EMSBoDMeetingMinutes020124

Eugene Maker Space Board of Directors meeting February 1st, 2024

Call to order

7:04PM

Attending: Karen, Ben, Beata, Sam, Andrew, Piotr Also present:

Approve this agenda

Motion: Ben moved that the Eugene Makerspace Board of Directors approve the agenda as amended.

The motion was seconded by Andrew.

Motion passes, the vote was Unanimous.

Approve previous minutes

Motion: Karen moved that the Eugene Makerspace Board of Directors approve the minutes from the January BoD meeting as submitted.

The motion was seconded by Andrew.

Motion passes, the vote was Unanimous.

Reports

President's report

January was a difficult month. We had power outages, internet outages, and other weather related hurdles. I'm sure many of our planned action items from last month may have suffered because of this, so let's have some grace for ourselves. It's been a rough one.

Secretary's report

Nothing to report.

Treasurer's report

Money accounts as of 02/01/2024

Bank $2007.35
PayPal $24.01
Patreon $1507.79
Sum $3539.15
Rent -$1575.94 (diff $5.89)

Karen located several old bills and receipts and scanned them for archival. We had a $.07 check in the mail.

Shop status

Andrew has been using the shop frequently and reports that the shop is dusty. A new switch was installed on one of the saws and it is functional again. The state of the space is fairly steady currently.

Sam reports that we have several drills without chargers and chargers without drills. There is a planer in the shop now! No functioning welders at the moment. Metal shop is generally the same. There's some space in the cleaning room! The loom has left the building.

There is a member who is still using the CNC Alley area for storage of large items.

Old Business/Action Item Review

Loom update

Kayla took the loom and determined it's in good working order. She's identified some pieces to be replaced and will work to refurbish it shortly. A member has inquired about learning to use the loom! The loom is collapsible and can be stored safely/efficiently, a welcome discovery. Once it is done being refurbished, it will return to the shop. There was a discussion about rebooting the textiles area up front that might also be well suited for its storage and use.

Installation of NVR

We will try again this next week.

Karen will send the OK to Vermont maker space re: posters

Done.

Toner station

Toner is not a good candidate for repurposing, we have decided to scrap it. It will be evaluated for any useable parts then removed.  

Piotr will calculate specifics on what we need going forward to inform our new membership rates

Based on analysis, we will raise the individual membership to $45 and the family from $60 to $70. Andrew suggested that we announce the new rates with a target date to give members an opportunity to purchase an annual membership to benefit from some savings.

Motion: Ben moved that the Eugene Makerspace Board of Directors Raise the monthly membership to $45 for individuals, $70 for families, and to expand the operating hours to 24x7 for members at the new contribution rate. Implementation date to be April 1, 2024 AD..

The motion was seconded by Piotr.

Motion passes, the vote was Unanimous.

ACTION: Ben will Update keymaster code to accomodate 24x7 access for new tier members.

ACTION: Andrew will Write a communication to the membership informing everyone of the changes..

Karen will write a New Years state of the shop blog post

In progress.

ACTION: Ben will Create a Wordpress login for Andrew and anyone else who wants it.

New Business

Email server setup

Andrew would like to set up an email server so we can have @eugenemakerspace.com addresses. He would also like to implement SSO, mail retention, and other general IT modernizations.

Andrew and Karen will coordinate on access.

ACTION: Karen will Secure our access credentials for the Google for Non Profits.

TechSoup AWS credits

Andrew analyzed our annual spend and found it's roughly $260 a year. For $95 we can get replacement AWS credits via TechSoup, he suggests we do this instead as it will show immediate savings.

There was a discussion about how TechSoup works.

Motion: Andrew moved that the Eugene Makerspace Board of Directors Pay TechSoup the $95 to gain access to non-profit AWS credits.

The motion was seconded by Ben.

Motion passes, the vote was Unanimous.

ACTION: Karen will Coordinate with Andrew to implement this.

Tool inventory system options

Andrew would like to improve the state of our tool inventory and centralize documentation/resources.

Karen suggests that if we pursue this, we add this to the shop status report.

Paperless-NG instance

Piotr notes that we have a lot of receipts coming in and suggests that we implement Paperless-NG. He suggests we spin up an instance and fire it up. Karen suggested we also use this opportunity to switch our internet billing to paperless and pipe those into the new system.

Piotr will coordinate with Andrew on this.

Possible clean up day

Sam suggests that we schedule a shop clean-up day in the near future then reach out to the membership for volunteers. We discussed February 10th and 17th, it sounded like the 17th was a good match at 1PM. Andrew will inform the membership.

Andrew will notify the membership of the event.

DOJ Reporting forms

Karen received forms for our required annual report and scanned them for Piotr. She added an event to the calendar for the deadline for the form.

We received a letter from a non profit supplier

Andrew reported that we got some advertising from a company that sells janitorial supplies to us for super cheap and suggested we sign up for their free membership. Andrew will evaluate this.

Calendar question

Karen noted that our close call last year re: some government reporting wasn't attached to a recurring calendar item. She suggested that we identify what the shortcoming was that caused us to be blindsided. Piotr has set up notification so that we will not encounter this issue again.

Review upcoming events

Andrew and Sam have volunteered to host several open hacks through the end of February.

Adjournment

Motion: Andrew moved that the Eugene Makerspace Board of Directors adjourn.

The motion was seconded by Ben.

Motion passes, the vote was unanimous.

The meeting was adjourned at 08:34PM.