Storymakers Board of Directors Meeting Minutes, 3 August 2021
Present:
Chelsea Hale — Chair
Shelly Brown — Chair-Elect
Lindzee Armstrong — Secretary
Lori Parker — Finance Chair
Emily Huey — Whitney Awards President
Rebecca Carlson — Membership Chair
Wendy Jessen — Conference Co-Chair
Cindy Whitney — Communications Chair
Don Carey — SMIAH Conference Chair/At Large Representative
Paige Edwards — At Large Representative
Absent:
Cassie Cook — Conference Chair
1—OPENING
Chelsea opened the meeting and started the recording. She made a motion to
approve the minutes from last meeting. Lori made a motion and Paige seconded the
motion.
2—CHAIRMAN, Chelsea Hale
We’ve been working to try and get some things done lawyer-wise, which Shelly
will address.
3—CHAIRMAN ELECT, Shelly Brown
We need to talk about what the dues we collect for the guild are for. We don’t
currently have a really clear purpose for them. Obviously it can change. We need to
discuss how much of that we want to keep in reserve. This is probably more of a
Facebook discussion, so we can have time to think about that question.
Very closely linked to this, is what is the guild’s purpose? We went over the
mission statement and once we get everything together, we’ll need to have a full guild
vote on all of that stuff. Pretty soon we’ll send out a link for help on that, and have
people approve bylaws and all the stuff we’re changing so that we’re following proper
protocol.
Along with that, Shelly took a poll to say what Storymakers Guild is to you, what
does it do and what is it for? She wants the BOD to have access to the results with
confidentiality.
4—SECRETARY, Lindzee Armstrong
Lindzee had nothing to discuss.
5—FINANCE CHAIR, Lori Parker
We had the tax bill that was higher than anticipated as far as sales tax for the
conference. We ended up spending more in sales tax than we got from the bookstore.
The conference did just a little bit better than breaking even. Whitney Awards, it’s hard
for Finance to see because of how we do finances but it looks like they did a little bit
better than breaking even as well.
We are putting in bylaws stuff to make the financial end more safe with multiple
signers and stuff. Once we get things back from the lawyer, it’ll be posted so we can all
offer input on it.
6—WHITNEY CHAIR, Emily Huey
There is a rule in the Whitneys that if anything is changed in the wording, the
BOD needs to be notified. When they changed the one book per category per awards
year rule, there was some confusion about how co-authored books would be handled.
Originally, it said co-author books could only be one per category as well. It’s a very rare
instance, but there are some writing co-authored books with 2 different groups. They
didn’t want it to be that whoever gets in first gets it, so they made it so each distinct
group can have one book per category per award year. They also clarified that a shared
pen name is one group. Question asked, if you have two different pen names, if they
can both be in the category? No, it’s just if you have a shared pen name. That’s
because if the pen name is shared, as judges they have no way of looking at the book
and knowing which author really wrote it.
They’re trying to get more nominations earlier this year, so they’re going to do
some giveaways associated with that. They will be in the newsletter.
7—MEMBERSHIP CHAIR, Rebecca Carlson
Looking over the bylaws, Rebecca said the membership chair looks fine in
the bylaws.
8—CONFERENCE CHAIR, Cassie Cook
Cassie was not present. Wendy said they’ve asked a few people to be on the
committee so far.
9—COMMUNICATIONS CHAIR, Cindy Whitney
Cindy didn’t have anything to report. She’ll be sending another newsletter this
month, so email her if you’d like something included.
10—SMIAH CONFERENCE CHAIR/AT LARGE CHAIR, Don Carey
With the SMIAH Conference, they’re about 3 1⁄2 weeks away. It’s been a mixed
bag this year. The good news is they really wanted to increase the size of the
conference, and they’ve had some success with that. They wanted to diversify the mix
of the presenters and attendees, including the core local Storymakers group, people
coming in from remote (especially Utah), and then they’ve increased the number of local
community writers. They’ve done a lot of outreach to them and there’s a pretty good
group of them coming. The last group they wanted to reach out to was virtual attendees
and they have that as well. The mix is exactly what they wanted it to be, but the
numbers themselves are not what they wanted it to be.
SMIAH is a great conference with great classes. In 2022 is that it will probably
move to October.
We have the equipment we used this spring for Storymakers. The plan is to take
that to the next step and resolve some of the issues we had before next year’s
Storymakers as well.
The area isn’t moving in the right direction with covid, but SMIAH doesn’t think it’ll
lock down before the conference and thinks they’ll be fine.
11—AT LARGE CHAIRS, Paige Edwards
Jenny Moore will be teaching Storymakers University in September. She isn’t
sure if she wants to do short video clips. If she goes that direction they may need Don’s
help.
Jenny is really excited and will be teaching on historical research. Paige is still
looking for someone for October. She reached out to someone, and a few days ago
they got back to her and let her know they’re unavailable to do it.
12—MOTION TO ADJOURN
Chelsea asked for a motion to adjourn the meeting. Emily made a motion to adjourn the meeting. It was seconded.