Board Meeting 2021-01-05 Special

AGENDA

Board Members

• JaiPal Chauhan, President
• Paula Pankratz, Vice-President
• Patrick Hutchison, Secretary
• David Springs, Immediate Past President
• Doug Wilson, At Large
• Scott Sullivan, At Large
• Terrence Laurendine, At Large
• Tom Bloom, At Large

Empty Board Seats

• Treasurer

Members

• James Lancaster
• Marti Secondine
• Gary Titus
• Joe Pajor
• Beverly Schellenger

New Business

• Review Wild Apricot / PayPal Payment System Recommendation from IT
  • James provided some review of the work he’s done testing an in-house option here on the forum.
  • Tom would like to request that the board authorize the $200 fee to the third party consultant if the in-house option doesn’t work in time to meet the deadline to get the code from the consultant and use it. If it isn’t needed, the funds won’t be expended.
  • Tom doesn’t see any benefit to switching to the WA Payment Platform, vs staying with PayPal.
  • Either way, in-house or through the consultant, will require some manual work and resetting member accounts within in WA, but would be transparent to members. It would require manually applying incoming payments to members accounts, but the in-house or consultant option will help automate the bulk of that.
  • Will need to do some manual tracking of people who stop paying because they don’t get transitioned, but that will go away eventually.
  • If the transition process works the way they think it should, there shouldn’t be a big impact on the treasurer's job.
  • Tom moves that we approve $200 to pay for a consulting firm process to monitor Paypal payments for the February 1st cutover. Jai seconds. Motion passes.
  • @DECISION: Board votes to approve $200 for consulting firm for Wild Apricot / PayPal change.

• Jai asks about concerns from a forum poster who had a recurring one year membership that auto renewed at start of 2020
  • This is not about folks with month-to-month memberships who had the option at any time to stop / suspend their memberships. Just the auto-renewing annual / 6 month memberships.
  • Do we want to offer an extension to these folks if they request it to cover X months?
  • How far back could that be offered for auto-renewals?
  • Should we offer this at all for folks who didn’t ask months ago to have their auto-renewal membership suspended vs folks asking now in retrospect?
  • Need to remember / remind folks that via the CARES Act their unrealized membership dues are tax deductible this year.
  • This really helps illustrate the difference between the ‘tool rental mentality’ and the community of makers that we want to foster and grow.
  • Jai has written a reply on the forum to the person denying a refund and explaining our reasons for doing so.

• Replacement Treasurer Appointment
  • Beverly Schellenger was discussed by the finance committee. She is a member who is willing to take on the job. She is retired and has plenty of daytime available to work on the job.
  • Jai moves that we appoint Beverly Schellenger to the treasurer position. Paula seconds. David Abstains. Motion passes.
  • @DECISION: Board appoints Beverly Schellenger to be Treasurer.

• Line of Credit - Seeking Guarantors
  • Still looking for two more members to guarantee at the $10,000 - $12,000 level a line of credit that we are pursuing with the bank for $60,000 with a three year term of interest only payments with machinery as collateral. Plan that it is only to be used to pay off the electrical contractor bill of about $47,000 and that we set a hard percentage of income each month to apply to the payments.
  • If you want to be one of the guarantors, email Jai at president@makeict.org.