Minutes of Board Meeting of July 9, 2003

Location: IRC server webmaster.ca.us.webchat.org, channel #asfar
Time: 9:00 pm eastern time

Board Members Present: Winston Featherly-Bean, Jacob Kafka, David Schneider-Joseph, Oliver Traldi, Susan Wishnetsky

Members Present: Woty F.

Visitors Present: James H., Michael S., Tom S.

The meeting was called to order at 9:19 pm eastern time.

Approval of minutes
In accordance with the rule change approved at the last meeting, the minutes of the June 11, 2003 meeting had been automatically approved three days after they were sent to the board, since there was no objection to their wording. This agenda item will not appear in future minutes.

Reports of Officers

The President, David Schneider-Joseph, received questions via e-mail from someone writing a story on lowering the voting age on the youth rights movement, and will respond. He also heard from a former NYRA member interested in forming an ASFAR chapter in Washington DC. He planned to leave for the International Democratic Education Conference around the 16th.

The Vice-President, Oliver Traldi, had no official report.

The Secretary, Susan Wishnetsky, reported that she was pretty well caught up on processing new members, and had also contacted all of those who said they wanted snail mail but whose form arrived without a full address. She also reported that she'd sent the minutes from the last meeting from a public library computer while travelling.

The Treasurer, David Schneider-Joseph, reported the sale of two books and a bill of $12.95 for a month of YRFire hosting. The PayPal account contains $178.20. Susan Wishnetsky added that she had deposited a $2 money order to the bank account, which had a previous balance of $586.47.

The Webmaster, David Schneider-Joseph, reported 19,335 pageviews in the month of June. He had done no further work on the membership database.

The Recruiting Officer, Winston Featherly-Bean, reported 19 new applications for membership since the last meeting, 13 more than the number reported at the previous meeting. He is working on a youth enfranchisement video to be posted on a teen-oriented web site. Although this attempt may turn out to be crude, and some clips may be unusable, he plans to continue to work on video production as a recruitment strategy in the future. Susan Wishnetsky commented that a few membership applications had to be rejected due to incomplete information or other reasons.

Reports of Committees:

For the Zine Committee, Susan Wishnetsky reported that all issues of Youth Truth were sent out, and that the publication was temporarily on hiatus. David Schneider-Joseph said that he planned to work on the online version during the coming weekend. Susan Wishnetsky noted that in the past she had added anyone who sent a donation to PayPal to the subscriber list, but since she was not the treasurer, she no longer received that information. David Schneider-Joseph said he would notify her of any donors.

For the Demonstrations committee, Oliver Traldi proposed a meeting date of July 16. After some discussion, the date of Friday July 25 was agreed upon.

Old Business

T-Shirts: Winston Featherly-Bean reported no progress on a t-shirt design. Michael Barker, who had also intended to work on a t-shirt design, was not present.

Qualifications of Directors: Woty F. reported that she had investigated the qualifications required of non-profit directors in the state of Missouri and concluded that they were not required to be over the age of 18, according to the law posted at <http://www.moga.state.mo.us/STATUTES/C355.HTM>. Winston Featherly-Bean reported that he had consulted with an attorney who had agreed that there was no such requirement. There was some discussion of whether any motion or resolution needed to be made by the board on this issue; David Schneider-Joseph and Woty F. felt that a resolution would provide a statement of the board's decision, for the record. Susan Wishnetsky moved to resolve that the board make no change to ASFAR's bylaws with regard to the qualifications, titles, or voting rights of its directors, as it was the opinion of the board that ASFAR was under no legal obligation to do so. The resolution was seconded and passed 5-0.

Non-Disclosure of Confidential Information: After some discussion of wording, Susan Wishnetsky moved that a section be added to ASFAR's bylaws, to follow the current section 30, stating that any officer who is granted access to ASFAR's membership information or other confidential date in the course of his or her duties is prohibited from disclosing that data to anyone not authorised to receive it. The motion was seconded and passed 3-0.

New Business

Board Vacancy: David Schneider-Joseph pointed out that according to ASFAR's bylaws, Justin Mallone's position was automatically vacated since he had not attended the past four board meetings. After some discussion of possible replacements, the issue was tabled until the next meeting.

The next meeting was scheduled for August 13, 2003 at 9 pm eastern time.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:50 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Susan Wishnetsky
ASFAR Secretary