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Meeting Minutes Mar 29th 2023

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SMTX Chess Club, Inc.
Meeting Minutes
March 29th, 2023 at 6:00 PM
At the San Marcos Public Library

Type of Meeting

1st Annual Board Of Directors Meeting 2023

Meeting Facilitator

Jeremy Lovelace – President, Chairman of the Board

Invitees

    • Mateo Garcia – Vice President
    • Jack Parker – Secretary
    • Adam Landry – Treasurer
    • Ben Austin – Tournament Committee Head/Chess Coach
    • Club Members

I. Call to order

    1. Jeremy Lovelace calls meeting to order at 6:00 pm March 29th, 2023

II. Roll call – ALL PRESENT

      1. Jeremy Lovelace – present
      2. Mateo Garcia – present
      3. Jack Parker – not present (arrived at 6:15)
      4. Adam Landry – present
      5. Ben Austin – present
      6. ~ 28 club members present

III. Approval of minutes from last meeting

    1. Jeremy Lovelace motions to approve previous meeting minutes
    2. Mateo Garcia seconds
    3. All in favor – motion passes

IV. Reports

    1. Treasurer’s Report (see Exhibit A)
      1. Incoming funds have surpassed outgoing funds.
      2. Already ⅔ of the way to the annual donation goal.
      3. Some budget items can be restructured
    2. Vice-President’s Report (see Exhibit B)
      1. Lots of new data with the website membership and new tournament signup form

V. Old Business

    1. Community Outreach Updates
      1. Crockett Elementary Chess Program
        1. Crockett Elementary Chess Program is now successfully running.
        2. USCF approved grant application for 8 chess sets for Crockett Elementary and 16 USCF memberships for members 18 and under.
    2. System for tracking membership data
      1. Membership registration data now available.
    3. Tournament registration collecting city of residence
      1. This is now implemented and provided a lot of good data for the Spring 2023 tournament
    4.  

V. New business

A. Takeaways from the 2023 North Street Spring Rapid

      1. What was good, neutral, bad
        1. Number of players – good amount of players and could support more
        2. Prizes – prize amounts were decent and everyone seemed happy at the awards ceremony
        3. Organization – Printer issue caused a 30 minute delay. Backup laptop and printer needed. Another snafu causing some delay was one person was registered in the wrong section and it wasn’t caught until after pairings. For multi-section tournaments the section should be verified during check-in. Ran very smoothly after initial issues/
        4. Amount and type of snacks – Almost a perfect amount of snacks. Could have used a little more water. Water and snacks cost about $1.50 per player.
        5. Number of volunteers – More volunteers needed for setup/takedown (maybe 2-3 more). More volunteers needed for noise monitoring (maybe 1-2).
        6. Promotional materials on site – QR codes to website and more QR codes around the tournament hall for donations
        7. Announcements information – Went well
        8. Sponsor materials and recognition – Went well
        9. Thoughts on the bigger trophies – Mixed feelings. Some people thought bigger trophies could be more of an annoyance for the winner than a plus. If sponsors can’t absorb the extra cost of the bigger trophies then the club should not.
        10. Thoughts on doing fun stuff like the giant checks – The giant checks were fun and we should come up with more stuff to keep things fun and set our tournaments apart. Nobody took the giant check home so we should create dry erase versions for the next tournament.
      2. How did more than one section affect the above topics – Multiple sections impacted the prize pool, expenses and logistics considerably and needs to be considered for future tournaments.

B. Past Tournament Review

      1. Vice-President review (also detailed in Vice-Presidents report in Exhibit B)
        1. Surplus of snacks
        2. More volunteers needed to enforce tournament rules
        3. Volunteer needed to photograph/video tournaments
        4. More volunteers needed for setup/takedown
        5. Clearer announcement needed for each tournament round start

C. Future Tournament Review

      1. Date/time – June 2nd and 3rd
      2. Time controls – G/60;+10 and G/90;+30
      3. Max entries – Need to test capacity at library but mostly likely 100-150
      4. Location – San Marcos Public Library – big meeting room
      5. Tournament organizing duties
        1. Need to form a full tournament committee?
          1. Ben Austin is currently the Tournament Committee chair and will work with the Vice President (Mateo Garcia) on adding more members to the tournament committee.
        2. Project management system
          1. Created a free ClickUp account for all project management and task management.

D. Membership

      1. Women/Girls membership is very low. There are currently 6 women/girl members. Two are moving to another state and one hasn’t been in over 4 months.
        1.  Women officer(s)
        2. Come up with outreach ideas to reach more women/girls and get them into the club
        3. Make sure we have a clear code of conduct in writing
        4. Create a system for reporting any violations of the code of conduct
      2. How to get more people to sign up for “official” membership on the website
        1. Sign with QR code linking to signup form every club meetup; raffle; proactively ask people to sign up at meetups
      3. Membership growth considerations
        1. Room space at the library – can probably support 50-70 people maximum
        2. Amount of equipment needed –  good on equipment
        3. Maintaining club quality/friendliness/atmosphere/etc – need to be proactive, code of conduct, violation reporting system
        4. Snack purchase increase/increased costs – need to revise snack budget because of recent growth
        5. Noise levels – not bad
        6. Monthly tournaments are longer/harder – workable
        7. Welcoming/teaching people new to chess – need to be proactive; possibly create beginner activities on certain days
      4. Special member recognitions
        1. How often? Monthly
        2. How to recognize them/announce them? Newsletter, sign at club, announcement at the club
        3. Latest choice – Luke and Leilani Cleven
      5. Advertising
        1. Brief mention of advertising channels now free with chess.com affiliate program. We get a free Meetup account that can be used to reach more people.

F. Budget

      1. Possible budget adjustments needed – The Treasurer (Adam Landry) and the President (Jeremy Lovelace) will meet over next 2 weeks and create a revised budget for board approval that factors in increased snack expenses, increased tournament expenses, liability insurance costs, background checks, and reduces the budget for less needed items.
        1. Tournament budget adjustment based on VI.A.iii?
        2. Club budget adjustment based on need for liability insurance?
        3. Any other budget expenses based on the Treasurer’s report?
      2. Setup a RBFCU savings account to put all budgeted charity funds in and all raining day funds. Savings account should have the President (Jeremy Lovelace) and Treasurer (Adam Landry) on the account as signers
        1. Jack Parker makes motion to approve creation of savings account
        2. Mateo Garcia seconds
        3. All in favor, motion passes

E. Fundraising

      1. Yearly goal on pace? Considerably ahead of pace thanks in part to $1,000 anonymous donation
      2. Fundraising ideas – will create an idea whiteboard for these types of ideas. Consider creating fundraising committee as needed
      3. Rated tournament sponsors and fundraising ideas – will create an idea whiteboard for these types of ideas along with expanding the tournament committee
      4. Need to form a fundraising committee? – will wait a little longer
      5. Exploring grants – The library is starting a program for finding grants. There is also a member (Ross McEwen) whose wife has a lot of experience with grant writing and they have offered to help.

F. Club Activities/Tools/Learning

      1. Any new ideas? – Will create a whiteboard for this
      2. Brief mention of learning tools now free with chess.com affiliate program – we get a free Chessable pro account with our affiliate status that can be used for learning and teaching.
      3. Classes beta trial before club meetup will be started soon

G. Community Outreach

      1. Time frame for next outreach initiative
        1. Revisit next quarter
      2. Ideas
        1. Another SMCISD School – need to solidify plans for transition to school staff at Crockett before this can be done (unless we can find school staff willing to start with our guidance at another school).
        2. Senior center monthly chess – no responses from any senior centers in town to our outreach
        3. Jail/prison chess – Hays County Judge’s office was not as much help with this as we had hoped. The Hays County Sheriff’s office has never replied to any of our communications requesting a meeting. Putting this initiative on hold for the moment but will continue to think of ways to get a meeting with county officials.
        4. Local youth outreach chess – will revisit next meeting
        5. Special event for charity
          1. simul; blind simul. Possibly Jon Crummiler, Brandon Moore
      3. Scholastic tournaments?
        1. National Master Jesse James wants to do a Summer scholastic tournament together
        2. We would need to find a venue and help only. Everything else will be supplied by Jesse James (prizes, trophies, etc)
      4. Plan for migrating Crockett Chess Club to the school staff – Jeremy Lovelace will reach out and have a conversation with the principal of Crockett, Ms. Holmes.
        1. Time frame – unknown at this time
        2. Who will take over – unknown at this time

H. Organizational Structure

      1. Is the current structure working for everyone?
        1. No changes made to organizational structure at this time.
        2. Officer duties
          1. Everyone fulfilling their postion’s duties? Yes. The Vice-President mentioned he has been very busy and had issues keeping up with his duties on the tournament side but that should change soon.
          2. Everyone still happy with their current position? Yes
      2. Do we need new positions or just committees (or neither)? 
        1. If yes, what new positions or committees? Expand tournament committee 
          1. Something related to tournaments?
            1. Ben Austin is currently the Tournament Committee chair and will work with the Vice President (Mateo Garcia) on adding more members to the tournament committee.
          2. Something for women/girls (and general) membership growth?
            1. Women/girls only event
        2. Who would fill the new position(s)?’
          1. Jeremy Lovelace motions to approve creation of a new position to direct tournaments. Ben Austin will be appointed to this position in the interim until elections are held at the annual member meeting.
          2. Jack Parker seconds
          3. All in favor, motion passes
      3. Do we need to make any amendments to the bylaws?
        1. No amendments to the bylaws made at this time

H. Set date, time, and location of next board meeting

      1. Wednesday, June 7th at 5:30pm at the San Marcos Public Library

VI. Open Floor

A. No open topics

    1.  

VII. Adjournment

    1. Jeremy Lovelace makes motion to adjourn
    2. Ben Austin seconds
    3. All in favor – Motion passed
    4. Meeting adjourned at 7:15 pm March 29th, 2023

Signatures

President Signature

_________________________

Jeremy Lovelace

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