Burlington Writers Workshop 12/11/22 Leadership Team Meeting Minutes, approved 01-08-23

(Specific to-do items underlined and bolded.)

Attendance: Janet Mckeehan-Medina (Co-Chair), Katie Lazarus (Co-Chair), Dick Matheson (Treasurer), Millie Eidson (Secretary), Sam Fenner (Managing Director), Jon Fenner (Comms Team), Skip Keith (member), Rebecca O’Bern (MSR), Jane Nevins (Fundraising), Davy Yue (Comms), Ashley Hajimirsadeghi  (MSR)

Meeting convened at 6:02

Minutes from the previous meeting: Approved.

Ethics Committee – Janet and Sam

• Investigate and handle concerns including bullying; several members who have been trained in such issues are willing to serve on this new committee; set up guidelines for handling
• Concerns about the purview: writing that is inappropriate, lack of trigger warnings, racist remarks, someone disrespectful of someone else?
• Anything that makes someone uncomfortable is brought forward and considered
• One suggested solution by a member with a concern: website for anonymous reporting
• Committee needs to consider what its purview is. Are the problems with communication or something else?
• There have been different viewpoints on what is submitted in workshops. Some creative writing may trigger other writers. Trigger warnings are sometimes used by authors, but will we start to require them?
• One previous policy: anything submitted is fine unless intentionally offensive against another workshop participant
• If requiring trigger warnings, can be difficult to know when to require them because it can be difficult for writers to predict what will trigger others
• How participants treat each other in the workshop is a different issue than what’s submitted in the workshop
• Should there be a code of conduct that members agree to when they join? Same as terms of service. There are short templates that could be used. Send any template codes of conduct for other organizations to Sam. Having some preventive guidelines could be helpful.
• Issues should initially be brought to workshop host. If bigger, could be brought to another workshop host for consultation. Not all hosts maybe skilled in handling challenging situations.
• Better name might be Mediation Team, or mediation could be subgroup of it.
• Motion: Create Ethics committee to deal with interpersonal relationships within BWW no matter what the committee is called. Passed.

Conflict of Interest recommendations – Sam and Dick

• Millie suggests that the LT send back to the COI a proposal that products with no monetary value like old MSRs and CLAs can be given to workshop hosts, committee chairs, and LT members at no cost to BWW (provided at events and not mailed).
• Dick: gifts are an issue with IRS, not insubstantial, about $12, which is at about the selling price of the CLA.
• Should not order more copies with intent of doing that.
• Older products depreciate in value and will fall below maximum allowed amount. Specify that the books have to be more than 2 years old.
• Specify no cost to BWW for distribution.
• All COI motions approved except for #3 from 10/27 meeting. Millie will develop a proposal for COI to consider.

Jacqueline Lawson Cards – Sam

• Jon and Sam donated a subscription, used for birthdays, contributing members, thank you cards.
• Proposal: continue with BWW buying the cards; $45/2 years (approved)
• Could consider art contest with members submitting drawings, pick one to use for holiday cards; could be a way to engage members; but these cards have art already, animation

Table replacements – Sam

• Older tables couldn’t be maintained and vote was to donate rather than try to sell.
• $400 from library sale, use it to purchase foldable lightweight tables for events?
• Consider good cloths as table coverings: we have some already
• Make sure that the tables are sufficiently sturdy, hold like 500 pounds.
• 8’ folds in half for $164. 6’ for $80 (some initial available prices).
• Storage: likely in Fenner basement so no storage cost.
• Various members are still storing books and other supplies.
• With 1-2 events a year, we could be in same position as before of needing to find storage or donate if BWW has unused furniture.
• Some venues may include tables, but the sale of books at streetside near City Park required BWW to bring their own tables.
• Investigate advance purchasing options and costs. Determine if needed for specific future events and then consider purchase at that time if not available from venues.

Members – pending, missing info – Sam

• Email, house address, phone: a lot of the missing information, particularly phone number (some fake), only initial for last name, partial mailing address
• Already have an exemption for those with security concerns.
• Will those requirements put people off from joining? They may be concerned about the security of that information if database hacked.
• Phone numbers were needed if meeting in person to reach them if event cancelled. That requirement may not be needed. Last year phone number helped to follow up acceptance for CLA when email bounced.
• Mailing address: used for fundraising letters in the past but not actively doing that now. May do it in the future. Did the snail mailing help? Emails for fundraising have limited success. Previous experience yielded some good donations from a very small number of core members. Consider asking for them but may not be worth following up if not provided.
• Do nonprofit organizations require certain information about members to meet VT and IRS requirements?  None that we’re aware of currently.
• Proposal for discussion: continue asking for the information, but only have email address and full name as core requirements, even though some don’t want to provide last name due to security concerns
• Consider warning that incomplete or inaccurate information may prevent BWW from future contact. But that may give them an out.
• Second proposal: Only require full name and email address.
• Final decision: Let’s make no changes and no more work currently to follow up.

Marketing – Google Ads – Jon

• We’re authorized for limited free advertising
• Currently used for our workshops
• Can target local or nationwide
• Of 36 new members, 11 came in through Google ads

Website – New website layout – Jon

• Dec.: 17 new participating members, 4 new contributing members; Nov.: 32/2
• Redoing menus on website to simplify
• Expenses: YouTube showcase for contributing member videos like for recorded masterclasses; need WordPress plug in for $99/year to organize it, will be unwieldy without the extra tags and organizational options in paid version; will have more videos as 6 months past event occurs
• On survey, people complain that things are hard to find so they want more organization of the website.
• Proposal, agreed to by LT: Revisit issue with annual budget request, possibly in April
• Updraft Plus: don’t have staging area, can’t experiment except by breaking production website: $70/year; Jon is approved for this expenditure.
• Content:
  • get more content by having a contest
  • give our writers opportunity to prepare something for website, a place to put writings for sharing, potentially on Facebook site too; alternative to MSR and CLA
  • there are copyright issues so writers are taking a risk of not being able to publish it elsewhere and someone else taking it; could be dealt with by providing the writers a disclosure
  • could be a lot of work to organize submissions and judge which ones to publish
  • Proposal: do trial run without a contest. Limit 1-2/week to avoid being inundated. Could accept by order of submission so no judging. Members only.
  • What criteria for length? Start with poetry, then flash fiction, then short stories. 2-3 pages at most. Use a word limit cap. Jon will develop submission page for review before going live.

Literary Agent Mark Gottlieb Master Class; “Writing an Effective Hook” 3/12/23 1-3 pm – Katie

• How many author agents do we want per year? One every 6 months
• Create permanent pipeline to this agent or others? This agent is actively looking for manuscripts and the pipeline may be his openness to participants submitting a query
• Perhaps charge more for this type of master class or offer more of them because writers may be eager
• Are we limiting size? Other examples have 40 people attend. Ask him what class size he wants. Creates scarcity and value, more attention in class if not too large. Some classes are more presentations and not interactive, thus less reason for a limit.
• Do we have publication information on members now? Starting to get up author pages.

MSR

• Next issue about to come out
• Onboarding new staff members
• When opening manuscript review again, let Sam know so she can announce this
• New members are worldwide and bring diversity
• Workshop with Suzanne Guess from MSR; other editors are invited to do the same

Funding group – Jane

• Met in October
• Will meet again in 2023
• Dick will share letter used in previous snail mailings to determine if it’s an appropriate model.
• They’ve been considering some grant opportunities. Different types: development
• Choices will depend on BWW direction/mission and how it meets these opportunities.
• Having strategic goals will be important. We already have a strategic plan.

Funding ZoomPro licenses for workshop hosts – Sam

• Can be one fundraising objective.
• Renewal date coming up in February.
• Songwriting, published poets, master classes and paid classes, being done on one ZoomPro license by switching around, can use same license for more than one product
• We don’t have someone to reliably switch the licenses between the workshops, so need to decide soon how many licenses we need.
• Cost per paid license if done in advance $100/year; $150/year if added later
• We already get a discounted price (there are some free licenses if we order a certain number, but that’s off regular price)
• Sam will query workshop hosts to get an idea of number of requests by next meeting.

Number of workshops – Sam and others

• Romance workshop, per LT discussion at previous meetings about schedule and requirement for EventBrite, is withdrawing from BWW and will meet on their own.
• Skip wants to start new workshop so need to consider their need. 20 people said they want to learn more about becoming hosts, so can’t predict demand.
• Consider complexity, risks, and costs of growing BWW and the workshops. We have mission statement but what is the vision statement?
• Few workshops meet once/month: Montpelier (details of new hosts not yet worked out), Janet (has her own license) and Nancy, songwriting; so it’s easier to share one license among these
• Haiku workshop is scheduled to end in January but may do a different one or continue with Haiku once a month.
• Riki has left with her workshop; she was paid for her Zoom license so it can’t be reassigned.

Strategic plan – Sam

• Sam and Katie putting it in ClickUp for updating

Thank you to managing team including Sam – Dick

Adjourned: 8:08    Date for next LT meeting: Jan 8, 6 PM