1. Attendance and Apologies

Attendance (MC): Bruce Diekman, Cyrus Irani, Jenny Kent, Tara Morelos, Andrew Whittingham

Attendance (Members): NONE

Apologies: NONE

2. Approval of Agenda

As it was unclear who would chair this meeting and an agenda had not been circulated, Andrew stepped into the role without notice.

There was agreement to use the list of agenda items Jenny emailed early on 5/2/21 with the order to reflect their urgency.  A Finance Report was added, as were discussions with the Real Estate agent, and outstanding Fair-Trading forms, and concerns about ethics raised by staff.

• Finance report.
• Shop rent negotiations.
• Email communication handling.
• Confluence instructions and information provision for new MC members.
• Understanding of the skills currently available in the MC members.
• Procedures for storage of records.
• Staffing - why is turnover high.
• AH business planning/ future business model.
• Chair/ co-chair positions.

3. Finance Report

Andrew had not yet seen the sales report for this week. Profit for Jan was $36k. January COGS at $36k was lower than the $44k for December.

4. Shop rent

ACTION: Andrew and Jenny will meet early next week to being work on a proposal for the agent to present to the landlord. Andrew will look at Jan figures to prepare an offer. We need a volunteer to prepare a market survey to form part of our presentation. Jenny and Bruce will find a volunteer to do the research. Will approach Jenny Cohen. Ai Leen Quah was also suggested by Bruce and Andrew.

ACTION: The proposal will be circulated prior to the next MC meeting.

We have not been given formal notice to vacate the premises. Our negotiations will include a turnover component.

ACTION: Andrew will organise for the rent to be paid to the end of Feb.

ACTION: Andrew will discuss this matter with Ran early next week and help her draft an email for distribution to staff.

5. Staffing

Staff duties/payment will be discussed at our next meeting when Lisa Kwok is able to attend.

ACTION Andrew will check Ran’s contracted hours of work. There was concern that Tom’s staffing spread sheet was out of date.

6. MC culture

There was discussion of the culture that had developed in the previous and current MC. Cyrus advised that Ran expressed her concern that the MC had stopped consulting with staff and that decisions had become top down. Tara said the values should be set and practised by the MC and then flow down through the whole organisation.

Tara suggested we prepare a statement of our values that could be read aloud before each meeting, as we do with the acknowledgement of country.

ACTION Tara and Cyrus will prepare and circulate a draft prior to our next meeting.

7. Email communication

Bruce will prepare a Google distribution list for the MC support group. It will include Lisa, Elliot, Eamonn, Lucas, Ai Leen and Sandra. It can be used with the MC distribution list when required.

Ran and Carina do not appear to have an email distribution or equivalent such as a WhatsApp group.

ACTION Cyrus will check that they have established a way to communicate to the team.

We will use the Shop email such as volunteer@alfalfahouse.org rather than personal emails.

ACTION We will upload documents to Confluence and link to them in our correspondence.

ACTION For incoming email correspondence sent to the MC google account.

• Jenny is not required to reply to emails.
• Andrew will reply to Finance related queries.
• Bruce will reply to requests for general background, Tara for volunteers, marketing, etc., Cyrus for work on new operating models.

The MC will be copied on these replies.

Information such as Treasurer’s reports will be sent out well before meeting so they can be read and discussed at the meeting.

8. MC induction process & governance

There was discussion about the MC induction process.

ACTION: Bruce will send out the MC Tool Kit to new MC members. Bruce suggested that reading minutes from previous AGMs Director’s Reports was good way to catch up with the co-op’s history.

ACTION Cyrus will investigate how to restrict access to documents stored in Confluence. Minutes with confidential information, but not headings, will be redacted before uploading to the public section in Confluence.

Confluence is full of incomplete projects. There was discussion about the need to ensure projects don’t get forgotten about.

ACTION Jenny will help ensure projects are monitored and completed.

ACTION Bruce and Jenny agreed to be co-chairs and will work out a process. Request from the media and similar stakeholders will be referred to the Marketing team.

9. Volunteers

Tara said she had the list of donors from the 2019 Crowdfunder and will contact them for assistance.

There was discussion about the need to increase our retention of volunteers, MC members and organisations/partners that we have a relationship with.

ACTION: Tara said that Ran does not have the time to do all aspects of volunteer management. She will discuss this with her.

10. Grants

Andrew said we needed to check the schedule of grants and suppliers such as councils and state government.

Andrew thought the breakeven point might be less than $85K but will need to do further analysis. We should look at how we can achieve grants. Jenny has contacts in Sydney Council that can help. She mentioned Jeremy Kelshaw who is Manager, Grants and Sponsorship.

11. Annual Subscription Fee (ASF)

The grace period for unpaid Annual Subscription Fees will end on 1 March. The normal discount of $5 per quarter will begin from 1 April.

We will review an increase in the ASF at the next AGM.

12. Any other business, reports

We will not proceed with the Wind-Up form C16 sent to Fair Trading.

ACTION: Cyrus will inform Fair Trading that we will not be proceeding.

ACTION: Andrew will organise payment for submitted forms. Cyrus will send copies.

ACTION: Andrew will take over Secretary role from Cyrus who was Acting Secretary.

ACTION: Former Secretary, Lauren Sims, needs to give us access to the Alfalfa House secretary email.  Cyrus will contact her.

ACTION: Bruce will give access to the AH google account to Andrew.

ACTION: Janet has a key. Cyrus will remind her to return it.