Food Lobby Co-op Meeting 5/3/09
Present: Hilary, Jocelyn (facilitator), Sarah, Randy, Nichole, Ron, Jessica H., Dave, Lara, Lindsey, Ann (notes), Meredith, Jessica C.
1. Minutes from last month approved.
2. Updates
- Bulk room:
- approved to have room rent-free through end of December
- have debit card in place - main problem: having problems finding people to fill shifts - continuing to get investments, so we can continue to get new products - getting stuff at cost from Melba, which is awesome!- Membership
- average a new member or household each week - people seem to be disappearing at an equal rate - orders for produce stay about the same each week - need to make sure everyone gets plugged in quickly - some new members would like to see some kind of orientation- maybe could have an orientation once a month on a Sunday during food distribution, would be cool to have new people be able to sign up for their workshift at that time
- Ben is current workshift coordinator, sometimes gets busy and doesn’t respond in a timely manner. His responsibilities include making sure new members get signed up.- Ann is down to help slot people into workshifts and start up the orientation process, will need someone to take over.
- how are new workshifts being generated? How frequently are workshifts added and taken away? Jocelyn went through the list with Ben last month.
- membership in general could use more discussion at a later date, possibly at the retreat
Proposal: Ann will responds immediately when new members turn in their
sheets. She will start setting up monthly new-member orientations.
She will also try to catch up on the current backlog of new members who still don’t have a shift. *Consensus!
- Finance
- Jocelyn is sick of doing the money collection. - Randy is considering helping out again. - Anyone else who is interested in helping out should let Jocelyn know.- Might help to have a harder deadline (say Wednesday), such that people can’t turn in the money late.
- The more money we receive per week, the better variety we get from the farmer. - Jocelyn will work with Randy to transition the responsibility.- Survey
- have 22 responses so far- Lindsey will tabulate graphs and write-up a report, will send it to the co-op listserv
- methods of outreach to let people know about the survey: through listserve, to everyone who ordered last week
- people who have left didn’t get necessarily get the invitation to fill out the feedback, have an old list with emails that we could also send to
- people who left might not want to take the time to answer the survey
- on the other hand, we need former members’ feedback to figure out what is working and what isn’t for folks
- Lindsey has started to call people who have yet to respond
- we could send out an email on the listserve with the subject of have you left the co-op asking for feedback on why they left
- do we have a “due date” for the survey? Maybe a
- Lindsey will put a question in the survey a chance to say why they left
Proposal: Make sure a link to the survey goes out to members on the old database. Lindsey will add a question that asks why folks left the co-op. He will also send out an email specifically geared towards members who have left. *Consensus!
3. Retreat Planning
- Ron put together a draft agenda, tried to send it out for feedback for people who volunteered to look it over, but many of them didn’t get it – oops!
- goals of the retreat: 1) formalizing our decision-making process 2) determine the future of the co-op
- idea for the retreat came up a few months ago
- June 6th or July 11th are the two most popular dates based on the folks who have taken the survey thus far
- agenda (broad outline): welcome, ice-breaker, overview of membership survey, formalizing decision making – talk about how to make decisions at the retreat, conversation about who makes decisions at the co-op (board? Elected or appointed? Whoever shows up to meetings?), what kinds of decisions can be made independently by coordinators, how do we make decisions (consensus? Majority vote? 80%?), future of the co-op (keep it as is? Other alternatives?)
- comments on the proposed agenda
- include food and celebration
- talk about where we’re going before how we’re going to make decision making
- haven’t had much time to have discussions about the politics underlying the different visions for the future; would be great to have the retreat be less efficiency-minded, and more focused on relationship building and discussions about why we’re doing what we’re doing
- need more regularly scheduled meeting time
- would be good to have a presentation on the model we’re using now, and who we’re getting the food from currently
- like the idea of having a more open discussion, but also need to address certain urgent issues that
- maybe the political discussion could happen before the decision-making discussion
- discussion should focus on what we have in common and inclusive politics, rather than extreme or revolutionary politics
- do we have a mission statement, do we want one?
- could have a potluck dinner and/or brunch to sit around and have a go-round about what our values are around food and how that informs our relationship to the co-op
- some people won’t be able to make the retreat, would be good to have people be post their thoughts to the listserve
- could post ideas up on a board in the bulk room, one person who could responsible for bringing them to the retreat
- make sure that we get the opinions of people who can’t come to the retreat
- could have a blog online where people could post their ideas and values The Plan: June 6th, 5-8ish – long potluck with discussion of our food co-op visions and ideas about the future July 11th – retreat, start with values/vision summary and possible future directions, and then talk about decision-making
Dave will organize two additional potlucks at other times.
Sarah and Lindsey will put together a blog for peoples ideas about food co-ops.Agenda team: Ron. Jessica, Hillary, Sarah, Nichole, Randy, Ann, Jocelyn, DaveNext meeting: Sunday June 14th at 4 pm
- Lindsey will facilitate, Jessica is on notes