Autscape Management Committee Meeting Minutes Meeting date: Wednesday 19th January 2011 Meeting time: 1pm Present: Elaine, Kalen, Martijn, Peter, Stephen, Trish, Yo. Absent: Katja Late: Peter Due to Peter's absence from the first half of the meeting, several items were discussed out of agenda order. However items are minuted here in the order given by the agenda for the avoidance of confusion. 1. Approvals 1.1 The committee approved the minutes of the December meeting (as posted to the list on 12/12/10) with 4 for and 2 abstentions 2. Proposals 2.1. Newsletter. The committee confirmed Alexis as the new chair of the working group and noted that some recent progress has been made. The committee agreed to review progress on the newsletter next month. 3. Follow ups 3.1. Membership database. Yo noted that sc-fund needs a reliable database or current and past members. Peter agreed to assemble this from existing information. It was noted that the database needs to include: communication preferences for each member, whatever contact info we have for them, past members (identified as such) so we can encourage them to rejoin and details of when they became members, and when they stopped being a member etc. 4. Subcommittee progress reports 4.1. Venue (inc. 2012 search) Kalen reported no progress on 2012. 4.2. Tech. There was a brief discussion around issues with the proposal submission form and it was agreed to discuss these by email. Yo suggested making it possible to save progress on a partially filled form. This was not possible for this year but Peter agreed that it could be done for next year. 4.3. Publications/publicity. Martijn had nothing to report. There was a brief discussion of issues raised on Chat around publicity and of deadlines for advertisements. Martijn undertook to check on these. 4.4. Constitution. Yo reported that there had been a little progress recently towards developing the governance policy. She stated that she will keep trying to move this forward steadily but could still do with people trying to make time to contribute to discussions on these important issues whenever possible. 4.5. Fundraising. Yo reported that she had made a start recently. This has produced the suggestion of adding a Paypal donation button to our donations page and she thought Peter was going to do this. Otherwise progress is basically waiting on the development of a membership database (see 3.1). In response to a question Yo clarified that funding this year is very unlikely. She commented that there is little point in applying for grants as grants for general running costs don't exist. She reported that sc-fund is concentrating on developing our internal fundraising first, but that this is unlikely to produce significant sums quickly. 4.6. Youth. Elaine reported that she had tried to recruit new members and would be starting discussions shortly. Yo asked if the issue of hiding email addresses had been sorted out. Elaine said not yet but Peter explained how to do it. Yo was also concerned that the vital job of finding a suitable childcare provider might get overlooked in favour of a youth programme. Elaine said she would make this a priority. 4.7. Programme. Trish reported that they had worked on theme description and Call for Proposals. CfP has now been sent out but she needs to follow up and encourage people to distribute it more widely. Martijn offered to distribute to some places and let Trish know so they didn't duplicate. 5. Key position progress reports (matters not covered earlier) 5.1. Venue coordinator. Kalen said she hasn't yet got the H&S policy from the venue. Peter said he had been told it was too large to send, but we can have specific bits on request. This is not ideal, but it means that they can't expect us to behave as if we know the contents in advance. Kalen also said she had sent off the deposit cheque last week. 5.2. Treasurer. Peter reported that VAT exemption has been confirmed by the venue. Regarding the accounts, Peter reported having filled in a draft CC39a (the official form for filing charity accounts). Although Autscape is not required to do this until next year, Peter felt this was a useful exercise to make sure that our finance system can generate the figures required. He also reported that he has not yet contacted an accountant, but completing the CC39a is the last thing he needed to do before doing so. 5.3. Company Secretary. Yo reported that the CRBs were still 'almost complete'. She explained that, unfortunately, because we need enhanced disclosures the speed depends on individual police forces around the country and some take much longer than others. But she expects them to be completed very soon. Regarding the charity form, Yo reported that she has been in discussion with our solicitor about a draft of this and it is close to being ready. She was still confident of having it ready to go by the time the CRBs were done. 5.4. Chair (Elaine as interim Dec-Jan chair). Elaine had nothing to report. 6. Any other business. 6.1. Kalen said that she and Peter have begun discussing the 2011 fees and should have a proposal on that by next meeting. The venue costs somewhat less than Ammerdown, but rather than reduce the fees, they intended to propose freezing the fees at last year's levels to give Autscape more financial flexibility. The committee agreed with that proposal in principle (nem con). Kalen agreed to make proposals about the purpose to which the additional funds should be put at a later date. 6.2. Kalen requested placing the issue of subsidising a site manager on the agenda for next month. 6.3. It was noted that Stephen is the Jan-Feb interim chair Meeting closed at 3.21pm