032516 Core Team Meeting Notes

Hi all,

The 03/25/16 Core Organizing Team Meeting Notes are below. We will send out a Doodle poll for the next meeting soon, and committees will be called before then. Please see the notes below for the committees you are on.

Thanks,

Diana & Alli

Living the New Economy 2016 - Core Team Meeting
March 25, 2016 Notes

Participants:
Aaron Lehmer-Chang, Bay Localize & House Kombucha
Tom Llewellyn, Shareable
Chong Kee Tan, Bay Bucks
Eron Liddy, Bay Bucks
Susan Harmon
Yvette Holts, Cowrie Village & BAOBOB
Alli Starr, Artivista Consulting
Diana Abellera, Diana Abellera Consulting
Desire Johnson-Forte, BIZ Stoop & Downtown TAY (via video)
Angela Sevin, Green Life (via phone)

Deep Introductions
Chong Kee - Bay Bucks, moving to Oregon. Bay Bucks works on economic justice and wanted to bring diverse people that used to work in silos to talk together, build trust. Wants to build a new economic system that doesn’t exploit people.
Eron Liddy - Bay Bucks, lives in Oakland. Born in SoCal, Pops from St. Croix (fluent in Spanish). Doing this project b/c it’s the team aim, has experience in conferences
Susan Harmon - Lives here but is from NY. Is in public banking. Part of Code Pink. Starting house village for homeless in Berkeley.
Alli Chagi Starr - Artivista Consulting. Chagi means person who runs the festival. Parents escaped pogroms. Getting MBA is socially responsible business. Also, took Challenging White Supremacy course when she was 25. Met Van Jones and did a lot of street activism against the criminal injustice system.
Tom Llewellyn - Shareable.net. From Canyon. Lives in a yurt (10 years). 1 of 10 kids (23 - 55 years old). Niece is 1 and grandma is 102. Bay Area born and raised. Has a strong community. Planning on coordinating similar conference, made sense to align.
Desire - growing social enterprise. Mills alum. Learning to balance desires and time constraints and family life. Scaling back to get a hold of what’s viable. Volunteered at last year’s conference and enjoyed what the event is supposed to be. Didn’t feel like many people from the flatlands were there and wanted to be able to get them more involved.
Angela Sevin - The Green Life at San Quentin. Grew up in Midwest in woods, near Lake Michigan. Parents grew up poor in Detroit area. European descent. Excited about the intended purpose and would like to contribute to making it real.
Aaron Lehmer-Chang - House Kombucha, co-founder of Bay Localize. April 23rd: 10 year anniversary. Heritage: Irish blood, great-grandfather is a clock maker from Denmark, German, Czech. Excited about convergence to bring together people necessary for solutions. Wants to bring community together.
Diana Abellera - Co-organizer for LNE Convergence. Worked for various nonprofit over past 13 years, doing fundraising, project management, and education program development. A lot of social justice work, intersecting with a lot of folks at the table. Trying to find a clearer professional path. Passionate about event planning and organizing, which is a perfect opportunity for me to be working on LNE.

Staffing Update (Chong Kee)
Published call for applications. Received 21 responses, very strong pool. Settled on Diana and Alli b/c we felt we found a good match. Knew there was a good possibility of hiring 2 b/c of diverse needs of job (fundraising, detail-oriented, program, etc.). Diana has experience in fundraising and event planning, Alli has experience in organizing and event planning.
Go to Diana for fundraising and logistics and All for content and program design.
Splitting funding equally
Money hasn’t been raised yet.
3 month review to see how it’s working out and how budget is working
Angela - suggests that Alli and Diana let the team know if hours are challenging, things come up, and adjust as needed.

Budget
Committee (Rana, Aaron, Alli, Diana)
Notes on changes:
Include transportation costs to get people to venue, legacy fund, more opportunity for community session leaders.
Detailed breakdown of revenues and ticket categories, including day passes for student / youth and speaker discounts
Last year’s was much more expensive. Keeping it affordable at $150 early bird and $200 regular.
100 comp tickets for ensuring communities are represented, media, sponsors, volunteers.
Bare bones budget right now. If more is raised, we can do more.
Currently have close to $3000 in pledge sponsorships. Need to do a heavy lift to get there to carry cash flow until ticket sales come in.
Budget is a working document, pending revenues. Priorities for budget expenses:
Staffing payments
Production needs (including additional speaker honoraria)
Communications / materials
Supplies, misc.

Discussion / Comments:
Suggest $ for Facebook ads in promotions ($100)
Would like to pay for photographer out of respect, but depends on if we can raise more than targets
Talk to Bon Appetit about reducing or donating costs, or may want to consider other vendors. Can we work with local businesses that could be food vendors?
Fundraising and outreach goals are a bit of a stretch, needs a group effort among core team - please send leads to Diana and Alli.

Eventbrite Ticket Sales:
2014 - scholarship tickets with an application. Prioritized all racial minorities and youth. Close to free so they could bring in as many people as possible. Allowed to see motivations of why people wanted free tickets. Asked for volunteer time.
Don’t want to ask systemically oppressed people to work in exchange for ticket. It should be a scholarship.
Scholarship should be offered, especially for people of African descent and / or Indigenous peoples.
Allocate the # of tickets available for scholarships versus media, sponsors, etc.

VOTE: Unanimous approval of revised budget.

TASKS:
Aaron, Aaron, and Desire to work together on language for Eventbrite ASAP before publicizing.
Chong Kee will work with Alli and Diana on sponsorship application and simplification.
Everyone review the sponsorship document to see if you have any connections or leads.
Diana will share Google Docs with files, including sponsorship file

Convergence Dates
Oct. 21 - 23. Bioneers is the same weekend. Mills has another socially responsible event that weekend they would have to move. Do we want to move to Oct. 14 - 16?
Life is Living - date is not set
OUSD holiday is Oct. 14

VOTE: 5 - 4. Sticking with Oct. 21 - 23. Different audiences, already set with Mills.

Communications (Aaron)
Website is ready to roll. Need to update committee members. Go live this week.
New graphic - see website https://lne2016.wordpress.com

TASKS
Committees to meet before next core meeting (Point people: Aaron - communications, Alli - program, Diana - fundraising)
Communications - Aaron, Angela, Corrine, Rana, Nika, Kit, YaVette, Susan Harmon
Program - Yavette, Alli, Rani, Tom, Angela, Aaron, Desire, Susan Park, Eron, Shiva
Fundraising & Finance Committee - Eron, Diana, Aaron, Alli
Diana - ask Desire and Tara about which committee(s) they would like to join.
Diana and Alli - send out Doodle poll for next meeting. Set a regular time.