Board Meeting Notes 08/23/17

Meeting AgendaWednesday, August 23, 2017, 7:00 - 9:00 pm The Co-op: 18 Putnam Ave, Brooklyn

Facilitator: Chris Note-taker: Chris Note-takers - please see link to secretary responsibilities. Timekeeper: Chris

Directors Present: Chris, Christina T., Cecile Directors Absent: Christina L., Lauryl (ex officio) Others in attendance: Sapana

Any person attending may participate equally in discussions, but only Co-op members/owners may vote on any issues. Member/owners may receive work credit if they attend (allotted 1 time a year).

Next General Meeting is September 27, 2017 at the store. This will be our Annual Meeting of the membership. Want to be a facilitator, secretary, timekeeper or to propose items for a future GM agenda. Please email board@greenehillfood.coop (work credit always allotted)

Welcome/Orientation 7:00-7:05 (5 min)

Welcome and introductions. Brief explanation of the purpose of the Board Meeting. Questions welcomed!

Consent Agenda 7:05-7:20 (15 mins)

A collective vote on decisions that have already been made or that don’t generally require/solicit discussion. Attendees can pull out any item they would like more discussion on, and this item will be moved to discussion at the end of the meeting. Information on all consent agenda item votes will be circulated in advance of the meeting.

Approve minutes from previous Board meeting
- Minutes approved
Governance project to delineate committee, board, and staff responsibilities and decision making
- Finn is unable to take on this project
- Cecile sent around spreadsheet to collect input from SCs and Board members
- Lindsay and Chris taking this on
- Sapana suggests: SCs spearhead committees when there are low on people; divided with Board based on whether or not it’s store- based work
  - Merchandising, Ops - SCs
  - Finance, Marketing - Board
- Priority: communicating and delineating what projects SCs are working on; monthly, and email in between

1. Store Coordinator Update 7:20-7:30 (10 min.)

-

2. Lease Committee and Relocation 7:30- 8:15 (45 mins)

Discuss proposals for change in relocation plans and priorities (see member email)
- Prioritizing our social commitment (i.e., confronting our role as potential gentrifiers)
- Update on ongoing work with CBFC and other co-ops
Creation of 90-day plan for action: What would decisions and actions would need to happen if we are given 90 days to vacate?
Cecile would like to follow up with CBFC as soon as possible, since we have little chance of finding a commercial property around here
Sapana wonders if Finance would be able to look for grants
- Christina T. clarifies that because we’re not a nonprofit, we can’t accept most grants
Chris asks, what do we do right now? What do we prioritize?
Christina T. suggests it’s all about sales:
- Get more people to come in and buy more
- Prices fluctuate
- Merchandise stocking is inconsistent
- Long cashier lines
Focus on merchandise and working!
Sapana agrees on merchandising -- this is the one thing we could really significantly improve on
Christina T: If we do improve merchandising, we need to have the front end ready to deal with more customers
Sapana: Open shopping days?
Christina: It’s the members who we already have who are not shopping as much that we need
Christina: What protocol do we use to notify Merch that something is out of stock?
- Sapana: It goes both ways; they come in and we also notify them
- Maybe there are procedures or processes in place that
Christina T: how could we change our pricing strategy so that it doesn’t change drastically from week to week?
- E.g., change the markup to even things out?
- At the end of the day, produce will rot on our shelves if it’s too expensive
- Raina and Lindsay order produce
Sapana: Mostly greens are what go to waste
Cecile: Committee labor could use reorganization -- focus on our priorities -- look at a list of who’s on each committee
Christina T. : Maybe it’s a retreat
- Get as many committee members from as many committees as possible
- Use this as a forum to communicate priorities and encourage cross-committee work
Sapana: Board could prioritize projects; these are inter-committee projects
Cecile: Most powerful thing to do right now -- the best move we can do right now is to improve our health
All agree we need to work on the structure to improve the health
Christina: It’s the convening of people: board’s role is to hold the retreat; we could go in with just a format and see what we
Chris: Go into the retreat with an overall plan: grow sales and support member labor
Sapana: People want a sense of community too -- retreat
Go in with big goals
- Identify projects
- Identify who from specific committees is liaising with whom
Christina T: Also make it fun!
- Weekend, backyard, grills
- Get to know people
- Throw some money into it -- food and drinks
- Thank you for your time on the weekend
Bottom line: we need more money, even if we find a place we can afford to move to
Schedule for beginning of October
Communicate with Merchandising - Christina
- Pre-meeting with Merch and SCs
  - How does this committee work?
  - Where are the gaps?
- Strategy to increase sales
- Retreat: How do we
Cecile: also want to work on the storefront - Chris to reach out to marketing
Board to reconvene in two weeks to plan

Additional action items:
- Chris will reach back to Bed-Stuy Fresh and Local

3. Committee Reports 8:15-8:30 (15 min) Add discussions as needed from committees and liaisons below.

if there is nothing to be discussed or decided but a report is needed add at the end of this agenda.

Finance: Committee chair Bianca Orlando, Liaison Christopher Gollmar
Merchandising: Committee chair Sarah Chinn, Liaison Lauryl Bergen-Chun
Marketing & Website: Committee chair Ray Jolicoeur, Liaison Chris Gollmar
- Ray stepping down effective Sept. 1
Outreach: Committee chair Ray Jolicoeur, Liaison Christopher Gollmar
Membership: Committee chair Chad Donnick, Liaison Cecile Arnaud
- Followed up on sign-up process
- Sign-up process still complicated
- Would like to be able to sign people up for a regular shift when they sign up as a member; did this happen at last orientation? (Cecile will ask Chad if they did this last orientation and how it went)
- We would like them to find a way to simplify signup (new members and recurring shifts)
Investment: Committee chair Renee B, Liaison Cecile Arnaud
IT: Committee chair Misha Avrekh, Liaison Cecile Arnaud
Governance: Committee chair Mira De Jong, Liaison Christina LeMoine
Operations: (renamed from Design build/Operations) Committee chair Penelope August
HR: Committee chair Megan Curran, Liaison Christina LeMoine

4. Committee Asks and Gives 8:30-8:35 (5 mins) (Committee Chairs and Liaisons)

Committees asks for help or support / others give below:

5. AGENDA - free flowing and aspirational discussions

Proposal to change trial membership from 2 months to 1 month and highly recommend orientation.
- Passed unanimously
Proposal to enact a policy linking future Store Coordinator pay raises to profits.
- Do we re-evaluate this every quarter? Every six months?
- Doesn’t have to be super mathematical -- we have fixed costs and sales
- All are in favor of having this policy --
  - Cecile: should also include coordinator evaluation
  - Sapana: that would be helpful!
  - Cecile: SC evaluations a way to build feedback and support paid staff
  - Sapana: SC role changes as the needs change -- would help define the role without structuralizing it, making it rigid
  - Cecile: policy should also include differnet pay rates for different store coordinators -- workers get more efficient the longer they work with an organization
  - Christina T: also helps with the financial decisions
  - Sapana: Agree that SC pay could rise with time working here, wary of tying to performance eval b/c
  - Sapana: We need to define what the terms/metrics are
Results from summer shopping survey
Clarify schedule of upcoming meetings
- Which upcoming meetings will be Working Board Meetings, and which will be General Meetings?
- What preparation needs to take place for September Annual Meeting?
  - Taken offline
- Divide member responsibilities for preparations

Chris to reach out to Renee and Finn: board election
Propose bylaw change: board term 2 years
Pick date and time for Oct. thing
- Meet next week 7-9pm

6. Bike Rack (10mins) (Notetaker)

Closing 8:55 - 9:00 (5 min) Board reviews votes at the end of each Meeting

Reports in writing:

Membership and Finance Report

Monthly membership report (link)

Summary of report:

Current number of working members: 506
Number of new members and deactivated in July: 6 new members,
1 reactivated member, 32 trial members, 3 deactivated, 4 cancelled
Number of existing members waiting for investment returns: _________
We’ve seen roughly a 7.7% increase in membership since January.

Monthly finance report