Sarah Chandler listed as Member, but attended as Guest

O. Bajracharya began the day with a teambuilding activity wherein participants worked together in teams to build a structure of spaghetti, tape and a marshmallow.
M. Borrego presented first draft PPT and messaging that will continue to be refined with strategic consultants for presentation to potential funders, with Charter School Growth Fund intended as the primary audience.

O. Bajracharya broke attendees into small groups to discuss what different board member responsibilities would look like at varying levels: 101, 201 and world famous.
After 15 minutes of discussion, the small groups shared out to all attendees what they had discussed and/or written for each responsibility.
Key responsibilities discussed were:
Attending Monthly Board Meetings - appropriate level of preparation for each board meeting was debated, with the group discussing the challenges of high time commitments and board member burnout being a challenge to recruitment. The group ultimately defined the bare minimum (or 101, in the parlance of the activity) as reviewing the board packet before arriving to the start of the meeting, with the expectation that board meeting attendance should account for about 5 hours per month when preparation is considered. At the 201 level, a board member would lead one aspect of the meeting, take notes and ask questions, and a world famous board member would set agenda items, organize the meeting, and be prepared to step in and lead the meeting in the board chair's absence.
Raise $5,000 per person - At the 101 level, a board member should meet the $5,000 goal. Some debate occurred around whether trying hard to raise that amount qualified, but the group ultimately settled on the baseline expectation being results of $5,000. 201 involvement would include constant cultivation of donors from whom the $5,000 would be raised to ensure they are engaged in the mission, and world famous performance would include regularly and proactively mining contacts to bring on new donors and raise greater than $5,000.
Recruit and orient new board members and assess board performance - At the 101 level, board members would evaluate their networks to identify strong candidates for board membership, would complete the Board on Track board member assessment once per year and would participate in delivering an effective board orientation for every new member. At the 201 level, a board member will regularly and proactively mine linkedin for quality board candidates, take the Board on Track board assessment twice per year and act as a designated mentor to a new board member through the course of her/his first year. During discussion of this responsibility, again the issue of board burnout was raised, and the board agreed that effective strategies to avoid this were distribution of board chair responsibilities and effective recruiting of board members and committee members who will help balance the committee work without being full-fledged members of the board.
 

This item was presented the night before, with K. Cape outlining historical fundraising statistics, with an emphasis on the balance of foundation giving vs. individual giving. The presentation reviewed previous benchmarking of the difference of that ratio from Equitas to other successful area organizations, which showed Equitas needed to continue to grow the proportion of giving that comes from individual, non-foundation donors. The presentation reviewed the roles and responsibilities of the board, board chair, development committee, CEO and development director and gave a high-level outline of the strategies planned for the coming year.

Before commencing succession planning, O. Bajracharya asked everyone in attendance to share how they came to the board and something interesting and unique about themselves.
Then, a listing of the board chair duties was evaluated for distribution, both to lighten the chair's load in order to focus on recruitment and to allow other board members to evaluate their interest in and fitness for the duties of the board chair in order to identify if it is a role each might consider taking on.
This discussion parlayed into preliminary committee goal drafts to be confirmed later in committee meetings, with the following results:
Finance Committee: Develop facility strategy take out plan and ensure existing financials are on track to execute on facility strategy.
Development Committee: Increase unique # of individual donors to 250 (7% to 15%)
Governance Committee: Increase board to 11 people (Descriptors for board members: board chair replacement, over 50, Person of Color, High Net wealth, Fundraising, Legal, Technology, Community, Prior board experience)
Develop a onboarding for new board members and development for existing board members
Academic Accountability Committee: Define academic excellence to set academic goals (also include satisfaction and retention of high performing teachers).  Alignment of investments and academic priorities. Commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
No vote