Meetings/Minutes/2021/01/12
So Make It AGM 12th Jan 2021.
Chair: Jeremy Bennett
Current trustees: Dave Rowntree, Ed Chaney, James Bruton, Chris Nash
Minutes: Michael Craddock
Agenda:
- Confirm trustees
- Accounts update 2019/20 (Ed)
- Members Area update (Dave)
- Any other business.
Minutes
Chair starts with welcome to the virtual AGM. Last AGM over a year and a half ago thanks to Covid-19. Introductions for Jeremy chairing and Michael taking minutes.
Chair asks if people are happy for the meeting to be recorded. Vote consensus said yes.
minutes of the previous AGM.
Previous agenda approved.
Confirming the trustees
Current trustees are listed. Asked if anyone has any issues to raise against the current trustees.
Unanimous approval.
Accounts update.
Handed over to ed to give a review of accounts.
Accounts have been submitted on time by a day or two. Ed has shown an abbreviated form of what was submitted to company’s house.
We made a small profit this year.
This shows a profit and loss report and equipment logged as part of this.
Some donated printers and other equipment have been logged in the accounts.
Started using pandle for managing the accounts and expenses.
We can use this to look back at our accounts for the last three years.
We have been going on an even keel for the past few years. Unsure as to why one year we made loads and the year after made a big loss. Possibly due to more expenses and due to not having a lot of accuracy in our accounting.
Rent rolling over in month is the cause of this.
Overall picture is we are cruising along fine for now.
We will show a large profit due to COVID-19 support and large equipment logged as assets.
We can claim allowances back on the grant to reduce the tax bill.
We should be starting to do tax returns going forward.
Questions?
Q1: Sundries in accounts line. Does it include the tuck shop? But payments are going through donations with other sundries?
A: We need to go through the accounts to work this out if we think it’s worth doing.
Q1: Donations is anything given in cash to the space so this should be kept in mind about these rows.
Q2: what are sales.
A: Anything gone through the card machine as goods and services.
Comment: Laser log to work out how much went from the laser.
This is a good set of accounts as far as management accounts are concerned.
We should have been ring fencing the laser money for use on the laser. We need to go back in the logs to work out and decide if it should be ring fenced or not.
Q3: Are we registered for VAT?
A: No. we do get charged Vat on rent, but we would have to charge VAT on the members to claim back.
VAT registering is probably not a win for us.
Q4: the grant we got. Is it the trustee’s views that it needs to be spent this year?
A: It does not need to be spent this year as profit or loss can be pushed forward. This is Ed’s understanding how this works.
We do not have access to the banking so Ed could not provide the balance currently of
1st dec when rent last paid. Balance as of then £11,700 and £2000 in savings untouched for 8 years
£13700ish with a £2-300 per month bleed rate.
This is an estimate.
7-8 thou to spend without worrying assuming that is wise.
Minimum payments for membership
Some people are in financial position to not be able to maintain membership.
Suggestion to decrease it to £5/month. Chair suggested to move this convo to AOB.
Chair thanks Ed.
Members area update
Dave: Chris, Ed, Mic on call with NottingHack about the new members area
State of play: Multiple old webservers hosting various thing. Old members area impossible to maintain.
Main site is WordPress hosted on the oldest machine Dave has seen in a long time. Needs to be rebuilt.
Created some new servers. Brought on latest WordPress. Turning attention after to members area.
NottingHack have a better maintained platform and it looks to be the best for us currently and to continue investigate it and adapting it to our needs.
We could employ the people from NottingHack to make the adaptations for us. This might be the ideal solution. So, it is ready to go post COVID-19 to help continue growing the membership and our web presence.
We cannot really do anything anymore with our current system. It's trashed.
It is explained how the system differs in ways to ours. Like approval and roles and how this differs to our membership and keyholder process. How onboarding works.
Some of this could be modified to what we do and other things might be a lot harder.
There is a lot of automation and they also have COVID-19 booking system for their space. The software has been shown to be well maintained.
More of the technical details and potential problems are discussed.
Chris brought up also potentially looking into Seltzer.
It sounds like putting money towards the solution does not sound like a bad idea.
Suggestion to talk to bracken to investigate the door integrations.
Lots of other spaces have tried to do this in the past but have hard forked and have heavily modified the codebase so maintainability could be a problem again.
Suggestion to pick a couple of systems and do a bit more of a deep dive on them to find the best solution for us. Lots of spaces end up just rolling their own as well to fit their operating model and governance.
Maybe we should build something from scratch with bare minimum features. Though we could run into the same issues we have now.
Chair brought an end of the conversation. Trustees to investigate some other solutions and bring it to the group.
Something important to note is that the trustees do not have the skills or the capacity to do the research, but the current working group/subcommittee (ITWeb) is going to continue this line of enquiry.
Sentiment is to continue with what we are doing and find the best solution for the space.
AOB
Treasurer. Dave currently the only one paying the bills.
Having a dedicated treasurer would be good. Jeremy said he could reach out to get some mentorship from a qualified accountant.
A point was made to make the accounts more visible.
Q: Does the treasurer need to be a trustee
A: not necessarily. But the trustees need to be the rubber stampers.
They just need to have good bookkeeping.
We need a good method to sort out expenses.
Maybe we need to think about having a small team to run the accounts.
Mic offered to join part of a treasury team.
Discussed some of the tasks needed to be done as part of the role. The new software makes it a lot easier.
Legally we do not need an accountant until you are making a lot of turnover.
Ben, Mic and Dave all willing to help.
Membership fees
What to do about the minimum fee and what to do about members who are having troubles especially when they cannot make it to the space anyway.
If everyone stopped the space would obviously stop. But maybe offering a grace period or a token donation in the meantime.
Q: Has there been any reduction in the past year?
A: Only processed the last financial year so far
Just to help work out the bleed rate.
Current subs are not covering the rent and bills.
It is not ideal but that is why we were given the money to help us survive during lockdown. We are hopeful to get more for this lockdown. That is money for us to survive but not to buy nice toys.
We could spend it 50/50. Could be good to keep and or attract new members.
The best thing it to reduce the minimum to 1 or 5 pounds for people who have been struggling.
A hardship fund could be set up where the space recognises a user’s hardship and would cover someone’s subs for 3 months. Make it easy for people to suspend so we do not have to re-recruit them back to the space.
Lots of people pay very varied amounts.
Try and inform more people who could afford to pay the guideline to how much the space costs to run. This would allow us to include those who can not afford as much to use the space.
It's agreed by a member that if you feel you cannot pay to contact the space and we can help them out. Making sure it's known if there is a difficulty that there are options for you. And at the same time saying if you do have broad shoulders, we could also use you help in this time.
Any other business?
Ed: been finding himself busier at work. At some point he knows he will need to step down probably at the end of April due to this fact. Just wanted everyone to know. Still going to be involved with the space but not in the trustee roll.
Probably need more trustees as we are a bit thin on the ground anyway.
James agreed that we need more trustees and indicated he was thinking about stepping down. We Need some new blood.
Some info about being a trustee was discussed.
Maybe we need to change our governance to match a system seeing as nothing seems to work well for us – (phrasing might be off here)
Is it worth transitioning to a non profit or charity to help with some of these issues?
Ed: charity too much of a headache and CIC could be doable. We are a non profit limited by guarantee. CIC looks better for funding potential. But do not know if it is worth it as there is no financial benefit to us. (chair, Ed)
https://www.gov.uk/set-up-a-social-enterprise
trustees have legal obligations as directors of the company.
Changing the governance modal, minimum payments, and members area might be good to change as one big chunk.
Chair: if someone want to be a trustee, what are the roles. If you think you are interested in it then talk to one of the current trustees and see if its something you are interested.
Minimum trustees are two. But we would like more and to have more structure. Possibly teams that report to individual trustees. Being fluid has not really allowed us to grow. The only thing holding us back really is a structure and a direction. We have achieved amazing things, but we could step it up a gear.
We could leverage our good financial position to grow the space. Buying new equipment, consulting an accountant or business advisor.
Finding interested parties has been a stumbling block. Last time was 1 out of 100 people emailed.
Maybe look at the 15 people on this call as a starting point for changing this and getting new trustees/sub committees. The existing trustees maybe need to poke people.
A blocker is personal liability due to directors.
Insurance does not protect from criminal liability. Something that the current trustees are trying to address. They need to make it more attractive by getting rid of some of these issues. But we need more trustees to do it.
There is an element of education as to what is involved in the responsibility of a director and the liability involved. Its important not to over scare people of what involved.
Common sense and you will be alright, and you are part of a team not just you.
Chair: Nothing else to note on this subject
Nice to hear from Chris about Farset Labs and what they have implemented and achieved. The community is what makes it.
Thanks to everyone for your contributions. any other business asked about. Nothing, meeting closed. Thanks was given again.