Hello everyone!
This past weekend was the Board Retreat, wherein the incoming and outgoing board members for MNFurs sit down and hash out a long list of agenda topics surrounding the organization and the plans for the coming year. A lot of this planning revolves around how to maintain our legal status, reviewing operational documentation to ensure it stays up-to-date and relevant, and divvying important tasks to various board members. This is about 15 hours of work stretched over the course of two days.
I wanted to give you a very brief summary of some of the topics discussed.
Elected Officers
Firstly, the MNFurs fiscal year ends at the end of March, and the new term starts April 1st. There were three seats up in this current election.
Our outgoing directors are Snap, who has been our Treasurer for several years, and Gita, who is currently acting as our Vice President. Their hard work is incredibly appreciated, and they deserve a standing ovation for the work they’ve put into the organization, and will continue to contribute in other ways.
Officer designations are nominated and voted on by the board, and are comprised of those who have been elected onto the board by the community. The new officers, which will start April 1st, are as follows:
President: Talon
Vice President: Ollie/Alphawhitefang
Treasurer: JJ
Secretary: Kurt
Conchair: Rico
Board Member: Vulan
Finances
Secondly, some of you might remember from last year our candidness about our finances, and how important it is for donations to match our growth as an organization in order for us to remain solvent. In past years, we have been “in the red”, or running on a deficit. This year, we had a few members make *exceptionally *generous donations, however even outside of that, we made well above what we projected for donations and income, which allows us to have more financial safeguards. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for continuing to turn out for our organization. The costs of running events continues to go up every year, both due to the costs of inflation, as well as the growth of the organization, and continued and enthusiastic support allows us to keep doing what we’re doing.
We are hoping this trend continues into this next year! We want to continue being able to offer you all the events you love without having to cut out things that people are excited about due to costs. We are also working on more merch – if you’ve got ideas of things you’d like to see, we’d love to hear it!
Procedures and Policies
Finally, as always, we do look over our policies and procedures during the retreat. We are reviewing all of the MNFurs and related charters (including for Furry Migration and Midwinter Frolic) to identify language that may be outdated or need tweaking, while still staying in line with our legal responsibilities as a nonprofit. If at any time you have questions about our Code of Conduct, Bylaws, or our legal responsibilities as a nonprofit, we are happy to answer them!
Once again, thank you to all of you for your support for us and our community. We hope to continue providing that sense of community for you all and the other furries in our community, and are endless thankful that you’re here.
-Talon ♥
