Access Ready Strategic Social Purpose Corporation Board of Directors meeting
Date: 06-24-2021
Time: 7 pm EST
Place: Meeting by Conference call? yes
List of attachments:
1. Minutes of 02-25-2021
2. Financial documents
3. Proposed expense and income budgets
4. Chair-CEO Annual review
Meeting called to order by Chair-CEO Doug Towne at: 7:00 PM EST.
In attendance
Elizabeth Campbell Yes,
Gust Dean Doulou Vice-Chair, yes,
Treasurer and CFO David Mickey Ellis No? Non-voting
John Medcalf Yes,
Secretary Corey Saur Yes, Non-voting
Mariano Tan Yes,
Chair-CEO Doug Towne yes, non-Voting
Donny Ward No,
Carol Westlake Yes,
* Information Agenda
* Stockholder meeting
The Chair request that the Board approve that this meeting also constitute the annual meeting of stockholders.
Motion by: Dean
Seconded by: Carol
Discussion:
Call the question,
Elizabeth Campbell Yes,
Gust Dean Doulou Vice-Chair, yes,
John Medcalf Yes,
Mariano Tan Yes,
Donny Ward Absent?
Carol Westlake Yes,
Motion Passed,
* Board Secretary report
Correspondence None
Minutes of 02-25-2021
Motion to accept minutes as presented or amended by: Carol
Seconded by: Mariano
Discussion:
Call the question,
Elizabeth Campbell Yes,
Gust Dean Doulou Vice-Chair, yes,
John Medcalf Yes,
Mariano Tan Yes,
Donny Ward Absent?
Carol Westlake Yes,
Motion Passed,
* Board Treasurer Report
Correspondence none
Accounting Report
David Ellis
See attached financial documents
Mickey was unable to attend because of a family issue. He has provided a written summary.
“You have the narrative and PDF details of Access Ready Strategics’ financial performance for the fiscal year to date, which is July 1, 2020, through April 30, 2021. Doug did a good job of developing budgets, but circumstances were such in the tail end of the COVID year that they changed rapidly and were of little use. Doug has made the insightful move to budget quarterly for the upcoming year, which I believe will serve us well.
Our revenues were budgeted at $ 202,500 for the 10-month period. Actual revenues came in at $ 174,710, or a shortfall of $ 27,790. VOTEC accounted for $ 164,160 of our revenue dollars, or 94%.
Our expenses for the same period were budgeted at $ 191,060. Actual expenses incurred were $ 171,598, so we were under budget by $ 19,462.
Net income originally budgeted was a surplus of $ 11,440, but with differences in income and expenses we came in at $ 3,112 in the black.”
Balances
ARS Checking $3086.70
ARS Savings $18501.03
ARI checking $14436.72
ARI savings $45149.99
ARI communications checking $6391.23
ARI credit card checking $879.60
Discussion:
* Chair/CEO report
Correspondence:
1. Our budgeted intentions of a year ago have not gone well. Like many other organizations our plans were totally disrupted by the pandemic.
Grants, Fund raising, advocacy, and other plans were totally stymied.
As Chair-CEO I take full responsibility for my failure to advance the Board’s mission and budget priorities.
Looking back, I believe I could have done better and made better choices knowing then what I know now about how the past year would play out.
The continuing chaos of what I see as a threefold pandemic and its aftermath will continue to affect us and everyone else.
The three-fold pandemic includes healthcare, political and social effects. We must find a way to navigate them all and try to take what strategic advantage we can find in each.
This is not meant to be an opportunistic or unfeeling statement, but rather a reflection of today’s reality. I hope our following recommendations reflect that reality.
2. We are challenging the state of Maryland on their intention where accessible check in at the polls is concerned.
We have been able to form a partnership with:
The Image Center for People with Disabilities of Baltimore
The National Association of the Deaf
The National Council on Independent Living and,
The national Federation of the Blind.
This extraordinary partnership has given our movement and organization wider legitimacy.
With the Board’s moral support and the financial support of VOTEC we have made it clear that the Maryland Community Partners are not going away on this issue.
3. We are seeking to stake out a clear position on new legislation related to digital accessibility. A white paper on the American Digital Accessibility Act has been put forward and with the Board’s support and the financial support of VOTEC and
hopefully others we will be recommending that we engage a Washington DC lobbyist to advance such legislation.
4. Our partnership with Passtime GPS has not moved forward because of issues related to the pandemic. They have had massive supply chain issues and been unable to invest the time or money in completing the product we had agreed on. We have agreed to revisit our potential partnership in Q-2 of 2022.
This had budget impacts on us as well as them.
5. As stated many of our budgeted intentions were not possible. This has put a fair amount of money in savings that we will spend as needed by reprogramming those funds with VOTEC’s approval. You will see some of that reprogramming in the proposed budgets.
Because we are still facing a wide range of uncertainties, we are proposing that we budget on a quarter-by-quarter basis going forward. This will give us a better idea of where we are as both income and expenses develop.
6. Having had the time to consider various fund-raising opportunities including the Grand Collections concept. We have come to the conclusion that at this time many of them require too much effort for too little return.
It is our recommendation that through Access Ready Strategic we concentrate on marketing our consulting, learning, sponsorship, business brokerage (development) and product development and marketing lines of revenue wherever possible.
We can widen our consulting services with the talent we have available and by reaching out to draw in new talent where necessary.
Access Ready Learning is building out and we can add new courses to our curriculums through new partnerships.
Through Access Ready Monitor, (our daily) Reporter, (our monthly) and People (our ongoing magazine) we can offer sponsorships (advertising) that supports the community and our efforts.
We have been developing a sponsorship rate sheet for various offerings with the input of our original sponsors which we believe will draw in new participants.
As a business brokerage and developer, we will take advantage of opportunities that come our way to put the right people and companies together that advance our mission and agenda.
From the product development and marketing perspective we will continue to seek opportunities such as the Passtime GPS tracking device when they are available.
7. We have with the Executive Management Committee’s approval moved our online presents to our own virtual private server (VPS). This has resolved several security issues for us that were looming.
We have also begun moving our websites to a new and more accessible platform. This became possible with the choice of a new Web Master James Foster of Right Click Computer Consultants.
From a management perspective we are extremely happy with this choice.
8. Our consulting contract with Devoted Health has gone well and as you know they have renewed it. We hope to build on that model in the coming year.
9. Our current contract with VOTEC expires at the end of this year and we have already begun discussions on how we might continue working together. I expect that there will be a new contract, but its extent is the substance of our discussions. We all know that the legal case in Maryland will most likely be a multi-year challenge. The attempt to pass the American Digital Accessibility Act or some version of it may also be a multi-year project.
10. Based on a concept brought to us by Mariano Tan our Chair of Global Strategies we are having discussions with Light House Works about their ability to manage the recruiting, training, placement and/or management of call center activities for accounts we bring them as a business broker. Besides the potential call center management company brought to us by Mariano two consulting or sponsorship clients have expressed interest in this capability.
We have now agreed on the framework for an agreement and are putting that on paper. I will of course inform the Board of the agreement and seek the Executive Management Committee’s approval before signing it. A draft contract has been sent to them for review. Once it returns with their inevitable changes, we will review it and share it with the Executive Management Committee.
11. Our partnership with Accessibility in The News as content provider and with eReleases as distribution provider has greatly widened our impact through Monitor and Reporter. This has given us the opportunity to launch Access Ready People as a standalone website.
This will offer sponsorship opportunities across a wide range of topics.
The goal is to offer news on subjects that show how both accessible and inaccessible technologies effect people. It will be an ever-changing site utilizing Monitor and Reporter articles as well as others which are specific to the People magazine site.
Access Ready People will launch in the coming months as a stand-alone website and accessreadystrategic.com will become more of a corporate identity site with accessreadyreporter.org and accessreadypeople.com moving off to be separate sites.
This strategy recommended by our Web Master will give us better exposure through Google and other search engines.
Because we have our own virtual private server there is no added cost for hosting additional websites like these.
We are also creating a accessreadysponsors.com site where all our sponsor pages will be housed. Again, this has to do with better Search engine optimization (SEO).
12. Looking at the Consulting, Learning, Sponsorship, Business Brokerage, and product development and marketing lines of revenue along with Monitor, Reporter and People. It is clear that ARS is becoming much more of an information source than anything else. This allows ARI to concentrate on its advocacy mission and ARS to invest in its social purpose mission.
Discussion:
* Other Officer Reports
Chair-CEO annual review Dean Doulou
Discussion:
The Chair-CEO expressed his appreciation for the Board and teams support over what was a difficult year.
Motion to accept all reports items by: Carol
Seconded by: Mariano
Discussion:
Call the Question,
Elizabeth Campbell Yes,
Gust Dean Doulou Vice-Chair, yes,
John Medcalf Yes,
Mariano Tan Yes,
Donny Ward Absent?
Carol Westlake Yes,
Motion Passed,
** Discussion Agenda
1. The Chair-CEO requests That the proposed ARS income and expense budgets for Q-3 of 2021 be approved. The Chair-CEO informs the ARS Board that the ARI has passed the proposed budgets and recommends that it do the same.
Motion by: Dean
Seconded by: Liz
Discussion:
The Chair-CEO clarified that this would be a living budget process that would require updates and changes to the quarterly expense and income budgets moving forward. Further those changes would be presented to the Executive Management Committee consisting of:
David Ellis CFO, Dean Doulou Vice-Chair, Donny Ward Chair of New Technology Market Development, and Mariano Tan Chair of Global Strategies.
Call the Question,
Elizabeth Campbell Yes,
Gust Dean Doulou Vice-Chair, yes,
John Medcalf Yes,
Mariano Tan Yes,
Donny Ward Absent?
Carol Westlake Yes,
Motion passed,
2. The Chair-CEO informs the ARS Board that the ARI Board has advised it that it should renew the management contract with The Oswegatchie Company (Doug Towne Consulting) for an additional year as currently written.
Motion by: Carol
Seconded by: John
Discussion:
Call the question,
Elizabeth Campbell Yes,
Gust Dean Doulou Vice-Chair, yes,
John Medcalf Yes,
Mariano Tan Yes,
Donny Ward Absent?
Carol Westlake Yes,
Motion passed,
3. The Chair-CEO requests that the Board elect the current slate of officers to serve an additional year in their positions.
Doug Towne Chair-CEO
Dean Doulou Vice-Chair
David Mickey Ellis Chief Financial Officer
Corey Saur Board and Corporate Secretary
Motion by: Mariano
Seconded by: John
Discussion:
Call the question,
Elizabeth Campbell Yes,
Gust Dean Doulou Vice-Chair, yes,
John Medcalf Yes,
Mariano Tan Yes,
Donny Ward Absent?
Carol Westlake Yes,
Motion passed,
** Old Business?
None
** New Business?
None
** General discussion
None
** Next meeting Date and time?
The fourth Thursday of October at 7 PM EST
Thursday October 28th, 2021, at 7 PM EST by conference call.
Discussion:
None
*** Adjournment
Motion to adjourn by: Dean
Seconded by: Mariano
Discussion:
Call the Question,
Motion was unanimous
Meeting was adjourned at: 7:26