Call to Order
The November 28, 2023, virtual meeting of the Board of Directors of the American Council of the Blind was called to order at 7:30 PM Eastern by President Deb Cook Lewis.
Roll Call - Denise Colley, Secretary
At the call of the roll, the following Board members were present: Deb Cook Lewis, David Trott, Ray Campbell, Denise Colley, Michael Garrett, Kim Charlson, Chris Bell, Donna Brown, Gabriel Lopez Kafati, Cecily Laney Nipper, Terry Pacheco, Doug Powell, Rachel Schroeder, Kenneth Semien, Koni Sims, and Jeff Thom. Board of Publications Member Penny Reeder was present representing that body.
Staff present: Dan Spoone, ACB Interim Executive Director, Nancy Marks-Becker, Chief Financial Officer, and Rick Morin, ACB Media and IT Manager.
Approval of Agenda - Deb Cook Lewis, ACB President
It was moved by Nipper and seconded by Semien to approve the agenda. The motion carried.
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Brown that the Board move into Executive Session for the purpose of discussion of some sensitive financial information. The motion carried and the Board moved into Executive Session at 7:38 PM Eastern.
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Trott to recess out of Executive Session and move back into regular session. The motion carried and the Board recessed out of Executive Session at 8:00 PM.
President Lewis reported out that, in Executive Session the Board heard from our investment firm to get an overview of the Market and ACB’s investments. No motions were made, or actions taken.
Mission Moment - Deb Cook Lewis and Dan Spoone
This Mission Moment celebrated the 3rd Annual Audio Description (AD) Awards Gala. Dan reported that our Audio Description Awards Gala committee did an outstanding job creating, communicating, producing, and raising funds for ACB. Special thanks to Tabitha Kenlon, Kim Charlson, Carl Richardson, Joel Snyder, Rick Morin, Gabriel Lopez Kafati, Clark Rachfal, Jo Lynn Bailey Page, Kolby Garrison, Jeff Thom, Doug Roland, and our industry partners for all their contributions!
An amazing job was done under very difficult circumstances given the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers’ strike. The Committee was very resourceful and creative in getting the caliber of industry participation in the event. We had our best year with our sponsors and donors with roughly $132,000 in revenue.
A special thank you went out to Gabriel Lopez Kafati, Dicapta and the entire team for all the work done to put together a truly full-length AD Gala presentation in Spanish, which ran concurrently with the English version. Gabriel shared that the work on the Spanish version of the Gala has also helped to solidify a solid working relationship and collaboration between ACB and Dicapta, both technically and promotionally.
President’s Report - Deb Cook Lewis
Upcoming Board Meetings: The 2024 budget approval Board meetings will be held on December 4 and 11. Because of Deb’s surgery, First VP Trott will be chairing the meeting on Dec. 4, although Deb plans to be present. The next regular virtual Board meeting is scheduled for January 30, 2024. The next hybrid Board meeting is the DC Leadership Board meeting scheduled for March 2, 2024.
CCLVI Resolution on Demographics:
CCLVI has passed a resolution in response to the discussion that we had at the September 30 Board meeting on demographics. After our discussion, they had some concerns about how we are currently expressing the demographics related to vision. The three data collection categories in AMMS around vision are blind, low vision and sighted. They have requested, through resolution, that we consider breaking the data down to reflect blind, legally blind, low vision, and sighted. Based on the discussion that Deb and staff heard at that Board meeting, we have already modified our demographics to include the concept of “I identify as blind, low vision or sighted”. This change met the concerns of CCLVI.
Discussion ensued about collecting this demographic information based on how members view themselves as opposed to medical visual diagnoses.
It was moved by Sims and seconded by Powell to endorse the proposal that we ask members to indicate whether they identify as blind, low vision or sighted for our demographic data collection. The motion carried.
Reminder about end of year Board giving:
Board members were reminded that it is time to make their Board gift to ACB if they have not done so already. This needs to be done by the end of December. We do need 100% participation, and it does need to be a Board designated gift.
Deb also reminded the Board that if members are not requesting reimbursement for Board expenses, the Office still needs to receive travel receipts for any lodging or transportation related to a Board expense. Those are considered in-kind gifts that matter for our giving profile of our Board members.
Update on Board Liaison Program:
A little more than a third of our affiliates have signed up so far to request Board liaisons. Sign-ups are still being taken if there are affiliates who would like to participate. Cindy is specifically contacting any newer presidents of affiliates who have not participated previously. She will be getting the first kickoff activities going sometime between now and the beginning of the year. The Board Liaison Program is an opt-in for both Board members and affiliates. Board members are to let Cindy know if interested in participating.
Powell moved and Schroeder seconded acceptance of the President’s Report. The motion carried.
Staff Report - Dan Spoone, Interim Executive Director
Dan reported that Sayuree Naik has been hired as the new Human Resources Specialist in the Minneapolis Office. She began her employment with ACB on November 1st.
With Clark Rachfal’s resignation, staff have been working on updating the job description for the Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs. The job posting was up for two weeks and taken down on November 26th. We received approximately twenty applications, and Sayuree is beginning a series of screening interviews to narrow the applicant pool down to those most qualified. The goal is to get through the screening and interviewing process and be able to offer the position by the week of December 18th. The ultimate goal is to have our new Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs on board the first or second week in January.
Sayuree also comes with graphic design and social media experience, so has helped in crafting our end of year appeal that will go out in December. She is also helping interview for a new manager position for the Amarillo thrift store, and working with the Executive Director planning and search committee to modify/update the position description and job posting.
Staff have received word that things are on track with our Alexandria office move. They should be able to move into their permanent space the first week in January.
Our IT team has been working hard to take our ACB.org, ACBmedia.org and ACBminimal.org and transition them from our Azure server, where we are really struggling with some viruses that they are having a hard time controlling, over to the Pantheon platform which does hosting for websites. Pantheon owns the server administration layer, all of the security, performance testing and backups. Pantheon has a very robust development platform with a development stream, a testing stream, and a live stream. The migration took place right between the AD Gala and the auction, and all are up and running with no glitches. We’ve moved the ADP website from the server to an AWS platform because it is written in HTML. When we’re able to completely roll off Azure our cost to maintain this environment will actually be less, and we will have the security of knowing that we have a well-protected and maintained host environment for our ADP website.
It was moved by Trott and seconded by Garrett to accept the staff report. The motion carried.
Review and Approval of 2024 DC Leadership Conference Calendar - Deb Cook Lewis
(See document in ACB Board folder in Dropbox)
Three recommendations made were: highlighting key legislators to meet with who are specifically important to our imperatives; holding community calls prior to the seminar for participants to learn about and discuss the imperatives; and making sure we have the imperative documents available to give to the legislative staff or legislators for those going to the Hill.
It was moved by Powell and seconded by Semien that we accept the proposed timeline for the 2024 DC Leadership Conference. The motion carried.
Update on the 2024 ACB Conference and Convention - Janet Dickelman, Convention Committee Chair
All exhibitors were polled, and they indicated they would like ACB to open the exhibit hall on Sunday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with set-up on Saturday. Due to some scheduling issues and in order to have the needed time to get the audio/visual equipment set up in the ballroom and making sure it works properly, the opening general session will be on Sunday evening instead of Saturday. We will hold the two concurrent breakout sessions Monday morning, since we received such positive feedback on these sessions from the convention survey. This shortens general session by a day, but moving reports and some of the other general session events into zoom can free up general session time for business and speakers.
It was moved by Nipper and seconded by Kafati to accept the convention schedule and report. The motion carried.
Update on the Executive Director Job Search Process – Nancy Marks Becker and Deb Cook Lewis
The Executive Search Committee was appointed in September and includes Deb Cook Lewis, Kim Charlson, Jeff Thom, Michael Garrett, Dan Spoone, and Nancy Marks Becker. This committee will do the preliminary work for the screening process. Sayuree is preparing the draft job description based on input she received from the Search Committee. As a part of the interview process, Deb would like the top two candidates to come before the Board, and then have the board give feedback to the Search Committee. The Search Committee will then make the final recommendation to the President, who will present the final recommendation to the Board along with all supporting evidence. It is hoped to have a hiring announcement that can be made by the time of the DC Leadership Conference. It is hoped that the hire can be onboard, with some concurrent training time with Dan, at the time of the convention.
It was moved by Powell and seconded by Campbell to adjourn the general meeting and return to executive session for the purpose of discussing the budget preparation. The motion carried.
Adjournment:
The general Board meeting was adjourned at 10:00 PM Eastern time and the Board moved back into Executive Session.
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Charlson to adjourn out of Executive session. The motion carried.
The Board meeting was adjourned at 11:30 PM Eastern time.
Respectfully submitted,
Denise Colley
Secretary
Date submitted: 01/19/2024
Date approved: 1/31/2024