Bridge Foundry - next board meeting?

[Sarah Allen]

Dear Board,

I apologize for falling off the map this summer.  I got caught up in travel and work and didn't manage to schedule the meetings I had committed to.  I'd like to ask if there's someone on the board who wants to be chair, so I can focus on being Program Director and not also coordinate the board.

Two quick questions:

- any quick feedback on process of including GoBridge?  (see below)

- anyone want to volunteer to chair the board?  duties: schedule & facilitate board meetings (every 2-3 months)

I have been devoting needed attention to operational matters, as well as including Bridge Foundry in most of my talks (per suggestion by Kins or Bev from the Outreach Committee).  Both Rachel Myers and I mentioned Bridge Foundry in our talks at Magma Conf in Mexico in June, where a full 1/3 of my "Power of Transparency" talk was about Bridge Foundry, including RailsBridge, ng-bride (which is still nescent) and MobileBridge.  

From that Bill Kennedy pulled together an organizing team that has two women on it and created GoBridge.  (starting to draft a process for  how to make a bridge) I think they qualify for the board now, and wanted to check in with folks if there is some stuff you want to talk about in advance of me inviting them to send a representative.

In other news, Michelle Glauser, from SF RailsBridge is interested in creating a new initiative to bring RailsBridge workshops to the Tenderloin providing coding workshops for unemployed people.  To that end, we've been researching whether we can partner with organizations that provide computer labs and other training.  I suggested that I would be willing to help raise funds as needed as part of Bridge Foundry -- as a pre-condition to that we need the Grant policy (on the draft agenda below).

I didn't follow-up with posting the advisory board bios and sending out the welcome / advice letter -- Isa volunteered to help with that, but we didn't manage to get together yet.  I hope to get that done in the coming week.

Draft Agenda:

- GoBridge

- operational goals: I think writing these down will help Bridge Foundry operations folk (Mary / Diana) create and maintain detailed operations / financial policies to support all the Bridges (and other future programs)

- grant policy: Diana, Mary & I are going to draft something so we can announce 

- supporting our code-of-conduct with training for organizers.  Bridget kicked this off and I've done some additional research on this (will send out more details in advance of our next meeting)

If other people want to chime in on what you or your Bridges have been up to, it would be great to hear it!

Sarah

[Sarah Mei]

RailsBridge has spent most of the last few months getting a handle on our finances (separating SF from 'general' and implementing a new expense reporting scheme). Having finished most of that, we're now starting to reach out to groups that have done/are doing RailsBridge workshops, so we have a better understanding of our landscape. Our goals there are to 1) get more input from groups doing workshops about how we can help and 2) give our chapters better guidance on fundraising, budgeting, etc. 

We've been working with a designer on a new logo & branding...that's progressing, but slower than we'd like. :)

We're starting a volunteer drive soon; we'd like to take advantage of end-of-year budgets by doing a crowdfunding campaign. We'll see if that actually shakes out - we're super early in the planning. 

Sarah

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[Sarah Allen]

Kins has volunteered as Chair.  In case someone else is interested, I've asked her to be acting Chair for the next board meeting.  If there are others who are interested, we can vote or create different leadership roles with separate responsibilities.   Just let me know.

Many thanks to Kins for stepping up so quickly!

Sarah