April 16, 2023 Board Meeting Minutes

Michelle McCraw – VP of Programs
Tara Lynn Baisden – VP of Workshops
Cheryl Barton – Secretary
Katrina Marie – VP of Communications
Stephanie Derbas - Treasurer

Nicole is traveling. Katrina stated her only report is that the non-profit form has been submitted. She’s waiting for it to process.

○ PNC account has $54,168.44. Pay Pal has $142.00
○ She sent the email to the audit volunteers. The one to Emily could not be delivered. Secretary’s Report – Cheryl
○ Current membership sits at 345 members.
○ Cheryl cleaned up FB by removing member’s whose memberships have expired.
○ Do we survey those who didn’t renew to ask why?
○ Katrina noted that Melanie had a document from a previous survey that may be on the Google Drive.
○ Nicole will look into adding something automated to go out asking those who left if they are considering coming back. She stated it’s an involved process. She will look into it.

○ Since January 1, we have had 63 new or renewals added to the membership.
○ We have 365 members total as of today.
○ She removed expired memberships through the end of February only. There were issues with the last time I removed some memberships due to issues with the dashboard. I removed 7 people. She will do removals again in May giving people a chance to renew – giving them a little extra grace period to renew.
○ Have been monitoring the FB approvals. Some are looking to join the FB members-only section before joining. I sent back a message asking them to join CRW and then come back.

○ Stiletto contest. Closed entries on the 31st and moved into the judging phase. Believes they have sent out all the judging packets to all judges and those are due in May and June for unpublished and published divisions. We filled four of our 8 categories for the unpublished and 5 categories for the published. They filled a slot for every entry. We have selected the final round judges for the unpublished division. We have just enough influencer judges for the published division. We should be good to go.
○ Conference – Melanie is co-chairing the conference with Dayna Reidenouer They seem to have everything in order. It’s at the end of July 30th and 31st.
○ We do have an in-person retreat for around November 10th or so. We sent out a poll and Palm Springs was one of the top locations. She will look into having one there. Last year we had issues with non-refundable fees. She is still looking for a venue that would be refundable if we don’t fill it up along with a free space for writing. There will be no speaker for the retreat.

○ For workshops for the first quarter, brought in $1,630. We paid out $1300. She is concerned that we don’t make a lot of money with workshops and enrollment is low, except for the members only because there is no cost for those. We’ve been upside down on a few workshops lately.
○ 2nd quarter – we have 3 workshops coming up for members only. Also, 6 webinars coming up.
○ For 2024, we have enough workshops but low on business workshops. She won’t schedule anything else and look for business only type webinars. She will send other proposals to the conference team.
○ Katrina says workshops have been impacted by inflation like a lot of other things.

○ Twitter is changing their API which could impact scheduling posts in Twitter. She may need some help with posting. Cheryl offered to help with posting to Twitter.
○ She has a few posts to schedule for the Stiletto but she’s waiting on finalists. Donna has already sent her the graphics she needs.
○ She has workshop posts scheduled through the end of May, mid-June. They are ready to go. They are posting out every three days per workshop.
○ We are doing a roundtable in May – Michelle and Stephanie Scott are doing this. There are 3 people, Robin Covington, Brighton Walsh and Mariah Ankenman. This is on May 7th.
○ Katrina can create a graphic for the FB group so that people there can join.

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