Board meeting, December 9th, 2019

Board members present

• Michael Schultheiss (schultmc) (President)
• Stephen Frost (Snow-Man) (Vice President)
• Martin Zobel-Helas (zobel) (Treasurer)
• Forrest Fleming (fsf)
• Chris Lamb (lamby)
• Héctor Orón Martínez (zumbi)
• Andrew Tridgell (tridge)

Board members partially present

• None

Board members absent with regrets

• Luca Filipozzi (luca)
• Tim Potter (tpot) (Secretary)

Board members absent

• None

Board advisors present

• None

Registered guests present

• None

These are the minutes for the December 9th, 2019 SPI Board Meeting, held at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG.

President's Report

We had a successful treasury team sprint November 20-21, 2019 in NYC
followed by a productive board meeting November 22-23, 2019, also in
NYC. The treasury team was able to process the vast majority of the
outgoing payment backlog and the board is planning weekly meetings to
help stay on top of ticket backlog (both treasury and general board
tickets).

The board received the final audit report for 2018 from our accounting
firm and posted it on the treasurer section of the website. Our 990
(Federal return) and CHAR500 (New York State return) were also filed by
the deadline. We have reached out to the accounting firm to discuss the
feasibility of starting the 2019 audit earlier in the year.

The treasury team is working on opening accounts that will provide a
better rate of return than the practically 0% return we are currently
receiving. I met with a banker at Key Bank today and opened a new money
market account that has 100x the interest we previously were receiving
for the next six months. We are also working with Merrill Lynch to open
accounts with their wealth management service (money market and
certificates of deposit accounts).

The SPI board is extremely thankful for the work Martin Michlmayr has
done working with the auditor and streamlining our bookkeeping. SPI has
renewed his contract through the end of 2020.

Treasurer's report

We had a successful treasury team sprint during the face-to-face meeting
in New York. We are down to 2 outstanding approved reimbursements.

During the face-to-face meeting we had a conference call with
Martin Michlmayr, where board decided to extend the contract with Martin
for one more year.

Martin explained what needs to happen to move to accrual accounting for
2020 as well as his plans to move to the software beancount, which will
give us better reporting.

We started opening a new bank account with Merrill Lynch for a Money
Market account and certificates of deposits to get better interest
rates.

I am very thankful about the work that tbm is doing, esp. when I was
out-of-business the last two weeks.

Secretary's report

We had a successful face-to-face meeting in New York City in
November preceded by a bookkeeping sprint. Thank you to everyone who
attended. The minutes for this meeting are still in progress and
should be completed before the next meeting.

A note about Resolution 2019-11-22.tp.1 to rescind Board Advisors has
been posted to the spi-general list to solicit feedback from the
membership.

Vote on Minutes for Monday, 11th November 2019

Forrest Fleming	Yes
Stephen Frost	Yes
Chris Lamb	Abstain
Martin Zobel-Helas	Abstain
Michael Schultheiss	Yes
Andrew Tridgell	Abstain

Motion did not pass with vote of 3 yes, 0 no, 3 abstain. The vote was rescheduled until the next meeting to allow board members to review the minutes.

Resolution 2019-11-22.tp.1: Rescind board advisors

No vote was taken to allow further discussion to take place on the spi-general mailing list.

Any other business

Some minor discussions of work-in-progress were had.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned until Monday February 10th, 2020 at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org.

Appendix A: Current Board Membership

Last elected	Name	Role
July 2018	Michael Schultheiss	President
July 2018	Stephen Frost	Vice President
July 2019	Martin Zobel-Helas	Treasurer
July 2017	Timothy Potter	Secretary
July 2018	Luca Filipozzi
July 2019	Forrest Fleming
July 2019	Chris Lamb
July 2019	Héctor Orón Martínez
July 2017	Andrew Tridgell