icarus coordinators collective conference call  9/10/08

present: Mimi, Molly, Michael and Nick

web group update
- meeting last night about database
- looking into cafe press and zazzle online stores for on-demand printing
- considering going with democracy in action for 6 months, they offered to defer the start up fee while we decide
- considering combination of highrise (37signals) and constant contact
- also some combination of drupal modules can be used in addition to (or possibly instead of) these other solutions
- Nick set up captcha on the site so spambots can't make accounts now

education/outreach
- first mad pride class went great... michael got it on video and is working on editing it and getting it up on website
- michael will try to have final job description ready to be posted on the website by friday
- in 6 months fountain house is doing a renovation on the floor icarus' office is, ken (director) doesn't know exactly where to put us.
- relationship with fountain house needs to improve - icarus isn't contributing to fountain house as much as it could (specifically fountain house wants to get more young people and was hoping icarus would be able to draw them)
- we may need to think about a new national office space

admin/development
- budget - should distro materials be split up by group or just all go together?
- if groups need extra materials, that would be by group
- another space would have to go into the budget
- fees (fjc fees are taken out of donation, but future banking fees should be somehow estimated)
- giving each group a budget helps prevent micro managing
- what percentage of our budget are we able to generate ourselves? where does money from tip jars go?
- online storefront/transaction management should help keep track of income
- fundraising calendar would be useful
- Nick and Mimi will look into calendar solutions (openplans?)

support
- people are getting back from the RNC
- silverelf posted about trauma - not a lot of work being done around that in the activist community
- molly has been talking to people who want to start local groups
- molly is trying to understand difference between chapters/local groups and autonomous groups that are more just contacts - gaining clarity
- thinking about how to make more clear what kind of support icarus can offer local groups
- web liason stuff - people often can't find things on the site, molly is taking the role of empties, she will try to get the moderators to help with things like this.

fundraising
- we need to figure out a way to make fundraising more of a collective process
- break stuff into smaller pieces that we can divide up for volunteers
- can we just have just a link to FJC's donation web form?
- fundraising campaign through the forums?
** get consensus next week to create a "donate" link/button

- michael proposes we try video conferences with skype or something similar instead of the wonkavator

- we're going to hold off on the retreat meeting until we have more thoughts on it and more people who can make the call - in the meantime we'll continue to use emails to brainstorm things


*next week:*
-- we will talk about the budget
-- michael will facilitate