Storymakers Board of Directors Meeting Minutes, 6 July 2021
Present:
Chelsea Hale — Chair
Shelly Brown — Chair-Elect
Lindzee Armstrong — Secretary
Lori Parker — Finance Chair
Rebecca Carlson — Membership Chair
Cassie Cook — Conference Chair
Wendy Jessen — Conference Co-Chair
Cindy Whitney — Communications Chair
Paige Edwards — At Large Representative
Absent:
Cassie Cook — Conference Chair
Don Carey — SMIAH Conference Chair/At Large Representative
Emily Huey — Whitney Awards President
1—OPENING
Chelsea welcomed everyone to the meeting and started the recording. Chelsea
made a motion to approve the minutes from last meeting and Shelly seconded.
2—CHAIRMAN, Chelsea Hale
We are going through a bunch of changes with Storymakers—the guild, the
conference, etc. There will be a lot of change and we need a lot of change. We are
really going to push this year to get nonprofit status. In order to do that, we have to be in
compliance with a few things. A vote is taken to approve money spent on lawyer. The
vote passes. Now we’re ready to present things and get feedback. Basically there will
be some restructuring between the Whitneys, the Conference, and the Guild. This is a
great chance for us to come together, and with that we can hopefully obtain our status
so we don’t have to pay so much in taxes in the future.
3—CHAIRMAN ELECT, Shelly Brown
In the process of changing, the IRS want to see that we’re a “new entity.” They
get suspicious when someone transfer things into a nonprofit and you’re making money
and we don’t want to get on their radar.
One of the things we’re going to have to do is change our name that’s on record
with the state and the federal government. Our old name was Storymakers Inc.
Obviously we won’t go back to LDStorymakers either. It is suggested that one way to
make it different is to do what we’ve been doing online already—Storymakers Authors
Guild. That’s a name we’ve never used, and right now we have a trademark issue with
two other companies with straight Storymakers.
It was asked if the guild will be the main organization, and the conference and
Whitneys will be under it. Yes. The conference will keep its name and we don’t have to
change the name of the conference or the Whitneys, but the legal entity that is taxed
has to have a legal name that is changed.
For tax purposes, we have to create a better structure, which is something the
IRS will look for. We need that structure and those really defined lines. We’re working
with a lawyer so we can do everything legally and hopefully it’ll work. In the past we’ve
been denied, but hopefully by working with a lawyer we’ll get rid of some of our previous
problems and it’ll be a more streamlined status.
They request a mission statement, which is part of incorporating.
We also need to combine our websites so people don’t have to look for us all
over the place. We should probably hire a professional to create one website that
carries all the information.
Shelly will take over Aug 15th
.
4—SECRETARY, Lindzee Armstrong
Lindzee had nothing to share and said she thinks the changes are great.
5—FINANCE CHAIR, Lori Parker
Someone tried in 2011 to become a nonprofit and it was turned down as a 3C,
which is the same type of nonprofit as the Red Cross or the church. We are now
applying for a 6C, which is what’s different. A 3C can accept donations that are tax
deductible. 6C is more general. We can accept donations, but they aren’t tax deductible.
Something to think about is we will need to be restructuring what the guild looks
like. We will need new bylaws, we will need new positions, etc. We don’t have to come
up with that all today, but we will need to justify those positions to the IRS. There may
be some overlap between the guild/conference/whitneys so there may be some
positions that are combined and some that are split further.
6—WHITNEY CHAIR, Emily Huey
Emily was not present.
7—MEMBERSHIP CHAIR, Rebecca Carlson
We will have to redesign our membership application process. Rebecca will be
available to work with the website person to say what we’ve done and what we need in
that terms.
Rebecca and Kara had a wonderful time working on the Storymentors program.
Everyone is now pair up—20 or 30 people. Rebecca will follow up with everyone with an
email in about a month.
We have two new members who just applied this month, and hopefully we will be
seeing them soon for a vote.
There is a reminder that with the new Storymakers, we want to make it so that
everyone pays dues in the month of January, which means there will be a lot of
prorating math for this coming January.
Maybe there’s a way to advertise the Storymentors program on the new website.
Consider ways maybe that could be implemented.
Membership requests an opening social at the conference for mentors/mentees.
Conference will look into that.
8—CONFERENCE CHAIR, Cassie Cook
Cassie was not present. Wendy said they will then be doing interviews for
conference committee and making sure people know what the commitment is
realistically, and seeing if people jive, are on board with the mission statements, etc.
Their main thing right now and getting the class proposals going. They also just got
rough drafts of the contract for the committee to sign as well as ones that will go to
special guests and faculty so they’re adhering to that.
The contracts are brand new—they haven’t had them in the past. It’s going to
show that this is a commitment. Obviously emergencies come up.
9—COMMUNICATIONS CHAIR, Cindy Whitney
Cindy said if it would make the transition easier, she’s willing to stay for as long
as it needs to be, and she agrees we need to hire someone professional for the website
design. She did the best she could, but isn’t a professional.
The new website security is working great. We keep getting notification emails
from the host that bots are trying to get in, which was the problem with the old website,
so the security is working.
10—SMIAH CONFERENCE CHAIR/AT LARGE CHAIR, Don Carey
Don was not present, but he put on the Facebook page that they are getting a lot
of new people signing up—not as many people as they hoped for overall, but the people
they are getting are new.
11—AT LARGE CHAIRS, Paige Edwards
Discussion of who would be in charge of Stormakers U since Paige leaves in the
fall. Paige agrees to set up the next few since it is one of the few things that we
currently offer the membership.
There is discussion as to what exactly the At-Large does as it doesn’t seem to be
the same as in the past.
12—MOTION TO ADJOURN
Chelsea made a motion to adjourn the meeting and Lori seconded it. Chelsea thanked everyone and the meeting was adjourned.