Event:2019/11/21 Delegates

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Omni Delegates' Meeting - 21 November 2019 7pm-9pm

for instructions on preparing and archiving these notes, please see the bottom

Agenda

  • Introductions [15 minutes]
    • Meeting Roles
    • Delegates Count
    • Access Check-in
  • Check-ins, Updates & Report-Backs [30 minutes]
    • Brief Announcements
    • Working Groups
    • Member Collectives
    • Conflicts, Mediation & Safe Space
  • Proposals & Discussions

Introductions

Introduce yourself: Name; Preferred Pronoun; Affiliation; any brief announcements; say whether you're a delegate; let us know about any access needs you have†

  • WHY DO WE ASK PRONOUNS? To make space for people who are trans, nonbinary, gender noncomforming or otherwise vulnerable to being misgendered. It's not an invitation to make jokes or trivialize the idea of pronouns. If you are fine with the gender and pronouns society generally assigns to you, please just say what they are without fanfare or embellishment. Conversely, please don't pressure anybody to give their pronouns, as that can harm trans people who are closeted or questioning. The point is to prompt and normalize asking, but not to mandate or enforce. Thank you! <3 Yar

Access Check In

Is everybody able to participate fully in this meeting? Do people have unmet needs or concerns?

Meeting Roles

  • Facilitator/s: Mary Anne
  • Explanation of hand signals: "deaf applause", "raised hand", "point of process", "direct response"(wildcard), etc.
  • Stacktaker:
  • Timekeeper:
  • Notetaker/s: Jenny
  • Vibe Reader:
  • Who will out next meeting's agenda beforehand:
  • Next meeting's facilitator(s):

Delegates

  • CCL: Ken
  • CSC: Mary Anne
  • FNB: Phil
  • FYE: AB
  • GWS: N/A
  • LL: Dennis
  • Phat Beets: Mylan
  • Sudo: Jenny
  • Quorum: 7/8 YES

Brief Announcements

Working Group Report-Backs

Building & permits

Commons

Finance & Fundraising

Member Collective Updates

What is going on with your collective? What are you working on? What have you accomplished? Any events coming up? Any difficulties you are encountering that you need help with?

CCL

CSC

FNB

FYE

GWS

..notetaker arrives...

LL

  • Had a greatly-successfull showing of The Commons film last week. Several Omninoms were there including Jenny, AB and Gerald. Brouht in $205 and agreed to split with Omni.
  • Had an excellent workshop on citizen journalism on Sunday

Phat Beets

Sudo

Conflicts, Mediation & Safe Space

  • Updates for any ongoing issues
  • Has anybody been asked to leave? asked to leave


Statement from Delegates to the Village:

Dear comrades,

There has been a great deal of effort put into cleaning and organizing the basement over the past couple of weeks. This has been accompanied by an uptick of events held in the basement and ongoing plans for renovating the kitchen. There is also growing concern about the Village storage area, at risk of rodent infestations, mildew and more. Several folks from the various collectives are willing to help sort, organize, and relocate the donation area, if Village is amenable to such an offer.

Our requests:

  • All donations must be stored in rat-proofed bins
  • With the assistance of Omni volunteers, move storage area to raised platform, north end
  • Maintain consistent weekly schedule of distributing and organizing donations


Proposals

Omni Event Sponsorship

  • via Jenny on 10/20

Problem: Our property tax exemption annual application requires us to provide official documentation of any given rental event’s nonprofit / fiscal sponsorship documentation so as to establish the nonprofit nature of the event booked. Events that are unable to provide such documentation or don’t fall into the proper nonprofit-y category risk putting the entire space they utilize at risk of taxation.

Potential Solution: One way to support events at Omni that are not under official entity status would be to support them as Omni Commons, the nonprofit - writing this into our individual contracts with organizers. What follows is some basic criteria to enable and empower Omni’s Commons Working Group to quickly assess and consense to sponsor certain kinds of events that are already in line with Omni’s stated mission, vision and values.

Proposal: The Board of the Omni Commons supports the Omni’s Commons Working Group in deciding which event requests are aligned with Omni’s mission and values and thus officially endorsed by Omni Commons as a sponsored event.

What kinds of events?

  • Grassroots organizations or put on by individuals - no explicit political candidate support;
  • NOTAFLOF (No One Turned Away For Lack Of Funds) / sliding scale admission;

One of these:

  • Furthering free education and co-learning;
  • Supporting educational and political endeavors;
  • Supporting creative and artistic projects.
  • Align with our Mission and Values.

Endorsers:

  • Jenny
  • Roberto
  • Robb

Reply from Jesse on 10/30:

"Dear All:

I have read the Proposal and Robb's statement of the issue. It might be that it would be helpful to have a brief phone call to allow some back and forth, but here's an email response first:

1. Omni can fiscally sponsor particular activities that fall within the non-profit's charitable activities.

2. The board of directors normally approves fiscal sponsorship and the board is responsible for making sure activities are charitable.

3. The board can delegate that task to the Commons Working Group. (See Corp. Code Section 5210, pasted below, which provides in relevant part "The board may delegate the management of the activities of the corporation to any person or persons, management company, or committee however composed, provided that the activities and affairs of the corporation shall be managed and all corporate powers shall be exercised under the ultimate direction of the board.")

4. I could help come up with appropriate paperwork or review paperwork you create. My suggestion would be that instead of having a typical rental contract, you would instead have a fiscal sponsorship agreement that would include any terms found in the rental contract.

There should also be a board meeting at which the board grants the Commons Working Group authority, with some method for the board to review what is going on.

5. There are two ways of doing a fiscal sponsorship:

i. PROJECT - as a project of Omni, so that a group or would suggest an event, and Omni would on paper operate the event as an Omni event run by the group or person sponsoring the event. The event sponsor would collect funds which would be Omni funds. The agreement could provide for payment / use of some portion of the funds directly for particular charitable uses. (There could also be expense reimbursement or even reasonable payment for services, but if there are payments for services things get more complex.)

On paper, this would show Omni having income and expenses for its own operations. The income generally is going to be exempt function income that is helpful for the public support text. The accounting is potentially extra work to the extent that there might be a lot of expenses you don't have now on particular charitable projects. It would make more sense to use this for events with less complex income sources such as donations from participants or door fees and less complex expenses.

ii. RE-GRANT - the agreement could provide that the event group or sponsor would put on the event, money would be donated (or paid*?) to Omni, and then Omni would provide a grant (less agreed expenses) to the group or individual sponsor for particular charitable purposes. The event sponsor would need to document that they used the grant funds correctly and Omni would need to keep track of it either with a short grant report or receipts, etc. Typically a re-grant agreement permits the sponsor to ask for the funds back if documentation is not provided.

  • Regarding the source of income being a payment, if the payment is for renting the entire room from a single source vs. a donation or donations or door fees from participants, the situation is confusing. The income is rent and having the fiscal sponsorship paperwork may not change that dynamic -- I want to think about this more with specific examples. For instance, if the anarchist book fair or a zine fest pays rent for the room that they have collected from tables and the zine fest isn't tax exempt, you would need paperwork to clarify the situation.

I think you could have 2 forms and use one type where that works better, and the other type where that works better.

For instance, if you have an established non-exempt group with its own bank account and its own operations, then maybe a re-grant makes more sense. 

If a person is doing a 1-off educational or artistic event and they want to raise money for something -- tents for homeless encampments or art supplies for kids or whatever -- then that could be a Project based agreement.

6. Either way, there needs to be a higher level of paperwork than you have with a rental contract. Also either way, this will be better for Omni's form 990 and property taxes.

Let me know if I missed answering your question or if you want to discuss this further.

take care, jesse


5210. 

 Each corporation shall have a board of directors. Subject to the provisions of this part and any limitations in the articles or bylaws relating to action required to be approved by the members (Section 5034), or by a majority of all members (Section 5033), the activities and affairs of a corporation shall be conducted and all corporate powers shall be exercised by or under the direction of the board. The board may delegate the management of the activities of the corporation to any person or persons, management company, or committee however composed, provided that the activities and affairs of the corporation shall be managed and all corporate powers shall be exercised under the ultimate direction of the board.

(Amended by Stats. 1996, Ch. 589, Sec. 4. Effective January 1, 1997.)"


Discussion

  • Can we add all delegates to legal list?
    • Consensus
  • Phil: As expressed by Joe at last meeting, concern over event not actually being nonprofit - screening process should occur to ensure it's properly in line
    • Mary Ann: Assume Commons WG has a kind of screening process
      • Jenny: Yep...
  • Jenny: Property tax office actually recommended putting it into our contract for groups that are nonexempt

Action Items

  • Jenny send Jesse email to consensus (along with full proposal)

Last Meeting Notes

https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Event:2019/11/07_Delegates

End of Meeting

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