Present

Voting: Filipo Dorcas, Alekso Miller, David Beck, Charlotte Burton, Tim Rice, Fred Meyer III, Jane Shevtsov

Non-voting: Vilĉjo Harris

The mission statement is read, and a quorum is declared. No changes are requested to the agenda. Per board procedures, last month’s minutes were automatically approved.

Reports

Central Office

UEA has been paid $503 for our aligitaj membroj (po $1.78 who was a member of E-USA and not of UEA). Everyone who asked for birthday greetings will now get their birthday greetings online. Candidates have been sending in biographies and photos, and the voting process is being worked on. The issue with the 1-800 number seems to finally be fixed. For a while, it was out of service, and no one seemed to have access to it. The membership committee had a meeting with Chuck Mays about NASK, and it is recommended that E-USA send some money to NASK to sponsor the gufujo there, to publicize E-USA to those who attend NASK who are not members.

Treasurer

The treasurer has nothing to add beyond the regular reports the board has been given. We are awaiting status updates on Gary Grady, as we have not heard from him regarding some of our regular reports, and last information was that he may not be well. Action Item: Phil will request updates from Chuck Mays and Anna Bennett regarding Gary Grady. David clarifies that tradition indicates that now is the time to start hammering out the budget for next year, so that we can have it ready by our big face-to-face meeting in August. In 2023, we will need to host our own Landa Kongreso once again, but we do not currently know where that is. The local group who hosts it would prepare a proposed budget for the kongreso. The Landa Kongreso has its own budget for the purpose of calculating registration costs per person. Action Item: David will reach out to Bill to put together a budget proposal for next year. Phil clarifies that the spreadsheet is relatively simple for the budget, and that the goal is for it to be easily understandable to members. A question is raised concerning investment income for the 777 fund, which shows a different investment income amount than others. This is because of a computational matter due to the previous state that this fund was in. Phil draws the board’s attention to the donations budgeted and the donations thus far achieved. If we are to achieve this, we will likely need to be intentional about a donations campaign. Tim RICE steps out of the meeting early at this time.

President

Phil mentions the great disparity in members between UEA and E-USA - the people who are members of one group but not the other - either members of UEA that are not members of E-USA, or members of E-USA that are not members of UEA. Currently, E-USA has a little over 500 members, and UEA has around 600 members in the USA. This is indicative of a lack of communication somewhere, such that so many people who are active in one organization are unaware of the moves being taken by the other. Phil speaks from an advertising perspective of the amount of communication that is required for a person to become familiar and comfortable with some new item or service. He suggests that we need to use more than simply Usona Esperantisto and find more and better ways to share with our members and with the international community regarding what all we in E-USA are doing as an organization, as currently neither our members nor the international Esperanto community are clear on what E-USA has been doing in recent years. Action Item: Phil will write up a draft roadmap to share with the international community regarding the recent and planned activities of E-USA. Jane suggests that UEA membership includes a greater number of obvious benefits, to a greater extent than E-USA does. She suggests that restructuring our website to make our benefits and communication more clear to visitors. She therefore recommends that website redesign be a higher priority in order to organize the information we already have in such a way as to make it clearer and easier to find.

Moving on to the UK, Phil suggests that we should have a table at the movada foiro and that we should help to a greater extent with the planning, advertising, etc., for the universala kongreso. Action Item: After the meeting, the board is to discuss this suggestion on Slack after the meeting and create a plan for participating in this. The movada foiro is an event near the start of the UK wherein all nations represented can have a table for various activities.

Moving on, Phil reminds the board of Tim B’s suggestion that E-USA sponsor the NASK gufujo as a way to advertise for E-USA at NASK. This was brought up at the membership meeting. The discussion turns to where this funding would come from. Phil suggests that it falls under publicity. The Wolff Publicity Fund is currently without a fund manager, due to David Wolff leaving Esperanto-USA. A brief discussion arises on how to best show respect to David Wolff’s contributions and wishes, either by changing or keeping the name of the Wolff Publicity Fund. Until a manager is found, the board is temporarily in control of that fund. As such, the board has an option to vote to support the gufujo at NASK this year out of that fund. Phil proposes that the Wolff Publicity Fund provide up to $120 to the gufujo of NASK 2022, to be made available to Murray Merner. Jane seconds. Unanimously approved.

Phil asks that the board look over the items on “farendaj agadoj” on our meeting agendas and discuss which things are completed, and out of the non-completed items, what the priorities are. The board has a Trello, which is already tied to Slack somehow. Charlotte, as secretary, is also getting weekly reminders to remind the board of action items. Action Item: Charlotte or Phil will figure out how to add people to Trello.

Film Festival

27 films were made this time, including many from Africa. Next time, we will try to get more involvement from Asian countries as well. Alekso speculates that the larger prizes are helping garner interest and submissions and affirms that some of the repeat filmmakers for the festival are improving their cinematography. Alekso is working on delegating out some of the tasks of this film festival, to make it more sustainable in the long term, with fair success so far. We are now also seeing an Esperanto film festival culture building up, with some films referencing past films as well.

Misc

Fred brings up another matter regarding Indian Schools that E-USA may want to take a particular stance on. Phil and Fred discuss a local interfaith event in which the local Esperanto club will take part, which is the annual reading of the names of Holocaust victims, along with lighting candles for the people who died in the Holocaust, which includes the Esperantistoj who died in the Holocaust.