Minutes 2011-05-11

These minutes were approved at the Board meeting on 11 June 2011.

Minutes for Executive Board meeting on 20 May 2011, 7:30-10:30pm

Present: Roger Bamkin (RB; Chair), Mike Peel (MP; Secretary; minutes), Andrew Turvey (AT; Treasurer).

Meeting started at 7.33pm.

Finances

Fundraising agreement compliance/ recovery, including review of upcoming fundraising-related deadlines

If participating in fundraiser, will spend a lot of time on it - admin work, responding to donors, setup. So decision about whether we should participate. Lot of the work will be done by staff, but board members will also spend time on it - at the cost of not focusing on other activities as much.

2011 budget was written based on assumptions over staff hires; we've changed route with hiring staff, so ideally need to revisit the budget.

ACTION: RB to talk to the Foundation about the fundraiser

ACTION: AT to prepare a new budget reflecting the costs of the new profile of staff recruitment

ACTION: RB to talk to CK about the resource requirement for the fundraising.

Options with participating or not to be prepared and put to the full board at the next meeting.

Review of 2011 Budget expenditure, including adherence to 2011 Budget/Controls

AT ran through the 2011 budget.

WMF grant - bank has queried the transfer, which has delayed it. The WMF have been informed of the delay.

ACTION: AT to phone the co-op regarding the bank transfer of the WMF grant

ACTION: AT to discuss financial regulations with the co-op bank, particularly with regards the transfer of signatories after the AGM.

ACTION: AT to investigate alternative banks, with a recommendation to be made at the in-person board meeting

ACTION: MP to put together how-to pages for managing the budgets, authorising expenditure and requesting reimbursement

ACTION: RB to approach Steve Virgin regarding him leading an EDU-WIKI conference later this year. To be discussed at the next telephone full board meeting. Done

ACTION: RB to talk to Martin Poulter regarding the Campus Ambassadors program to determine how well it will succeed in the future. Done

ACTION: AT to talk to Chris Keating with regards advertising the availability of sponsorship for Wikimedia

ACTION: AT (or CK) to contact the WMF to see whether they have any recommendations for international Wikimedians to sponsor

OKCon sponsorship - invoice is with AT, will be paid once AT has access to internet banking.

Annual Conference 2011 - SV has submitted expense forms in paper.

Decision to change the owner of the microgrants budget line to the executive.

Partnership events - 60% spent (on CRUK); will also cover medical workshop, and physics workshop. Budget will need to be increased, to circa £3k or so. To be discussed at the in-person board meeting.

It is clear that the budget holders will need to be reallocated at the next in-person meeting.

ACTION: AT to request a quote for insurance for board members against the risk of personal liability and negligence.

Funds for the strategy consultant needs to be allocated. Decision to increase the Board Costs by £3k to cover this. A decision has already been made by the full board to have the strategy consultant.

Issue that board meetings will now cost more than before, due to the increase in number of board members and having more in-person meetings. Will likely need to be increased to ~£2k per in-person meeting.

Educating board on their responsibilities and budget breakdown

At the in-person board meeting, the budget will be discussed with the entire board in a similar format to how it was discussed this evening (i.e. line-by-line).

Status of financial audit; preparations in advance of the next audit

Auditors have everything they need for 2010-11; waiting for the final accounts from them at the moment. Expected in time for the next Board meeting.

Have asked the accountants for a quote for quarterly management accounts.

AOB

ACTION: AT to follow up outstanding payment of previous office manager with payroll.

Constitution and infrastructure

Review of charity application status

AT had an action from the previous meeting to request a meeting with the charity commission. Not done yet, but at the top of to-do list.

Review of hiring process status

AT/RB - We need urgent decision on which company to instruct

AT & RB visited three recruitment companies. One was weak in their presentation, and proposal arrived late. Aim is to provide a recommendation to the Board. AT + RB to meet and provide a recommendation to the board by email with a request for an email decision. Aim is to make a decision by the end of the month.

Strategy Meeting - Next Full Board meeting in Birmingham 11/12 June

RB has contacted "Marketing Birmingham" to find room/place to stay - RB

RB has re-contacted them to find a reduced quote (compared to a previous quote emailed around the exec). Has managed to reduce the cost, to ~£70/head with a free room. Will email around the details upon receipt.

Fae has circulated recommendations re facilitator - Exec recommendation/ default decision required - Exec

After discussion, and reading through all of the board's emails, it emerged that the consensus was to go with Fæ's recommendation. Structure, and clear outcomes, from the strategy discussion are important though.

ACTION: RB to recommend to Fæ that the facilitator aims to produce a more structured meeting with clear deliverables from the day.

Birmingham wiki-meet - RB

RB to find out location and time of the Birmingham wikimeet. MP to help advertise the wikimeet.

Agenda structure - RB

The draft agenda was overviewed.

Apologies - AT

AT won't be able to attend the meeting.

PR proposal - RB

Structure from Gemma regarding PR of events, so that expectations of what will be delivered are clear in advance of the event.

Thinking about talking at the board meeting in July about coming up with an overall PR plan.

Activities

Review of positive/negative features of recent events and activities

Wright Challenge Successful thanks to Andrew Dalby. Significant number of new articles each day.

RB went to UGC4GLAM Vienna - mini-report circulated

Aim is to turn the mini-report into a blog post.

Others?

MP to email Fæ with contact details of GLAM organisations in Scotland; also general GLAM contacts list (inc. culture24).

York: RB might have a candidate to lead this event. TBC... Done - Simon Smith (TagishSimon)

Review of upcoming events and activities, and their readiness

GLAMCamp NY

Fæ is there. Event is happening.

GLAMCamp London, NRM, Edinburgh Covered above. Plans in progress.

Culture 24 meeting

Will take place next month.

Note that MP has a large collection of contacts in museums across the UK - resource to be exploited.

Libraries conference

CILIP - RB to follow up discussions. Looks like this will be going ahead. Done

AOB

Format + length of meeting.

Preferable for it to be shorter - 2 hours rather than 3.

Should also cover outstanding actions from the previous meeting, after asking the rest of the board to update their statuses.

MP noted that AT had a lot of actions, and urged him to pass them on to other board members.

Overall, MP and AT think we need to "step up a gear" - but given that everyone's getting up to speed at the moment, we're on track.

Meeting ended at 22.30.