Location: Michael and Valerie Nelson’s house in Vallejo.

Attendance: Valerie, Michael, Sharon, Randal, Conrad, Art

Absent: Lex, Jesse, Talib

Meeting called to order by Art at 2:07 PM.

Minutes of meeting of 11/9/11 approved as written. Motion: Randal 2nd Conrad

Membership report: Michael: 100 current members. At end of last year, membership was

115. 28 members get newsletter printed and mailed.

The roster is ready but not sent out. Discussion on how to distribute. Board

decided to email roster to all those who are receiving the newsletter by email

but a limited number of printed copies will be available at next Guild meeting.

Guild Membership Card: Some people have asked for these so they can get a

discount at JoAnn’s Fabrics. Michael will make a stack of these and will fill them

out and mail them to a member if anyone asks..

Treasurer’s Report: $6622.86 total. Of this $1405.25 is designated for scholarships.

Discussion of setup of PayPal account which Michael has done. There

is 2.9% transaction fee + 30 cent fee per transaction. Therefore a

$20 membership fee costs 88 cents. Decided not to raise the membership fee

for those using PayPal, as the current treasury is adequate, and we don’t know

at this time how many people will use this system.

Review and approval/change proposed dates for Guild Meetings:

Next Guild Meeting Plan: Discussion of still having “holiday party”, but

it will be a Valentine’s party rather than a Christmas party.

Next meeting: Feb. 18. Program committee: Sharon, Randal, Lex

Art, will meet via email and set program and location.

May 20th – Michael is meeting with Old Books group in Vallejo. He will find out if we

can do a Guild meeting at the same venue and consider the topic of Old Puppet

Books. August 25th or 26th in Fairyland. Randal will find out for sure if these are the dates.

November 10th – program to be determined.

Web Master: Michael has been doing the minor changes to the web site and thinks, in general

he can do most of the changes. He might need consultation from an “expert” very rarely.

Art will check with Rik Franz what he would charge for random “consultation”.

Newsletter Calendar: Is the newsletter calendar postings exclusively for members’

performances only? Randal thinks that this was voted on in the past – that performances that

are important TO Guild Members, not only BY Guild members should be posted.

Procedural Changes: Michael brought up the fact that we have changed procedures on

some of the duties of the board. He questioned how these changes should be presented

to the Guild members. It was discussed and decided that Michael will send these changes

to the board for approval/modification, then when approved will try to find a place on the

website to put important procedures and/or procedural changes. If the By-Laws need to be changed, this needs to be brought up to the membership at a future meeting.

Planning for new board (and new members).

The nominating committee needs to rotate off (after so many years). According to the

By-Laws they are supposed to ask others to replace themselves. However, the nominating Committee usually selects 1 member per office, so essentially they are selecting the new Board members. Discussion: The current nominating committee is doing a good job and should continue for this year. Consideration: 2 nominating committee members plus 1 Board member and make nominating committee part of the board. No decision was made at this time. This would need to be a By-Law revision.

Guild sponsored puppet slam, and mini-puppet festival: Michael

Discussion about whether the Guild should sponsor a week-long puppet mini-festival with Workshops and performances. Would it be a possibility? Could we get enough people to do this. Would it be of interest to members? How much would it cost? Could we get a venue that would be reasonable enough? What about a Puppet Slam? Would this be a Regional festival? Michael: “No, more local”. This was not finalized, just proposed.

Legal Status: What are we, as an organization?

Valerie Moved, Randal 2nd: Conrad consult with SF Chapter of Volunteer Lawyers for the

Arts to help determine what our status is as an organization. We don’t have 501c(3) status, We don’t do tax returns. Should we? Right now donations to us are not tax deductible?

Meeting adjourned at 4:00 PM.

Addendum from Michael Nelson:

I did not recall a discussion of having the procedures approved before posting them on the website.  I did send them out to the board and heard back from Art who suggested a number of changes and a slightly different philosophical approach to them.  I wanted to confer with board on the approach but would prefer to do it at a board meeting (an in-person discussion.)  Currently I have a draft of the procedures up on the website.  It has not officially been approved by anyone, and can certainly change.

 And FYI, we now have more members than we did at the end of last year, so this will probably be a record setting year for membership numbers!