Minnesota United supporters waving flags and cheering in the Supporters Section.

© Daniel Mick Creative, 2019

The Board of Directors’ next meeting will be held over Zoom on Monday, June 7 at 7:00pm.

The meeting is open to the public. Please email president@dark-clouds.com to request access to the online meeting.

Dark Clouds Board of Directors Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, May 4th, 2021

7:00pm

Zoom

Board Members Present:  Sam Solberg, Meagan Weber, Andrew Bruski, Andy Wattenhofer, Alicia Pederson, David Zeller, Shaun Sapala, Nick Rodriguez, Maggi Heyer, Ty Hoagland

Absent: Jack MacFarland, Andy Kahl

Guests: Neal Logan

I. Call to Order

7:09 p.m.

II. Approval of Minutes

Motion to approve: Nick, Andrew seconds

III. Reports of Officers and Committees        

a. Treasurer’s Report (Financial report/status update)

  • Nach is the new WW Treasurer
    • Has already initiated the formation of a Finance Committee, composed of Andy W, an accountant, and representatives from Red Loons and TNE. They will be tasked with setting timelines for solving some of our ongoing issues.
    • Nach has set a goal by the end of May to have reporting on the financial situation of the SGs. Meetings will be bi-weekly for the foreseeable future.
  • Eventually, Andy W will hand off the WW finances to the accountant once they have a chance to meet and go over everything.
  • With the pass-through dollars not coming the way they normally do, WW will need to be a little more aware of spending as we continue through the pandemic.
    • We may still have money coming from the team re: pass-through dollars; we need someone to figure out when we will be getting these payments. Sam will ask WW.
  • Accountability and reporting is our main interest at this point. 

b. Committee Updates 

Merch

  • Sold just under 250 memberships so far.
  • Merch table is back at Black Hart; sold a few memberships on Saturday. We’re still doing mostly pre-orders.
  • Pride shirt will be released in a few weeks; pride scarf will be released in June (no pre-order for that).
  • Also beer glasses will be a new merch item-these will be sold only in person at BH to avoid us having to ship them. 

Matchday

  • We’ve had matchdays! This past Saturday went much better
  • Thunderwall is a necessity, no matter how many people are in the stadium.
  • Trying to track down some flags (we think they are at the office), but we may want to look into getting more smaller ones that we can pass out at matches.
  • We will know more about next batch of matches after the governor makes his announcement next week. 

Mar/Com/Social

  • Actively seeking volunteers!!
  • Plans for tradition explainer videos as restrictions lift
  • Hootsuite may be increasing price, we might consider moving to a new platform

Silver Lining

  • We had the River Cleanup event a couple of weeks ago; event went well and La Dona after event was good as well. 
  • SAYEC field lining this past Sunday
  • Upcoming: Green Garden Bakery will be this Saturday (we have a bit of a break after this)
  • DCCCC tracker will be up and running.
    • First collection is after the SAYEC season is over, working on getting Neal the funding prior to the season next year so he isn’t incurring those costs out of pocket.
    • Discussing an award attached to this fundraising and give it to the player who earned the most money. Need a fun name for this award (i.e. “Troublemaker of the Year”; “Frankie Calvo Appreciation Award”) and an idea for design (framed bill, red card, etc). 

Membership

  • Had an in-person scarf hand out at BH prior to the home opener. We had about 100 pick ups.
    • All others have been mailed (thanks to Erin in Merch for her help getting mailing labels printed out).
    • We had a few folks who were surprised to hear that they had to pay for their scarves, but for the most part people were fine. 
  • Membership survey-we made a mis-step in posting the link publicly and have what we assume are a lot of spam responses. We are looking at ways to prevent this in the future, but also we are looking at ways to filter through those spam responses.
    • Andy W has access to Qualtrics which we can use in the future.
  • We had people donate their shipping from the in-person pickup, which raised an additional $400 to go with our United Way donation. 

Partnership

  • Making plans for a meeting this month. 
  • Zeller is in contact with Summit to get our beer made; hopefully by end of summer. 
  • Nick is working with Ninth Street Soccer partnership (they are brand new, so it will take a little time to work out that relationship). Could be an opportunity for a unique partnership for us.
    • Maybe rent out the space for DC pickup games, host a social event.
  • If we hear of any partner businesses giving anyone trouble with the cards, let partnerships know. 

Tifo

  • “United Together” banner was successfully hoisted for home opener
  • Hoping to plan rest of this season’s tifo when we get an updated idea of finances from new Wonderwall board, expecting that to come sometime late this month
  • In the meantime, may try to do some type of small banner, but currently no concrete plans

IV. Old Business

  1. Update on Action Items from 04/05/21
    1. No action items from last meeting
  2. Other Old Business
    1. None

V. New Business

  • In person/virtual watch party discussion
    • In person-at what point do we want to transition from telling people where they can watch to “we’re hosting a watch party”? We will keep looking at the restrictions, but also work on  promoting our partners and keep reviewing as things relax. Going back to a pre-pandemic discussion, do we want to look at having an ambassador at each official watch party location? Who is responsible for a watch party captain sign-up and defining what it means to be one? Matchday and Partnerships will start jointly working on this. 
    • At what point do we cease virtual watch parties? Does this coincide with hosting watch parties? The challenge with virtual is getting folks to be on the panel. 
    • We may need to use the governor’s announcement as a guiding force to next steps, as well as see how many people actually join in. 
  • Affiliation update
    • Sam had a call with the team today (Zack from TNE and Sean Sittnick were on the call). They will be emailing all of the NEW 2021 WW members to request their affiliation to DC, TNE, or RL and then will be passing that info along to the SGs at the end of May.
    • This means we will have more scarf requests coming our way shortly. Also need to look for that pass through money. 
  • 2022 renewals supposedly have a deadline to affiliate by end of month (this is the first we are hearing about this, but keep an eye out). This means we need to know if DG is going to affiliate next year. 

VI. Open to Board

  • Have we talked about setting up a two pole/DIY tifo session?
    • Yes, Ty has thought about it, but waiting on WW.
  • Any more thought to repainting/reusing the tifo we already have?
    • There are reservations about this due to material and the message on the United Together banner. Plan to reach back out to the team about using their section covers. 

VI. Open to Public

  • Question regarding the National flags – do the Dark Clouds want to own this display?
    • Reimbursement comes from WW.
    • Great question-likely need to add this to the budgeting discussion when we get a more clear picture of the finances.
    • This has not been something we have really considered in the past, but likely will find its home in WW.
  • Tifo rigging from TCF (chain, etc) was not in the bucket that was brought from the office.
  • Brian Quarstad’s Lifetime Achievement Award was never delivered-could this be at the office?
    • We can check.
  • MSS reached out about putting together a basket for their silent auction. 

VII. Set Date for Next Meeting

Meagan will set up on Slack

VIII. Adjournment

8:59pm

                       

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