HRN Board Meeting (virtual)

February 28, 2024

8:00 PM

 

Attendance: Bonnie Courtemanche, Sharon Dennehy, Kari Hamilton, Pam Chatis,  Rachel Minnie, Suzanne Trayhan, Rich Whelan

 

    • November Meeting Minutes
  • Action: Sharon to add employee handbook sick time policy to quarterly report
      • Prior Board Meeting minutes were approved
    • Secretary/Clerk position
      • Jean Player is resigning as secretary/clerk
      • Sharon Dennehy interested in filling the role 
      • Nominated by Suzanne, seconded by Rich. Motion passed
    • Employee Handbook
      • Bereavement Policy
        • Decision made: Agreed that we need a basic bereavement policy with some flexibility depending on the situation.
  • Action: Sharon to circulate a draft policy for review and approval 
      • Vacation Policy
        • Decision made: Modify vacation policy to increase from 2 weeks to 3 weeks after 3 years of service.
  • Action: Sharon to modify handbook
    • Clinic development and expenses
      • Contractor bid reviews are expected to be ready last week of March for review
      • We may need an interim board meeting to review proposals (Action: Sharon to check in with Bonnie mid/late March to determine if we need an ad-hoc board meeting scheduled)
      • Board oversight of clinic plans—Agreed that board should understand critical path milestones and financials and be apprised/involved in major decisions like bid selection
    • Advisory Board
      • Suzanne proposed we consider having an advisory board as suggested by a supporter
      • Board was not convinced this is necessary but may have someone come in and talk about it at a future meeting 
    • New Board (2024-2025)
      • Rachel expressed interest in closing out her board service with HRN after 2023-2024 year
      • Board agreed we should solicit interest in board membership as we did last year
      • Action: Suzanne will aim to have applications available for review in April if possible.
    • Next Board Meeting
  • Action: Suzanne to reschedule April Board meeting to April 23rd at 8pm to resolve conflict with wine bar fundraiser on April 30
  • Quarterly Report (details in quarterly report. Additional meeting discussion highlights here)
    • Personnel changes
    • Financials
      • Charges to printing and copying for 1,000 in January 2023 was related to T-shirt printing and shipping and should be recategorized to fundraising expenses (Action: Kari to reclassify)
    • Fundraisers
      • Valentine’s Day fundraiser was much more successful than expected, due largely to the excellent social media strategy
      • Poorly drawn pets did not do as well and is something we should do every few years
      • Spa Days
        • Continues to be very successful and sells out every time
        • Great group of volunteers that work really well together
        • 70 bunnies in a four-hour window
      • Donor Management Tool
        • Donations collected through PayPal are difficult to allocate because there is a lump sum payout monthly without a lot of detail; Suzanne will be switching to Zeffy for donor management, which has better detail available and is free to us.
        • Suzanne demo’d PayPal and Zeffy
    • Grants
      • applied for MAC grant
    • Shelter
      • It was discovered after Julies’ departure that while rabbit exercise logs were maintained going back to 2021, Volunteer logs only existed back two weeks before she left
    • Clinic 
    • Foster Homes
    • Hotline
    • Volunteers

 

Board meeting adjourned at 9:30pm.