Board Orientation

From Pumping Station One

Fold in information from this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RB93_jgWFYBgU0DciqbfFnXY4hnfzHo02OD_2ViPHnM/edit#heading=h.dclvyvx7bf71


Email

Email Addresses

Each board member has their own email address. It is usually [email protected]. The previous board member should hand over the account to the new board member. When a board member takes over the email address, the board member should review all of the settings for forwarding to update where emails are forwarded.

Starting in 2014 and continuing through 2017, we have been giving the directors at large an official ps1 email address using their name/pseudonym. ex-directors may retain this email address; we are allowed 100 with our domain and have only used approx. 60

When you get your account, update the settings so that mail appears to come from you and not your predecessor. When you're logged in, click down the gear-shaped icon/pulldown in the upper right corner and select "Settings." To change the picture associated with the account (original link): There are 5 different places where Gmail could be referencing for your profile picture:

  • In Gmail's Settings - Gmail>>Settings>>"My Picture"
  • In your Google+ profile - Google+>>View your Profile
  • Via your contacts - Search for yourself by email address and see what photo appears.
  • If you have a "Send as" address that is treated as an alias, Gmail would reference the profile photo used for that Google account.
  • Via another app or mail program, like Apple mail or Outlook.

If you have your profile photo attached to your own contact in one of those program's address books, be sure to change it. If you go through each one of these and you still can't find the photo, try waiting 24 hours for the changes to take effect.

If your name is appearing incorrectly, here are some things to check (original link):

  • Under Accounts, you can edit "Send mail as:"
  • Your Google+ account page - Google+>Profile>Click on your name and change it> Save changes
  • You should also search for yourself in your contacts, to ensure that your name is correct and not misspelled.
  • Contacts manager> Search for your own email address> Make sure your name is associated with the correct address.
  • Check the spelling of your name in your back-up account.
  • If you have a recovery email, Gmail sometimes looks at the name in that account. Make sure it's spelled correctly there too.
  • Check your name in any Apps or programs.
  • If you're sending from an app or program, the name associated with that program will be the name that is listed in your account.
  • Lastly, if you are using a Google apps account, you may need to check with your administrator to see if the problem is on their end.


You should also update the Google Plus account settings for your [email protected] address, some of those settings (alternate email, profile photo, name) may also refer to a previous position holder.

Director only list

The directors-only@ list is the main way that the board communicates over email. It is managed through the G-Suite account at admin.google.com. Update the users when board members change.

Phone

We have a google voice phone number that we usually use on most official documents. It generally forwards calls to the president. Other board members can be added as well if needed. In order to update the call forwarding, you'll need to login to https://voice.google.com using the [email protected] account. The password for this should be in the shared LastPass.

The phone number is (516) Nine Hundred-3519

Google Voice Users

If you want to have the space phone number forward to your phone, but you already use Google Voice for your normal phone number, things get a bit more complicated. If you have your forwarding phone setup as a "Mobile" phone in the settings, Google won't allow you to have another number forward to it. I guess this has to do with SMS stuff being complicated. I'm not really sure. You can still forward two numbers to one phone, you just have to set the phone type to "Home" or "Work" for every number you're forwarding. If there are any phones forwarding to you with the "Mobile" type, everything will break. This might mean that SMS and voicemail will break for you on your normal phone number. I think if you were already using the Google Voice app or the Hangouts app for those on your phone though it shouldn't really change anything. In case none of that makes sense, see [here] for some more info.

Google Groups/Mailing Lists

We have two main mailing lists that our members use to interact with each other online. The [public list] and the [private list]. All board members should at least get the Manager role to be able to do moderation and to approve join requests and such. During orientation, new board members will need to be shown the interface for managing membership of these lists and how to approve posts to the public list. They should also be given some rough guidelines on what to approve or not approve on the public list. Generally anyone can post to it (member or not) and we'll only block them from posting if their message is obvious spam.

  • Moderating a member: Occasionally there is a need to require moderation for a member for some period of time and follows this process:
    • 3 Board Members form a moderation group
    • Moderated posts are emailed to the members of the moderation group and optionally, to the rest of the board
    • Any moderators can approve a post, without consulting other moderators, if the content of the post is respectful
    • For all other posts, if 2 moderators agree to ban the post, then that post is discarded and Google Groups sends an email to the member indicating a rejected post
    • Members under moderation can make reasonable requests to the board (email to directors-only -at- pumpingstationone -dot- org) to understand why a post was rejected
    • The service level agreement on response time for making a moderation decision on pending posts is 95% in 48 hours, however the moderators will strive to keep the timeframe below 24 hours to help maintain the flow of discussion
    • The moderation group may, by unanimous agreement, initiate a change in member moderation status by setting a board agenda item to reevaluate the member for a change in moderation status of the member

Bank account

  • Electricity Payments - Tony Stuff

Things to update payments for

  • Quickbooks
  • ComEd - ACH payment
    • This is done as an external AcH transfer, meaning there's nothing to change on the Chase side.
  • People's Gas
    • This is done as an external AcH transfer, meaning there's nothing to change on the Chase side.
  • Rent ACH---- Next time we do a board transition, make sure to cancel all ACH payments before any Chase accounts are deactivated/deleted.
  • Internet
  • Pagely
    • This is currently connected to the president's debit card. Login to the pagely website (https://pagely.com). The credentials are in the shared LastPass folder.
  • Creative Cloud
    • This is tied to the secretary@ email address

Online accounts

Credentials

We are storing credentials in a corporate LastPass account - check with CTO for details. We pay per-user.

Change passwords and sub-accounts. Give sub-accounts at discretion. For example, we've given PayPal sub-accounts to a subset of board members so that reimbursements and member point management can be done by more than just one person.

  • PayPal
  • Quickbooks
  • Online banking
  • PEX Cards
  • ???

Annual Report

As of 2015/05: According to the Illinois Secretary of State's office, amending the annual report is unnecessary since our registered agent or address has not changed. A new annual report must be filed at the end of the year, which will list the soon-to-be-outgoing Board.

Business Cards

The PR director has newish templates for business cards. Might as well get 500 if you get any. They will be stored on our Google Drive.

There is a supply of generic PS1 cards available stored with our office supplies (currently in the safe) if you don't want to get any personalized cards, or for you to use until your personalized cards arrive.

Member Payments

Accepted

We technically accept PayPal, cash, and check. Anything other than PayPal has significant overhead -- both for the person trying to find someone to give the money to and for the board for tracking payments.

Handling Cash Payments

All cash payments are to be deposited in the dropbox in the safe; it's currently mounted on the wall. On the envelope should be their name and the date of the deposit.

Members should be informed that cash payments can take a while to be processed and that they really should pay with paypal if possible

Processing the Payments

This is sort of outdated. The board has been working on a better process for this involving RT. Please update this page once you have it worked out.

For each cash payment, update the member's record in not zoho.

  • Set their membership level to their payment amount (if applicable.)
  • Set the "End Date" to be one month after the payment.
  • Add a note to their file, indicating when the payment was dated and how much it was for.
  • Make sure their payment type is set to "cash".
  • Set the "Last Payment Date" to the payment received date.
  • Immediately deposit the payment (after signing the checks.) DO NOT allow payments to accumulate. Anything over two weeks is unacceptable.
  • Take a photo of the receipt and send the image to info@, with a breakdown of the deposit.

Member Points

Members can receive $30 off via Member Rewards.

Procedure as of 8/2016 can be found here Redeeming Member Points

Current procedure for giving them the $30 off:

  1. Check a spreadsheet to see how many points have been used this pay cycle. Check the current month and the previous month.
  2. In PayPal, find their most recent payment.
  3. Via the refund button, give them $30 per member point used -- up to how much they paid that month.
  4. Deduct the points from their total in Zoho.
  5. Track the expenditure in a spreadsheet.

Members can't refund more than the cost of their membership, and we don't track fractional member points.

To add: how to handle members who spend member points on a temporary upgrade instead of a refund

Running Votes

Most of the business conducted by PS:1 is decided by member votes. The burden of most of the record keeping is on the secretary.

The process I've been using this year seems to work for the most part, it is detailed below. --Dbever (talk) 21:03, 11 November 2014 (CST)

  • A new vote should go here: 2014 Votes (or the equivalent page for the current year)
  • When a vote is officially proposed (usually at a member meeting, though mailing list works as well) - that is, the vote date is announced and there will be no further changes to the language - an email informing the membership of the vote (and soliciting electronic votes) goes out.
  • This email needs to be sent at least 5 days before the vote - so the Thursday before a Tuesday vote.
  • To send the vote notification email, select "Mass Mail" from the dropdown menu when logged in to the members.pumpingstationone.org. Edit an existing vote email changing the dates (they're in bold), save, and send to full members.
  • Make a note of the quorum on the day that you send out the proxy statement.
  • I keep a tally of votes in a google spreadsheet - tracking votes in person, electronic and proxy (A list of proxied votes is maintained in another spreadsheet. This should be checked periodically to make sure the names on it belong to current members).
    • 2015 update: I have started storing the results, including the proxy vs. in person breakdown, in the member minutes.
    • Proxies should be emailed directly to the secretary@ email account.
    • 2015 update: proxies seem to be emailed to the votes@ account.
  • Once the voting is done, update 2016 Votes as well as the votes page. I also generally note whether a vote passed in the minutes and on the vote page. Mailing list announcement also isn't a bad idea.

Checks

Need to pass along the blank checks.

Task Management

We use RT for tracking tasks. Emails from info, money, ...? get forwarded to RT and placed in to RT categories such as Member Payments, Treasury, General, etc. During board meetings, part of the meeting is dedicated to RT triage to adjudicate and assign tasks.

RTs can have attachments, comments, email replies, and statue changes. It is good to record status updates in tickets so that there is no bottleneck in case someone else needs to pick up the ticket, or has a question.

Meetings

Board meeting schedules can be determined by the board, but the board needs to meet at least once a year. Currently, Board meetings are the first and third Tuesdays of the month, before the member meeting. Board meetings notes are recorded on wiki pages by the Secretary or other Board member and organized in the category page for board meetings [1].

Volunteers

The board is responsible for selecting area hosts and volunteer authorizers. 2015's board started experimenting with sending a monthly checkup to volunteers to see how they are doing.