Board Meeting Notes 2025-03-04

Board Meeting Minutes
<< Board Meeting Notes 2025-02-18	2025 Board Meetings	Board Meeting Notes 2025-03-18 >>

Meeting Start:

Attendance

• Board Members
  • James
  • Ian
  • Nick
  • Lindsay
  • Uwe
  • Eric

• Other Members
  • Andrew Masek
  • Andrew Wingate
  • Ron Olson
  • Carl Karsten
  • Jennie Plasterer

Agenda

• Consent Agenda
• Committee Reports
• Read mail
• Financial/membership report
• Review the PayPal and banking transactions
• Member leaving reason reports
• Check Freshdesk queue
• New business
• Old business

Minutes

Committee Reports

Reports from Committees

Financial Report

• Chase Checking:
• Chase Savings:
• PEX:
• PayPal:

Membership Report

• Number of Members:
• Quorum:

Freshdesk

Login link: https://pumpingstationone.freshdesk.com

New Business

• Uwe asks for a Scholarship update
  • Claire has a demographic questionnaire that she wants Shauen to look over
  • Uwe wants to give out new scholarships now
  • Ian will ask Claire to give the board an update

• Nick wants to appoint a PR Officer
  • Nick recommends Ilya Moskvin for PR Officer, with Andrew Masek as Social Media Volunteer
  • Board votes, and it passes

• Sky wants to talk about stuff
  • Bitwarden is fixed, which is excellent
  • Surveymonkey is expired, which is excellent (because we don't use it anymore)
  • Sky was contacted by an alternative energy provider
    • We use AEP energy for electric, and Constellation energy for Gas
    • Constellation told us there will be a price hike soon
    • We could sign a rate-lock contract for ~4 years
    • These contracts are no-to-low-risk, meaning no or low ETF if we want to back out.
    • The upside is impossible to calculate, because we do not know what the market will do over the course of this contract
    • She wants to know if the board wants her to continue to pursue this.

• Ian scheduled an inspection for this Friday 3/7 at 11am.
  • Hopefully it won't snow
  • We will discuss our next conversation with the landlord at the next board meeting, once we have the inspection report + the inspection report.

• Andrew Wingate has been working on grant writing.
  • He has been working on a $300k grant application
  • It is a significant time investment
  • He would like to be paid $1,250 to finish this grant proposal.
  • Uwe asks whether we have precedent for our ability to pay members to do stuff
    • James says we do, citing electricians as an example
  • The board discusses the details of the grant, which are documented elsewhere
  • The board votes to pay him upon submission of the grant.

• Ian would like to raise a thing that Ben Tiefeld would like him to raise.
  • Ben Tiefeld wants to direct donations towards specific areas / equipment budgets
    • Treasury says this is hard and creates a lot of work for them.
    • The whole room goes back and forth on whether this is desirable, possible, legal or excellent.
    • We can do this case-by-case
  • Ben has also floated the idea of moving to a 'more traditional non-profit accounting system'
    • No one seems to have any idea exactly what this entails

• Andrew Wingate asks for the authority to conduct business on behalf of the organization in order to submit parts of this grant
  • Joe says this is a clear violation of the membership agreement and a bad idea.
  • Uwe wants to know about this in advance going forward.
  • The board agrees that would have been excellent, and this is fine for now.

Votes

• The board votes to appoint Ilya Moskvin as PR Officer, and Andrew Masek as a Social Media volunteer, both with W.I.L.D. status.
  • For: 6
  • Against: 0
  • Abstain: 0
• The board votes to pay Andrew Wingate $1,250, to be paid upon submission of the Tech Incubator grant.
  • For: 4
  • Against: 0
  • Abstain: 2
• The board votes to authorize Andrew Wingate to conduct business on behalf of PS:1 for the purposes of the Tech Incubator grant.
  • For: 5
  • Against: 0
  • Abstain: 1