2011-06-07

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Contents

June 7th, 2011

Agenda

  1. Approve draft minutes of the last meeting
  2. Consent Agenda
  3. Officer Reports
    1. President
    2. Vice-President
    3. Treasurer
    4. Secretary
    5. Public Relations
  4. New Business
  5. Old Business
  6. Member Reports
  7. Adjournment

Minutes

Attendance:

Initialization

Consent Agenda

Officer Reports

President
  • Nothing to report
Vice-President
  • Nothing to report
Treasurer

PayPal balance as of 6/5: $1513.48 (initiated $1500 transfer to BB&T account on 6/5, after which balance will be $13.48)

BB&T balance as of 6/5: $1532.44 (once $1500 transfer clears, balance will be $3032.44)

Automatic (free) money transfers from BB&T to CREH-Snow for rent are finally working properly! Insurance can also be paid online, so we're completely electronic (which may not be exciting to anyone other than the treasurer, but it certainly makes my life easier :) ).

We're currently past the break-even point for membership! We have just under a thousand dollars in monthly recurring fixed costs ($895 in rent + $86.53 in insurance = $981.53 in monthly payments). Twenty full members generate just under a thousand dollars in revenue (20 x $50 = $1000 - PayPal transaction fees = $975). We currently have 21 full members who are paying regularly (and another three whose status is uncertain) plus five associate or student members.

That plus donations and the $900 grant for the hackerspace challenge mean that we're comfortably in the black. Speaking of hackerspace challenges, if anyone has made purchases towards those projects and would like to be reimbursed, please send an email to treasurer@splatspace.org with the date / cost of purchase you'd like reimbursed and provide me with a receipt for whatever-it-was, and I'll be happy to reimburse you!

(As members purchase things for the space and our projects, we need to stick to a receipt-and-reimbursement process, rather than a "so-and-so paid for such-and-such so we're giving them a break on their dues next month" or "we'll just take it out of the donation box" or similar ad hoc arrangements. I don't think this needs to go on the consent agenda, since it's just good accounting practice, but I'm happy to explain the problems we're avoiding, this way, to anyone who's interested in why.)

Secretary
  • Nothing to report
Public Relations
  • Nothing to report

New Business

  • No new business

Old Business

Dwolla

TABLED FOR NEXT MEETING I (Lisa) propose that we add Dwolla (http://www.dwolla.com/) as an additional payment option / alternative to PayPal. Dwolla allows direct payments from a member's bank account (checking or savings) to a SplatSpace Dwolla account and direct transfers from a Dwolla account to our BB&T account. Members would need to create a Dwolla account, associate a bank account (verification similar to the PayPal credit card verification process), and then set up payments from their Dwolla account to the SplatSpace Dwolla account.

Dwolla's biggest advantage is their fees (or lack thereof). The only fee is $.25 per transaction. So where PayPal charges a transaction fee and a percentage (SplatSpace gets $48.75 of every $50 payment), Dwolla charges only a $.25 transaction fee (SplatSpace gets $49.75 of every $50 payment). Dwolla also supports multi-payment schedules (i.e. recurring payments) and automatic funds withdrawal (i.e. it automatically sweeps the Dwolla funds into our bank account so we never hold a balance in Dwolla). Paypal doesn't offer the latter, so the treasurer would no longer have to transfer funds manually (not that manual transfers are big deal, but it'd be nice not to have to remember to do it!) The non-profit transaction limit is $5,000 - I would love for us to hit that limit :) but don't see it as a big constraint any time soon.

Dwolla's biggest disadvantage is that they require associating a bank account, rather than a credit card, to users' Dwolla accounts. Some members may be comfortable with this (especially credit union members, since credit unions tend to offer the same fraud protection to their bank accounts that credit card companies do to credit card accounts); others may not (especially regular-bank customers, since regular banks are not required to extend the same fraud protection to checking accounts, so whether they do or not may vary).

I took an unofficial verbal poll, at one of the recent SplatSpace meetings, to see who would / would not be comfortable with using Dwolla to make payments; about half the people in the room were okay with it, about half were uncomfortable with attaching a bank account rather than a credit card. So my current proposal is that we add Dwolla as an optional alternative for members that are comfortable with the concept, based on the advantages above, and keep accepting PayPal payments from members who are not comfortable with Dwolla. (I will continue to investigate alternatives to PayPal, such as Google Checkout or Amazon Payments, for credit card dues payments.)

Member Reports

Adjournment