1. Roll Call
Board Members Present:Gerard Adams, Kolene Allen, Tom Cary, Paul DeLeeuw, Elizabeth Listello, Georgia Monroe, and Tara Simmons
Board Members Absent: Danielle Cenci, Nathan Creswick
Others Present: Andrea Jacobson, Amy Neis, Cynthia Price
2. Reports from Committees
Marketing
Elizabeth Listello stated that the committee had a presence at the Democracy Expo. The committee is meeting in November to discuss outreach possibilities and plan to look at other co-ops and look at their outreach efforts.
Kolene Allen asked if we could try targeting trial members who never continued their membership after their trial ran out. Paul will get a report together so we can target those people easily to entice them to try us again.
Motion made by Elizabeth Listello to change the name of the Marketing Committee to the Public Relations Committee. Motion seconded. Motion carried.
Tom Cary made a motion to charge the Membership committee with the task of coming up with a plan to recruit those members who never signed up after their trial. Motion seconded. Motion carried.
Membership
Tara Simmons reported that the member potluck had 8 members in attendance. There were three types of hummus.
Tara announced that the Volunteer party is scheduled for Dec. 4 at 6:30 pm and to be held inside Media Rare. The party will be catered by Amy Sherman. She expects approximately 50 people to attend. A keg of local beer will be purchased. RSVPs will be required.
Tara stated that the handbook is still being worked on. They are focusing on getting more Producer info.
Jerry stated that he will get the second survey results sent out to the board and posted to the wiki this week.
Vision
Tom Cary reported that his committee has not met, and that they are wondering what they should be working on now that the new system is in place. Suggestions for them to work on were how to make the Co-op work more than once a month.
Cynthia Price asked if we could do another Survey to see how members are liking the new system. Tara suggested that the Membership Committee work on a member survey and the Product Committee work on a producer survey.
Product
Kolene reported on behalf of the Product committee that all licenses are now in. Jerry added that we need to cultivate more members. He also wants the committee to get applications approved ASAP. There is no need for committee meetings to get them approved.
Web
Paul reported that he met with Casey Lubbers. Paul is currently in the process of cleaning up the code so that others can work on it. Jerry reported that him and Paul have ideas to freshen up the front page. They will send out a couple designs and have the board choose one.
3.Old Business
No Old Business was discussed.
4.New Business
Check out issues: Check out has been our one bottleneck with the new system. Those issues are being worked on.
Snow Contingency Plan: Jerry expressed that we need to implement a snow contingency plan. Beth suggested that we should close when the Grand Rapids Public Schools close. In the case of a closing, we will wait until the next day.
Set date for annual meeting: It was proposed that the annual meeting will be in March – the Tuesday before the shopping cycle.
Georgia made a motion to move the annual meeting to March. Motion seconded. Motion carried.
Georgia then reminded the board that we will be voting at the next annual meeting on new board members. Elizabeth Listello announced that she will not be running again. At the January meeting we will need to announce how many openings there will be. More details on this process will be explained at the January meeting.
Redistribution of duties: Tara sighted concerns over her increasingly busy schedule and has decided to lessen her load. She agreed that she can still be the Volunteer Coordinator, Treasurer, and the Board Liaison of the Membership Committee. She will stop doing email help support, having any contact with Producers (that will go to Jerry), and web work like sending out mailers, adding or editing events to the calendar, or blogging about events (Paul sited that he has someone on his committee to fill that gap). Tara also stated that she will not be available for any pickups January-April. Tom Cary expressed his thanks to Tara for all her work.
5.Public Comments
Andrea Jacobson suggested that Jerry tell Producers that they do not need to label items with member names if those items are all exactly the same (a jug of cider, a 5 lb. bag of potatoes) rather than having the Producer dig through a box of product looking for the one designated to that member. He will add that to the email he is sending Producers this week. He is also going to let them know the trouble late producers caused this month, and let them know they need to be on time.
Cynthia Price reminded the board of the list serve that other similar Co-op's use. She suggested we ask ideas on the list. Jerry stated that we first need to get our new system stable before we make any more adjustments.
Georgia suggested we have a form for Producers to fill out for “add ons” to try to decrease the amount of checkout errors.
6.Next Meeting
The next meeting will be January 27, 2009 at 6:30. The annual meeting will be held March 3, 2009 at 6:30.
Meeting Adjourned at 8:04 pm