Call to Order: Deb Cook Lewis, President
The November 2, 2024, ACB Fall Board of Directors Meeting was called to order at 9:00 AM Central Time by President Deb Cook Lewis. Members of the Board and guests participated both in person and virtually.
Roll Call and Introduction of Guests: Denise Colley, Secretary
At the call of the roll the following members were present: President Deb Cook Lewis, First Vice President David Trott, Second Vice President Ray Campbell, Secretary Denise Colley, Treasurer Michael Garrett, Immediate Past President Kim Charlson. Directors: Donna Brown, Chris Bell, Gabriel Lopez Kafati, Peter Heide, Cecily Laney Nipper, Terry Pacheco, Rachel Schroeder, Kenneth Semien, Koni Sims, and Jeff Thom. Board of Publications Member Katie Frederick was present representing that body.
Staff present: Scott Thornhill, ACB Executive Director; Claire Stanley, ACB Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs; Jo Lynn Bailey-Page, Associate Director of Development; Kolby Garrison, Development Officer; Nancy Marks-Becker, Chief Financial Officer; Cindy Hollis, Manager of Membership Engagement; Dan Spoone, Director of Operations; and Rick Morin, ACB Media and IT Manager.
Several guests were also present in-person and virtually.
Review and Approval of Agenda: Deb Cook Lewis
The agenda was amended to add a brief report from Koni Sims about her attendance at the International Building Code meeting in California in October.
It was moved by Bell and seconded by Colley to adopt the agenda as amended. The motion carried.
Review and Approval of Minutes: August 20, 2024, Telephonic - Denise Colley, Secretary
(See minutes in Board packet.)
There being no corrections/additions to the minutes, it was moved by Nipper and seconded by Schroeder to approve the minutes. The motion carried.
Consent Agenda: Deb Cook Lewis
(See reports in the Board packet.)
Due to some confusion around the receipt of the Advocacy Report by all Board members, it was moved by Thom and seconded by Sims that the Advocacy Services Report be removed from the Consent Agenda approval and be adopted separately. The motion carried.
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Bell to adopt the Consent Agenda as amended. The motion caried.
Convention Report: Janet Dickelman, Convention Committee Chair and Rick Morin, Information Technology and ACB Media Manager
2024 Survey Feedback Report: Janet Dickelman and Rick Morin
(See report in Board packet.)
For the most part, all responses to the multiple-choice questions were very positive. Negative responses were related to the length of the convention, attendees feeling they needed information, and the availability of volunteers. There was a definite correlation between age and concerns about convention length. Roll call voting takes too long and maybe should be eliminated entirely. 11.6% of the attendees were first timers.
2025 Convention in Dallas, TX: Janet Dickelman
talked about the layout of the hotel and plans for where certain events will be held. She is working with Envision Dallas to have an orientation and mobility instructor come out and fine tune our hotel description.
She is also working on coordinating with Envision Dallas to have someone come give some hotel orientations as was done in Jacksonville. The hotel is a no cash hotel. All rooms do have refrigerators and coffee makers. The convention schedule will basically be set up as it was in Jacksonville, with opening session on Monday, June 23 and business meetings and virtual sessions throughout that week. The Board meeting will take place on Friday, July 4, opening session of the hybrid portion will be on Saturday evening, July 5, the exhibit hall will open on Sunday, July 6, and the banquet will be on Thursday, July 10.
Future Conventions: Deb Cook Lewis
ACB has had a process in place for some time for determining requirements for sites for future conventions. We’ve now had three years to determine how we would do in our new hybrid environment, so we know what our footprint requirements are. Our in-person attendance has gone up significantly every year since Covid. With an overall full attendance of 1,200, and half of them being in person, there is good energy among our members to continue to have an in-person piece of our convention. We work with a broker who helps us shop all of the venues and processes and brings us the options that we have within the specifications given. We have added some components to that consideration to include the list of cities considered safe cities, cost, ability to get there, overall accessibility and usability of the hotel in terms of our space needs, and possible longer-term contracts with fewer venues. It is easier for staff and the balance of members if we are more centralized in the country. The Convention Steering Committee will work through this process and present a range of options.
Mission Moment: Deb Cook Lewis and Scott Thornhill, ACB Executive Director
The Mission Moment was turned over to Cindy Hollis to share about Ebrahim Vasta, an ACB Community volunteer, and a success story of the program. Ebrahim lives in South Africa and started with ACB Community through his involvement with I Love Braille as a host for them. Once it was required that hosts be ACB qualified, he went through the training. He is now hosting several events and has gone from only wanting to host those before noon Eastern time to anytime. He has also learned how to stream, broadcast, and moderate into Clubhouse. He was also selected as a volunteer of the month.
Staff Reports
Advocacy Update Report: Claire Stanley, Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs
(See report in Board packet.)
All four of our legislative imperatives this past year are probably not going to pass this Congressional Session because the session is ending soon and the upcoming presidential election. Thus, we’ll be starting fresh, come the 119th Congress in January. We will keep pushing on these bills.
Claire highlighted the information in her report. A question was asked about looking at our imperatives and what we might be able to get accomplished based on who wins the upcoming elections of the presidency and in the House and Senate. Director Thornhill responded that we may change our approach and the people we seek as champions for our issues, but not the ultimate outcomes. We might change our approach but not our priorities.
Resource Development Report: Dan Spoone, Jo Lynn Bailey Page and Kolby Garrison
(See report in Board packet.)
Dan reported we have eleven different sponsors that support both the Convention and the AD Awards Gala. We raised $324,000 worth of corporate sponsors for the Convention in 2024 and our AD Awards Gala raised $133,500, not counting individual donations.
In terms of individual giving, Dan thanked those Board members participating in the ACB Strong Program, and said we are reaching out to the 150 major donors that ACB has to see if they are interested in participating. Right now, we’re up to sixteen participants and a three-year commitment of over $55,000.
Jo Lynn reported on the progress made on several of the Resource Development objectives for 2024. We have been able to integrate our corporation giving across all of our ACB activities and now have a master corporate database. Activated our Planned Giving Program on social media and are working with Mike Johnson to have a year-long calendar in support of annual Giving.
Membership Services Report: Cindy Hollis, Manager of Membership Engagement
(See report in Board packet.)
Cindy shared highlights from the online survey sent out to ACB Community which highlighted the overall impact of ACB Community on ACB, our membership and outreach. While the majority of those responding were already members of ACB before Community, approximately 25% joined ACB because of it. The information shared and the connections made after 20,000 events has been astounding.
Rick Morin added that ACB has never had such robust content on ACB Media as we’ve had with the addition of ACB Community. From every piece of content that goes to Podcast we get ten to twenty times the number of people that listen on ACB Media or Zoom. Of the approximately 250,000 listeners of our podcasts a year 45% is Community-created content. The trained volunteers can and are being leveraged across all ACB Media.
ACB Media: Rick Morin and Dan Spoone
(See report in Board packet.)
We are now in the very final stages of putting in the new Audio Description Project website, moving it from the old HTML environment to Drupal 10. There will be dynamic title directory listings and search features to find results for both films and TV. It should be launched in the first quarter of 2025.
ACB.org and ACBminimall.org are also being upgraded to Drupal 10, and testing on the new ACB.org is planned over the next few weeks. Plans are to go live in early 2025.
One of the major goals is to create a way to operate a radio station that can be distributed throughout ACB and get more people involved in scheduling and running our ACB Media streams. Through the JPMorgan Force for Good Project Rick has been working with a small group to build a usable front-end to be able to use one of our streams to schedule the best Community content that’s being generated to be played on a predictable schedule. The bulk of this process from front to back will be operated by the ACB Community team.
Executive Director’s Report: Scott Thornhill
Scott reported more on his vision for the Accessibility and Training Services Initiative he hopes to implement in the New Year. We should no longer be giving away our knowledge as an organization and as individual members in terms of accessibility and training. We should be able to be compensated where we can for this lived experience and knowledge we have gained as blind/low vision people. We have already received compensation for presentations we have made on accessibility and audio description. This could increase to include more training/technical assistance on disability inclusion, assistive technology in the workplace, etc. These presentations could be done for companies or clients of companies.
A second part of this whole initiative would be to create our Visionary Supporters. These are companies/essentially sponsors who want to engage with us on an annual basis across our entire enterprise. They will also receive some other benefits to include being on our website as a visionary supporter and receiving eight hours of our accessibility and training services that can be used internally or for clients. We have already identified a group of potential Visionary Supporter organizations who have already engaged with us on a fairly high level and are interested in more.
The Advisory Board has not been engaged in over a year when Scott was hired. A couple of members have had to step down or are looking at doing so. Scott is in the process of rebuilding the Board and finding individuals with skill sets that make sense for ACB where we are now.
CFO Report: Nancy Becker
AMMS has gone through a long tune-up this year. Every request that has come in has been checked and everything is working well. For the beginning of 2025 they are working on trying to put AMMS under the members umbrella so the records person from each affiliate will only have to log in to their members site to enter the data.
In August a new accountant was brought on board. Her name is Asha Bagroo.
President’s Report: Deb Cook Lewis
Affiliate and National Expectations Document:
Kim Charlson has been appointed to chair this working group. Kim and President Lewis will be meeting soon to determine the members who will be asked to join the working group which will be comprised of affiliate presidents representing various sizes and types of affiliates, as well as Board members.
The goal is to bring back ideas and recommendations at the DC Leadership Conference.
Member Communication:
President Lewis and Nancy Becker are working on establishing a process for this. We are getting Google for nonprofits G-Suite through which we will be setting up the communications stream for members to be able to contact the Board and convey opinions and thoughts on an anytime basis. There will be a particular email address that will be sent out to members to use. The goal is to have it implemented in early 2025.
Committee Chairs and Assignments:
The Committee Chairs process and Committee restructuring is still moving forward. The work is almost complete in terms of moving all the ACB Steering and other Committees in to ACB Zoom accounts. If the committee’s staff liaison has the capacity to host them, this is probably what will occur. If a Committee Chair has not heard from someone, please check in. Any committee who has documentation to store is going to get a Google workspace area to work in. Most of the Committee chairs have been confirmed.
2024 Board Budget Meetings:
Proposed dates for the revenue and expense budget meetings on the agenda are December 9 and December 16, 2024, at 7PM Eastern time. Both dates are Monday evenings. All Board members agreed with these dates and times.
DC Leadership Conference Dates: March 14 to 18, 2025:
The DC Leadership Conference is scheduled for March 14 -18, 2025, at the Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel, Arlington, VA. Room rates are $155 a night single/double. The Friday afternoon tour will be of NLS, which has just moved back to the Library of Congress. There will be two tour times.
On Monday night Scott is also trying to put together a fundraiser dinner, somewhat like Dining in the Dark, but with a different title. It wouldn’t just be for Leadership Seminar attendees but also inviting a lot of people from the DC area to try to build more relationships. We would be looking at inviting political figures and other nonprofits in the area. We would also have a speaker. The cost of the dinner would be about $150, and the size of the group would be around 75 attendees. Nothing is firmed up yet.
Support the Holiday Auction:
President Lewis reminded all Board members about supporting the Holiday Auction on December 1. She also reminded the Board to get in their annual Board contributions. This is an important item for ACB in terms of its accountability to funders, so it is imperative that we have 100% Board participation.
Board travel stipend:
(See the document in the Board packet.)
Following Covid, the Board travel stipend to attend Board meetings was increased to accommodate the significant increases in airfare, and this policy was to be reviewed in eighteen months. While we have exceeded that deadline, the policy still needs to be revisited.
It was moved by Sims and seconded by Campbell to continue the travel stipend at the current levels. The motion carried.
DKM First Timers and Leadership Fellows Guidelines and Expectations Draft Guidelines Update:
(See the document in the Board packet.)
It was moved by Schroeder and seconded by Semien to adopt the revisions to the DKM First Timers and Leadership Fellows Guidelines and Expectations Policies. The motion carried.
Report-out on Uber Rally - Kim Charlson.
Everything was very well organized. ACB was front and center throughout the whole event on the speaking programs in both locations. The experience was very positive and ACBs presence there was noted. There were many members of the California Council of the Blind who were also present.
Kim then discussed the fact that both Lyft and Uber announced that they were going to implement policies where individuals who use service dogs can self-identify, and the fact that this is really a personal choice among handlers. What has become problematic is that Uber is recommending on their self-identification platform, which they are pilot testing right now, that the self-identification of a service dog be one that a driver will see prior to accepting your ride. Lyft already has this in place. She shared a letter that NFB President Mark Riccobono sent to Uber outlining the situation. She requested that, after hearing the letter, ACB support this letter and echo the same sentiments that are expressed in this letter in an ACB letter that can be shared with the community and with Uber.
It was moved by Bell and seconded by Semien that a letter be drafted to send to Uber substantially like and in the spirit of that which was sent by NFB. The motion carried. A committee was then appointed to craft the letter consisting of Claire Stanley as staff liaison, Kim Charlson as chair, and Chris Bell and Rachel Schroeder.
ACB Media Programming
(See the document in the Board packet)
The ACB Media Policy Committee recommends a due pass of the Policy on ACB Live Media Programming, and it was so moved by Schroeder. The motion carried.
ACB 2024 Demographic and Diversity Report: Deb Cook Lewis and Nancy Becker
(See report in Board packet.)
There is still a lot of discussion about the kinds of numbers that are being collected, and Deb and Nancy will take another look at whether they can parse this data out any differently to give us any more statistical information.
Financial Summary for 2024 Year-to-Date: Michael Garrett, ACB Treasurer
(See reports in Board packet.)
Michael reviewed our overall revenues and expenditures for the first nine months of 2024. He talked about our financial outlook from the standpoint of what the numbers tell us in terms of opportunities, challenges and trends.
This report will be filed for audit.
Review and Approval of the 2025 Legacy Endowment Drawdown: Michael Garrett and Nancy Marks Becker
(See report in Board packet.)
The document we received includes the original amount in the account, the increase and loss, how much we’ve had for Board approval withdrawals, and the current value of the Legacy Account. We can now look at the average of the fund over four years. Drawdown The allocation percentages we have continued to look at are 3% 4% and 5%, and except for the very first year we have had a 5% drawdown every year. In looking at our budget for 2025, as well as our investment account, Nancy is recommending a 5% drawdown again, which is $90,200.
It was moved by Charlson and seconded by Garrett to approve the recommended Legacy Endowment drawdown of $90,200 or 5%. The motion carried.
Board of Publications (BOP) Report: Katie Frederick, BOP Director
The BOP is reviewing the ACB Conversation and Leadership lists, and looking at current guidelines and procedures to see what needs to be done to better align the two. They will be coming back with more information at the DC Leadership Conference.
They will be looking at the sections about the BOP in the ACB Constitution to see how much of it is still relevant or what language changes need to be made to make the BOP and its role more relevant to today as we move forward.
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Sims that we recess the ACB of Directors meeting and convene the ACBES Membership meeting. The motion carried and the ACB Board of Directors meeting recessed at 4:31PM Central time.
ACB Enterprises and Services Membership Meeting and Elections
The ACB Enterprises and Services Membership Meeting was called to order at 4:31PM Central time by Board Chair, Michael Garrett.
Michael reported that our two thrift stores outperformed 138% over budget at the end of September, 2024. The Amarillo store was named the best secondhand store in Amarillo two years in a row. This year they were awarded the number one thrift store and the number one secondhand clothing store. This is the fifth month in a row that both stores have come in with over $50,000 in revenue.
ACBES Board Elections: The three ACBES Board members up for re-election were Michael Garrett, David Trott and Kim Charlson. All three were re-elected by acclamation to serve another term.
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Sims to adjourn the ACBES Membership Meeting and reconvene the ACB Board of Directors Meeting. The motion carried and the meeting was adjourned at 4:42PM Central time.
The ACB Board of Directors meeting was called back to order by President Deb Cook Lewis at 4:42PM.
Election of Executive Committee:
Denise Colley and Ray Campbell were elected as the designated officers to the Executive Committee. Rachel Schroeder and Kenneth Semien were elected as the two designated directors to the Executive Committee.
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by several that the meeting be adjourned. The motion carried and the meeting was adjourned at 5:00PM Central time.
Respectfully submitted,
Denise Colley
Secretary
Submitted: January 25, 2025
Approved: February 10, 2025