[CSL board] Minutes of August Meeting

[Laura MacNeil]

The Community Software Lab
Board of Directors Meeting
August 14, 2007
UMass-Lowell
Olsen, 2nd Floor conference room

Attendance: Dan MacNeil, Laura MacNeil, Karen Zgoda, Charlotte Crockford, Fred Martin, Muriel Parseghian, Kristina Ickes
Guests: John Miller, Eric Bryant

President Karen Zgoda called the meeting to order at 7:10.

The minutes from the May 2007 meeting were approved. Motion: Charlotte Crockfor. Second: Laura MacNeil. Unanimous.

Dan MacNeil reviewed the finance reports. Positive cash flow projected through November 2007. Pointed out that reports now reflect in-kind donation of services from the University. Fred Martin suggested that in-kind estimate could easily be doubled. Fred Martin made a motion to accept financial reports. Second: Laura MacNeil. Unanimous.

Eric Bryant is looking at applying for $85,000 in grants. 

$10,000 from Shannon Anti-Violence grant: CSL written in larger grant that the Lowell Police Department submitted the grant with CSL as a line item in Marketing for Family/Youth services. Use of MVHub as service.

$50,000 Parker Foundation is due September 15, 2007. Applying for salary for Josh Harding to do desktop support, file servers, back ups for 5 to 10 nonprofits. Kristina Ickes suggested making one presentation at the next NPA meeting in order to secure partner agencies and letters of support. Dan was urged to make presentation to partner agencies and to make it clear that in year two of the grant process they would be asked to contribute toward the tech support (e.g. $200/desktop). 

$10,000 CDBG and $15,000 Burgess Foundation are similar requests with a slightly different slant. CDBG would fund youth worker stipends and Burgess would fund desktop support or training for immigrant or housing organizations.

MVHub Update:
John Miller will answer any questions regarding MVHub posted to the list. The only thing not coming along as well as they would like is the youth workers are not getting the data entry done as quickly as projected.

Felicia Sullivan is no longer doing the administrative follow up needed for MVHub. Dan requested $15/hour to cover the work that the CSL had to take over from LTC since Felicia no longer works at LTC. Dan has been in touch with LTC regarding the fact the CSL has been doing all the work and LTC is taking the credit. There will be a meeting in the fall regarding this. LTC's contract is up in October and there is speculation that the city will not renew their contract. Concern about the copyright situation is that it isn't clear if LTC has copyrights to MVHub. Nothing was signed by LTC, CSL or Advancement Plus. The website says Advancement Plus holds the copyright. The major concern is that LTC would come to CSL in 5 years when we are doing MAHub and asks us for reimbursement or control of MVHub.

Other business
Charlotte Crockford said that we could have a retreat at her son's house in September 29 noon to 7:30pm. We will include alumni reunion, potential nominees and donors.

Nominating committe:
The Nominating Committee is Kristina Ickes and Laura MacNeil. They will contact Russ Smith from CTI, Harry Howell, and Colin King (Kristina has connection).

Other possible people to consider for the board as suggested by those at the meeting:
Sidney Liang  
Peter Bull
Ben Sheldon 
Dan Gregory (kristina)
Harry Goodall - where is he? does he still want to serve? Fred may know.
Jesse Heinz, George Grinstein
Sharon Sheldon CTI
Mariana Innes UMass, has connections, access to wealth, asks hard questions
Shery Denk (Dan has contacted but need to follow up)
(Fred Martin will not be renewing his term on BOD)

Action Steps:
Laura -- pull together goals that we discussed over past meetings
Laura and Kristina work on nominating new board members
Dan will get draft of executive summary for Parker Foundation to BOD by Thursday, BOD will comment so Dan can have a finished executive summary for Monday.
Strategic Planning committee: Josh Harding, Melissa Carino, Laura MacNeil

Fred Martin made a motion to adjourn. Second: Laura MacNeil. Unanimous.