Minutes from SC conference call: 12.3.04

Present: Amanda, Arif, John, and Reuben

Absent: Rich and Steve

I.General:
Amanda has pointed info at nosi.net to john's email also given him john AT nosi DOT net

II.Private party donations and fund-raising:

Arif suggests we need to make personal donations and individual a priority and set a goal as part of the campaign. Board members may be important in helping to get these individual donations.

Arif also suggests we set up a Network for Good or PAYPAL account on the website. Amanda will look into this.

Reuben talks a little about our fiscal agent:

The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region

http://www.cfncr.org/index.cfm

Kenny Emson is the CFO/VP.
Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
kemson@cfncr.org(202) 955-5890

CFNCR provides NOSI with a quarterly statement of funds in and out.
Structurally sort of an odd fit. Since they have a local focus.
good deal on fiscal sponsorship only a 2% cut.
(During the formation of NOSI the SC also looked into the Tides Foundation and one in new england possibly the Third Sector of New England http://www.tsne.org/
Emson said its fine taking small donations. When a donation gets to a certain level, they have to send out a letter for taking the donation.

III.501 (c)3

Reuben said they have gone around the block re:501 c3. It hasn't seemed to justify the effort and recurring paperwork that people put themselves in for.

Arif says it can be a legitimacy thing, but not always. If we are confident in having staff time paperwork/filing etc, then it wouldn't hurt, but it may not help tremendously.

Reuben IBM doesn't care about 501c3 but more about our capacity to get things done. Our bona-fides were provided by Tech rocks, Jaime, Organizers Collaborative.

IV. Thinking about adding new SC members:

Arif suggests someone from Civic Space http://www.civicspacelabs.org/ . They seem to have good connections.

Arif or Reuben: Our greatest need is for a WORKING steering committee. We should be up front with people in that respect. We might set some hours that are expected.

We should define some some tasks that need to be done.

Arif: We should be reusing the information we produce 2 or three times, to maximize its worth. For ex: a quarterly news letter on list could also be an article on the website. Amanda will think about some ideas about website content.

V.Relationships with other orgs

John: Has a phone call scheduled with Richard Koman rkoman@techsoup.org of Tech soup.

Rebeun says that Compumentor has been interested in talking to us about running the open source forum in the past. However it merely seemed to add work to NOSI without major benefits.

Arif: We shouldn't commit any resources without coming back to the steering committee for consultation.

VI.Website:
Amanda: Is going to take the site live.
NOSI members should take a look at the site and correct any outdated material. Some NOSI members have already been assigned to particular sections (see November minutes)

VII.Next steps
SC members should come up with a list of tasks, skills, relationships or qualities which will help guide our search for new SC members in the short and long term. For example it is probably more important to have hard workers and team players than millionaires on the SC at this point.
SC members SHOULD communicate by email in the next several weeksto put forward some qualities and eventually some names. Hopefully we can make some decisions in the next month or so.

Next regular SC meeting is 1/7/05 at 11:00 AM EST