Executive Board Minutes

EXECUTIVE BOARD MINUTES (Executive Council)

APRIL 20, 2021

by Amanda Ryan-Fear, Secretary

ATTENDING (ZOOM): Joe Eberhardt, President; Aimee Filimoehala, Vice President; Rick Amodeo, Treasurer; Amanda Ryan-Fear, Secretary; Jesse Applegate, Reena Clements, Lori Coyner, Judith Baker, Bob Breivogel, Staff: Sarah Bradham, Active Executive Director; Kelsey Shaw, Member Services Admin; Mathew Brock, Mazama Library & Historical Collections Manager

WELCOME & CALL TO ORDER

The meeting was called to order at 4:02 p.m. by President Joe Eberhardt. ■ Joe noted a quorum was present. Joe began by noting that the executive session was going to be split into two parts, the first to be taken at the beginning of the meeting and the second at the end. Joe adjourned the public portion of the meeting at 4:05 p.m. so the recording secretary and staff presenter left the meeting. ■ Recording secretary was called back to the meeting at 4:58 p.m. and the public session resumed.

REVIEW & APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Amanda Ryan-Fear asked for approval of the minutes from the March meeting and made a motion to accept the minutes as written. Rick Amodeo seconded the motion. Minutes were approved as written.

MEMBERSHIP REPORT Membership Report: Secretary Amanda Ryan-Fear gave the membership report, see page five.Additional infomation: ■ Sarah Bradham, Acting Executive

Director, explained usual membership trends to compare against year over year differences. ■ BCEP operated at a smaller capacity for students and with fewer assistants, and climb season had more of a soft opening with fewer opportunities.

TREASURER’S REPORT: Treasurer Rick Amodeo gave the treasurer’s report, incorporated herein for reference. Items noted beyond the written summary are as follows: ■ The Finance Committee is meeting regularly. ■ The forgiveness for PPP Round 1 funding has been submitted and educationrelated revenue is looking good. ■ Have avoided withdrawing from investments and investment funds are growing slowly. ■ $1.13 million as of statement on 3/31/2021 ■ We are halfway through the fiscal year.

Revenue is down, but as are expenses, so overall the net assets are increasing (~6 percent). ■ Rick recommends running popular

Lodge events, e.g. Round the Mountain, and rental events, e.g. group rentals, so as to receive that revenue. ■ Plan is in progress to research new bookkeeping options to streamline processes; reaching out to the auditor for recommendation for bookkeepers with nonprofit experience.

ACTING ED REPORT ■ Lodge Committee has decided to slow soft opening because they are uncomfortable with reliance on volunteer caretakers for paid customers. □ RTM is doable with Lodge in its current state, however the western portion of the Timberline Trail is closed indefinitely due to damage sustained during the Labor Day 2020 windstorm. Concerns remain regarding shuttle transportation and food for participants. □ Trail Trips Committee working on alternatives and/or solutions. □ Process of creating an Operations Plan for Lodge is well underway and has been recently aided with discovery of a Lodge Task Force report from 1998 within the Mazama archives. □ Committee and E.D. are in the process of crafting a short-term contract (approx. 6 months) for a caretaker.

Possible caretaker in mind who has extensive hospitality experience. □ Rick Amodeo agreed to continue as

Lodge point person. ■ COVID vaccines are increasingly administered across the region. Based on Sarah’s research, as a private organization, nothing prevents the

Mazamas from requiring vaccination for participation. However, we should proceed with caution when receiving actual copies of people’s vaccine cards (medical record). □ Sarah suggested a vaccine badge system based on an honor system (ask type and dates but won’t require documentation). □ Bob Breivogel likes the badge idea but asks if leaders will be required to be vaccinated. □ Aimee Filimoehala voiced concerns about the honor system and suggested a hybrid system: honor system for badge but participants bring vaccine cards to trailhead/meeting location for leader to verify. □ Bob suggested participants come to office for vaccine card verification.

Multiple meeting attendees pointed out this was prohibitive of people’s ability to come into the office. □ Sarah requested E.C. member participation in the vaccine badge planning process. Lori Coyner volunteered to help. ■ National Volunteer Week (April 18–24) □ Daily communications planned on social media. □ Sarah hand wrote and sent 150+ cards to volunteers who have volunteered within the last three months. □ Sarah plans to continue mailing cards monthly. ■ E.C. Portal Updates □ Committee Rosters have been added to the portal. Rosters will be updated weekly via Salesforce. Report includes known FY22 plans.

BYLAWS CHANGE UPDATE ■ Special election delayed to combine with regular election in Fall 2021 based on feedback received via email and social media. Feedback was that members felt unprepared for the vote and did not understand why it was a special election among other details about the proposals. ■ Informational Town Hall has been rescheduled for May 25 with the goal of answering: What are the bylaws? What changes are being proposed? Why? ■ May/June Bulletin will include process and timeline updates. Said updates are also included in each week’s eNews, the

EXECUTIVE BOARD MINUTES (Executive Council)

Mazama social media pages, and on the

Mazama website. ■ Voter Guide will include comparisons of existing and proposed bylaws to highlight differences. To be released in

August. ■ The Bylaws team is working to create videos explaining the Mazama voting process and the specific proposals. ■ Judith noted that she is working on an annotated version of the bylaw changes as opposed to a redlined version, which due to the reordering of certain sections is difficult to follow. ■ Questions from committee: □ Joe–how are people communicating their feelings and thoughts? □ Aimee–the Mazama Member Forum on Facebook and via email to bylaws@ mazamas.org □ Rick–where does this information live on the Mazama website? He thinks it should be front and center □ Sarah–currently listed in menu under

Membership and Resources header, but it can be added to the slider/gallery menu □ Joe asked that adding the bylaws to the homepage be done soon.

DEI UPDATE ■ Last month, the staff, in coordination with the Melanated Mazamas and the

E.C., crafted and released a statement in support of our Asian American and

Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. □ Received generally positive or neutral feedback. The small minority with negative feedback were quite vocal with their thoughts. ■ Sarah encouraged E.C. members to look at the AAC’s recent social media comms. The AAC recently announced their Climb United team that is tasked with the AAC’s justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion work, beginning with route names. The AAC received a lot of negative feedback on Facebook, to the point of deleted comments that referenced violence against other users.

Sarah reached out to former Mazama

E.D. Mitsu Iwasaki who is the current

CEO of the AAC and shared that, in contrast to their Facebook, they received

a lot of positive feedback directly via email, private messages, and phone. ■ The Mazama DEI Committee needs direction from the E.C. including, but not limited to: a charter, benchmarks, tasks, short-term goals, and long-term goals. □ Committee members want to do work but don’t know their role or scope. □ Reena (member of DEI Committee): committee was focused entirely on creating the Equity Statement, and since then there have been several attempts to bring the committee together during COVID but there has been little to no follow through. □ Aimee noted that some individual committees have their own DEI-related goals and practices, but there is no overarching policy. Also noted that committees want guidance on this work. □ Sarah suggests that after the charter is crafted and confirmed, the committee’s first project can be collecting all committee-specific DEI work into one location. Sarah emphasized that the

E.C. needs to help create the structure for the committee. □ Amanda Ryan-Fear and Jesse Applegate volunteered to provide direction and draft the charter. □ Joe asked that Sarah share existing roles and responsibilities document, so

Amanda and Jesse can see an example.

Sarah will share the completed roles and responsibilities doc of another committee.

POLICY AND PROCEDURES Mathew Brock began this discussion to give context to the concerns around existing policies and procedures. ■ Problem: ongoing confusion around old and/or outdated documents; need to streamline process/collection after the collapse of the Governing Docs

Committee. ■ Solution: twofold approach moving forward □ In Google Drive → delete all current copies of P&P documents; create restricted folder of master P&P docs; replace deleted copies with shortcuts to master docs □ In Salesforce → integrate P&P documents into SF for better tracking, reporting, and updating ■ Can eventually create dashboard for quick review ■ Sarah outlined next steps of the P&P project: □ Create new object in Salesforce to capture the data □ Define “public” vs. “private” in relation to P&P □ Staff will create a Records Team/

Committee with a defined set of responsibilities □ Schedule regular review process □ Critical step: remove duplicates & outdated copies from Drive □ Sarah will write up roles and responsibilities document for this team.

Mathew will oversee this team. ■ Judith: Is there a closely aligned staff person? Staff would need to take on a more directional role. □ Sarah: Staff person in LHC Manager role would work closely with Records

Team ■ Bob: Recommended checking in John

Rettig (past Council secretary and

Governing Docs chair). Bob stated his willingness to be E.C. point person. ■ Sarah: Has been working with John

Rettig since the outset of this project. ■ Joe: As we move to compounding pages of P&P documentation, is there a staff person who will oversee this area of work? □ Sarah: E.D. and Archives manager ■ Bob: Need to ID “owners” of each P&P and those owners should be responsible □ Judith: Best practice for a nonprofit would be that the board is owner of all

P&P and staff provides institutional knowledge and consistency. □ Bob: But, committees should own P&P because they know it best □ Sarah: Board needs to own P&P (esp. policy) because of potential liability ramifications, but committees should provide oversight and be content experts ■ Next steps: Sarah will write up the outline of project/role. She will reach out to Bob for involvement and to Judith for language.

MEMBER COMMENT PERIOD ■ No members attended to submit comments.

DOCUMENT RETENTION ■ Mathew Brock presented to the E.C. on the importance of accurate and consistent documentation retention procedures to the organization. His presentation is incorporated herein for reference. Items noted beyond the written summary are as follows: □ Turnover is high among board members, committee chairs, and staff so retention is critical to progress of organization. This is especially important for restricted files. ■ Rick informed Mathew of the existence of several boxes of paper records that are stored at the Mazama Lodge. Mathew will arrange a time to pick up these records. ■ Bob asked if there was a plan to index the paper records of the Mazamas. □ Mathew explained differences between indexing and cataloging. The Mazama archives are cataloged down to the series level. □ Bob: Are catalogs searchable? □ Mathew: Yes and can be searched online through the website since 2017. ■ Joe asked Mathew for more details on recent requests of restricted records. □ Mathew: Requests were placed by a researcher looking for more details on a past climbing incident and a family member of a restricted record subject. Researcher was informed of the restriction and turned down. The family member was given an executive summary of the incident report to their satisfaction. ■ Sarah noted that the E.C. and staff need to review what is confidential and/or restricted. “Lessons learned” reports do no good when locked in the vault.

Additionally, the definition of “restricted” varies and there is generally no identified

“owner” of original records to clarify time-based restrictions. □ Mathew has begun drafting restricted records policies in the absence of said policies. ■ Joe: time-based release with redacted identifying info? □ Mathew confirmed that is the plan but posited, “What is ‘enough’ time?” Has arbitrarily set it as 30-years to begin.

Added, there are a lot of things that need to be documented because we don’t know the extent of the “closed collection.” ■ Lori: 30-years may be too long because climbing methods and gear change within that time frame. □ Mathew: Good point. Example being

“The Ian Wade Report” ■ Sarah: Who has the authority to restrict records? For how long? Why? When can they be opened? Who does authorized access pass to if the original record recipient is no longer in a relevant role? ■ Sarah proposed creating an index of names in the vault to be shared with the

President and E.D. for reference. □ Joe supports this idea and added the idea of “tags” within index so reports can be searched by keywords.

Joe Eberhardt adjourned the meeting at 6:12 p.m.

MAY 18, 2021

by Amanda Ryan-Fear, Secretary

ATTENDING (ZOOM):

Joe Eberhardt, President; Aimee Filimoehala, Vice President; Rick Amodeo, Treasurer; Amanda Ryan-Fear, Secretary; Reena Clements, Judith Baker, Bob Breivogel, Lori Coyner; Sarah Bradham, Acting Executive Director; Kelsey Shaw, Members Services, Admin.; Brook Harris, Lodge Committee Chair.

WELCOME & CALL TO ORDER

The meeting was called to order at 4:05 p.m. by President Joe Eberhardt.

REVIEW & APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

■ Rick Amodeo asked for approval of the minutes from the April meeting and made a motion to accept the minutes as written. Judith Baker seconded the motion. Minutes were approved as written.

MEMBERSHIP REPORT ■ Secretary Amanda Ryan-Fear gave the membership report, incorporated herein for reference. Items noted beyond the written summary are as follows: □ Sarah Bradham, Acting Executive

Director, shared an additional report focused on membership retention rates between years. □ Lapse rates over the past 4-years (time using Salesforce database) have remained fairly consistent. ■ Council members engaged in discussion including but not limited to, definition of retention rate, theorized causes for lapsing members and changes in rate year over year, and efforts to improve the retention rate for future years

TREASURER’S REPORT Treasurer Rick Amodeo gave the treasurer’s report. Additional info: □ first PPP loan officially forgiven; second anticipated to be forgiven in September 2021 □ The Mazamas has avoided having to withdraw from investment funds due to budgetary diligence of Acting Executive

Director Sarah Bradham □ Activities currently breaking even □ Revenue year to date: increases in merch and activities; decrease in membership, Mazama Wild Climb, and

Lodge □ Treasurer noted that dropping the glaciated peak requirement will boost revenue of organization through membership dues ■ President noted April’s large budgetary impact due to annual insurance payment ■ Acting Executive Director noted that historically April is a big cash out month because of insurance payment, but also a big cash in month due to old climb card system

ACTING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR REPORT Sarah Bradham gave her acting ED report: ■ COVID Policy continues to change and become less strict as state continues to open up and vaccination rates increase ■ Staffing changes imminent Reconfigured job/position descriptions to

EXECUTIVE BOARD MINUTES CONT. (Executive Council)

better encompass needs of the org. Position descriptions have been sent to councilmember Lori Coyner for review. Communication of staff departures and job openings begins on May 25, 2021. ■ Recreating the Risk Management

Committee □ Critical to success of the organization □ Education and Climbing committees onboard with centralization of risk management process □ So far five members have applied to join the committee □ Council members engaged in discussion including but not limited to, reason for committee’s fold, reasoning for centralization, historic issues with process and plan to avoid them

BYLAWS AMENDMENT UPDATE Aimee Filimoehala provided an update to the bylaw amendments proposal, incorporated herein for reference. Items noted beyond the written summary are as follows: ■ Changing presentation of amendments from buckets to individual within each article (see report for full details) □ Goal of changes is to improve transparency and ensure we are abiding by Robert’s Rules ■ A public meeting is scheduled for May 25 to share changes and take questions/ comments from members ■ Bylaws team is working to create information videos covering proposed changes ■ Discussion regarding changes to presentation of amendments was had among present councilmembers; relevant changes were made the report

EC POINT PERSON Rick Amodeo asked that the council skip this agenda item until Rick and Bob have the opportunity to discuss project with staff.

LODGE UPDATE Lodge Committee Chair, Brook Harris, was present to provide a report on the reopening of the Mazama Lodge. ■ Volunteer taskforce has done an excellent job of positioning Lodge to reopen while also triaging much needed maintenance projects ■ Ski camps are returning in summer 2021 and have already begun booking for 2022 ■ Collaborating with Trails Club of Oregon on usage of Tyee Lodge to host big groups ■ Brook has been updating the online reservation system to better manage capacity, taking payment before arrival of guests, charging for meals, and managing inventory ■ Several Lodge workdays planned for spring: ■ May 23 - committee clean up day ■ June 5 - kitchen reorganization and clean up to be led by Julia Williams and future

Lodge Manager ■ June 12 - community spring work party ■ Ski hill looks good but trail to Lodge needs to be entirely rebuilt and re-lit due to downed trees (>100 on property) ■ In final talks with a solid Lodge Manager with extensive experience in hospitality and management of large projects ■ Councilmembers engaged in discussion including but not limited to, COVID policies, affiliated members/groups (FWOC), and planned capacity

DEI UPDATE ■ Acting E.D Sarah Bradham provided an update on the diversity, equity, and inclusion work being done ■ Claire is working to rebuild volunteer committee; first goal is to get interested folks invigorated around creating a mission statement ■ Other proposed work includes: ■ Course and activity acceptance policies ■ Review Policy & Procedure documents with Equity Lens ■ Use Salesforce to add native names to locations (e.g. Wy’East (Mt. Hood))

MOUNTAIN LEAD (LEADERSHIP EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT) AND MEA (MOUNTAIN EDUCATION ALLIANCE) ■ Acting ED Sarah Bradham provided a report on the future of the MEA and

Mountain LEAD program, incorporated herein for reference. Items noted beyond the written summary are as follows: ■ Council members engaged in intense discussion on the details and purpose of the MEA programming and how it works within the existing Mazama course ecosystem. ■ Judith asked Sarah what her goal was in presenting information ■ Sarah proposed hiring a contractor to continue Mazama’s engagement in

MEA programming after Claire Nelson leaves her role in mid-June. This role will in time be managed by a volunteer committee with staff support ■ Sarah stated that she needs approval for contractor salary because it is outside of approved budgetary expenses. Sarah projected needing $10k or less for 2021 ■ Judith moved to stay engaged with MEA project and for Sarah to hire a contractor with FY21 budget cap of $7,500 ■ Lori seconding this motion ■ All council members voted in favor.

Motion passed. ■ Joe recommended the quick creation of volunteer team to plan integration of

MEA into Mazama programming and leadership development structure ■ Sarah agreed that this would be a useful group

MEMBER COMMENT PERIOD ■ No members attended to submit comments.

Joe Eberhardt adjourned the public portion of the meeting at 5:53 p.m. and sent council members on a 5 minute recess. Recording Secretary Kelsey Shaw left the meeting at 5:55 p.m

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Kristi Kose, Kyla Skerry, Brett Halloran, and Mathew Baker traverse Mt. Hood, May 26, 2021. Photo: Jesse Applegate