Dark Clouds Flags and Scarves being held up in the Wonderwall

Photo by Matt Johnson (mattjphoto.net)

The Board of Directors’ next meeting will be held at Iron Door Pub on Monday, May 9 at 7:00pm.

The meeting is open to the public.

Dark Clouds Board of Directors Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

7:00pm

North Room, Pryes Brewing Company

Board Members Present: Sam Solberg, Meagan Weber, Jack McFarland, Andy Kahl, Shaun Sapala, Andy Wattenhofer, Alicia Pedersen, Andrew Bruski, Jackson Smith, Nick Moore

Absent: Maggi Heyer, Jens Selin

Guests: Katrina Heinze and Brandon Tourtelotte, DGS Board members

I. Call to Order

7:09pm

II. Approval of Minutes

Andy K motion to approve, Alicia seconds. No discussion. Motion carries. 

III. Reports of Officers and Committees

a. Officer Elections

Nick Moore will handle officer election facilitation.

Meagan nominates Sam Solberg for President; no other nominations. Sam Solberg remains president.

Sam nominates Meagan Weber for Vice President; no other nominations. Meagan Weber assumes Vice President. 

Jack nominates Jackson Smith for Secretary; no other nominations. Jackson Smith assumes Secretary. 

Andy W. asked to remain Treasurer, no opposition. Andy Wattenhofer will remain the appointed Treasurer by appointment from the board.

b. Treasurer’s Report

Lingering prior year issues (where we’re paying bills from the previous year at the beginning of the next year). Also will eventually need to deal with our ongoing questions about how the money is split in WW. Andy W. has some reports that he is working on to show what we believe we are owed. He is going to work with Andrew Beck (new President of the WW) to try to get to the bottom of this.

c. Committee Updates 

Merch

Not a whole lot to report; Smoke pre-order tee sold about 50 so far. A lot of things coming soon. We will have a non-presale shirt coming out soon. 

Matchday

Update from Maggi via Slack: For matchday we are still in need of some additional volunteers, but the increase in flags so far has gone well and we’re hoping to add some additional flags after the June break. There have been some reports of certain banned chants in the section. I would ask that anyone on the board keep an ear out where they are seated and either intervene if it’s heard, grab myself or Jens, or report it to the in-stadium text line. We also should push that number on the socials before matchdays.

Mar/Com/Social

No major updates. Please continue to use the form for requests. Newsletter going out tomorrow (Wednesday). Alicia suggested highlighting our partners in the newsletter. Tough to expand without more volunteers. Future wants would be software licenses, small scale video equipment. 

Silver Lining

Participated in the Second Harvest event, packed a lot of onions. Bee Run, Purple Stride on the 23rd and 30th, Green Garden Bakery in May; FB4K Ironman Ride and the Target USA Cup are summer, but they need volunteer numbers soon. 

Membership

Scarf handout going okay-232 before the Sunday match handout. Meeting next week to discuss additional handouts, maybe one outside of gameday, prior to pushing shipping. Look to reschedule our canceled happy hour event. 

Partnership

Still trying to touch base with old partners; met with BlackStack today, they want to continue the member benefit, and available for night before parties, meetings, and beer donations. Remind people of their WW card benefits. Should we move promotion of partnerships over to WW? 

Tifo

We will have one for the Chicago match. It is completely done. Need to really push volunteers for deployment. Also will be doing a Pride tifo for our 07/30 match. 

Party Planning Committee

Nothing to report. 

IV. Old Business

  • Update on Action Items from March
  • Update about Pryes (Jack)-table to April or discuss in Slack
    • Pryes is still wondering what the status is with our agreement. Jack has had some conversations about the concerns we expressed with regards to other breweries. Their point is that those breweries are WW partners and they could be our specific Dark Clouds partner. Pryes is trying to give us money, Summit said they can give us beer. Summit doesn’t seem to be super bothered with this potential deal with Pryes (per Jack’s conversation with them). Andy K. suggesting we call them something like our “premier partner for 2022.” We have also discussed tiered partnerships in the past, so this would not be without precedent. 
    • Andy K. motion to approve the Pryes partnership, contingent upon our language change from “exclusive” with something like “premier.” Alicia seconds. Discussion held; touch base with Summit is the biggest suggestion. Motion carries.
  • Other Old Business
    • Jonah Fields, Como Park Schools, Soccer Stars-Did we get a follow up email from him? He reached out to Nick to see if we were still on board. Nick said yes, so he will loop in Meagan to continue planning.

 V. New Business

  • DGS discussion (guests)
    • Introduce Brandon, newest DGS board member and also a thank you for being such good partners with the D4C and charity auction. Nick was great to work with and super helpful to work out the first year kinks. 
    • DGS officially got 501(c)3 status last year which is a huge deal. Goal for this year is to double the D4C numbers, have DGS run their own project, getting Stripe fees down (Andy K. might have a contact to help with this) and other operational things; and then expand social media reach. 
      • Dark Clouds would like to see more of the charitable donations like the Pryes beer; Katrina explained the complicated logistics of that and then how they’ll need to think about that in the future. 
    • DGS could build a volunteer list to provide SGs to increase volunteer hours; engage the broader soccer community. 
  • Pryes partnership/sponsorship-shirts (Bruski)-shirts needs to be done in two weeks
  • FB4K Ironman Rider(s) Sponsorship SL “Achievement” Scarves (Shaun)-we have a few riders interested in participating. 50K, 100K, or 100 mi ride options. Entry fee is $40-60 for a sponsorship. Create a signup for 5 people and if we get more interest, we’ll discuss. Shaun also brought up an SL scarf for repeat volunteers with a certain amount of hours. 
  • Motion to spend money for a 5 person bike team for FB4K and spend money to do a Silver Lining appreciation scarf. No discussion. Motion carries. 
  • Bus (Jack)-bus to Madison, link is live, hopefully we will get enough folks to fill it so we don’t lose money. We do have some donations coming in to subsidize cost and will have beer donated for the riders. 

VI. Open to Board

  • Discussion about ticketing company who reached out to Sam about a white label ticket operation. Not something we are interested. 

VI. Open to Public

  • Nick had his first WW meeting and was pleased with goals that are being set for the org. Nick’s goal is for WW to facilitate not to lead. 

VII. Set Date for Next Meeting

  • Jackson will do on Slack

VIII. Adjournment

8:57pm

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