Chicago Market Board Meeting
5/25/16
Beermiscuous
Present: Mike, Grant, Jen, Anthony, Emily, Karen, Tony, Malcolm, Linn, Dan, Heather, Lance, Mark
Absent: Kelly and Esther
No guests

Grant: Congratulations on the successful pop-up. The event netted 13 new Owners. Thanks to the great volunteers who helped make it happen.
Anthony: Be sure to use the Facebook invite tool to invite people to our events and raise awareness.

Grant: Remember to use Basecamp for most interactions and fewer person-to-person emails so we have a record of conversations.

Mike: Policy governance. Lance gave him documents on policy governance from Blue Hawk and Greg provided ones from other co-ops. We'd likely modify one of those documents to suit our needs. Mike will create a draft document and we'll start the conversation from there. Then, we'll decide if we want to bring it to a third party to look at it. People in the co-op community will expect us to have policy governance. And we want it completed by the time we hire a GM (though it will continue to be subject to revisions). 

Malcolm: Are there best practices for the frequency of revisions?
Lance: You can revise the "ends" as often as you like.

Karen: We should get a date on the calendar now if we'll be having a separate policy governance discussion.

Anthony: Is there another alternative to policy governance?
Mike: No formal alternatives. This is the only formal structure that exists.

Malcom: Moves we adopt policy governance. Dan seconds. Mark abstains. Vote passes with all others in favor.

Lance gave a recap of the NCB conferences he attended. He spoke with many people in the co-op grocery community and Chicago Market was a topic of discussion. Many asked if we're using the DC and there were no negative comments about Chicago Market.

Emily: We have great volunteers but we always need Board representatives at events -- especially from site. 

Anthony: Having Board members at the last pop-up contributed to lots of new Owners.
Grant: Also, the Board needs to be connected to people.

Emily: Our next events will be pop-up dinners at restaurants.

Grant raised the issue of talking to Owners about the site-selection process. Where and how do they have a voice?

Anthony: There are two issues ... transparency in the process and Owners actually voting on sites. 

Jen: We should solicit their feedback but not put it up to a vote. 

Anthony: We could send out targeted surveys on the site.

Jen: We could do programming around the site-selection process for the Owners meeting. We could do animated graphics, showing each prospective site and how they were narrowed down. 

Emily: We should hold a town hall about the site.

Karen: Where's the Owners' voice? It doesn't have to be a vote.

Tony: We should get information from other co-ops on how they've handled this

Lance: I believe it's OK to name the sites, but there are other ways for Owners to be involved -- volunteer, come to a Board meeting.

Anthony: There are various phases of people who join. This might help with recruitment, if we're upfront about the sites and the process. 

Linn: The idea and the process is more important than the site. Building community is important. 

Mike: I'm not sold that a meeting in six weeks is the best thing. We could do four different blog posts with the story of our process. My concern is about soliciting input at this point. The train has left the station. 

Tony: I'm concerned about spending resources planning an event that won't get us money or new Owners.

Anthony: Marketing will come up with two ideas. One will be an event, another a blog about the process.

Malcolm: We could switch focus to look inside the store more than geography.

The Board entered into Executive Session to discuss human resources and financial issues before adjourning.