and board members. ACTION: on AT to ask the tellers to publish the number of proxies that have been received. AT also to write a blog post regarding the CC not having any further issues with the new objects.

Everything progressing. Expect to hear more back in the next few weeks.

Fundraiser readiness (CK)

"Please see my report: also could everyone on the Board and all staff please fill in their Wikimedia story on; https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dF9MNkx5dGsxcFBmOHhGNWZmaC0zcXc6MQ#gid=0 "

More technical work to be done on ensuring Gift Aid will work. JD to capture remaining operational requirements from CK/MP/JS, including finding additional technical support and sysadmin tasks (beyond MP).

MP, CK and Jon to talk to discuss the hire of two positions - one on-wiki support, one sysadmin support.

Expecting to have a higher percentage of funds raised by direct debit than set out in the activity plan.

How the chapter works in the community, in particular

  • things like geonotice, uploads etc.
  • involvement in legal disputes - AT request

Both of these points were deferred to an in-person board meeting on 16 October.

Commitment to volunteers to pay expenses within 30 days and ensuring agreed advance purchases can be purchased - F request

We are currently meeting this commitment. AT is paying expenses individually (or in advance) for particularly urgent claims. Everything else is meeting the 3 weeks limit. Office wiki is outdated in terms of marking which have been paid. There have been some delays that have been caused by not having destination bank details.

AT has discussed with Jon about transferring all of the day-to-day expense duties to staff, nominally in January.

Scope of the Executive committee

It was decided to discuss this in-person on 16 October.

AOB

The next meeting will be at the EGM on October 16th. Note that a cheque book/£100 is required for paying for the room booking. There will be an in-person board meeting between 1-2pm on Sunday to talk about points that were delayed above, and also to approve new members.

The meeting came to a close at 22.15.