PCD Organization Meeting - 11/4/2013

Dear Dancers,

We had a lively meeting on Monday night -- exploring and making some decisions about a governance structure for Portland Community Dancers that can support and sustain our community-led Sunday dance offerings.

We identified lots of tasks/roles that we need to have organized for each Sunday, as well as for any kinds of other events (retreats? workshops? other dance offerings?) that the community may decide it wants. Here is a list of the tasks/roles we brainstormed:

Tasks and Roles

• DJ coordination
• Greeters
• Welcomers for newbies
• Set-up, breakdown
• Venue coordination
• Equipment management
• Communication and publicity
• Feedback coordination
• Money management, etc.

We also noted that we have some visioning and research work to do. Here’s what we came up with in that category:

Visioning and Research

• Our mission
• How we get our legal ducks in a row (insurance, bank account, taxes, etc.)
• What we can learn from other community-led dance groups
• How we may we want to consider the pros and cons of membership
• Do we want to consider growing beyond Sunday offerings
• What our feedback process could look like
• How we keep peace within our community

We made some decisions on governance going forward. All decisions were made by consensus among those attending -- which is how we’ve made all the decisions so far and seems like it could be a good way to do things in the future but we haven’t decided that yet. Here’s what we did decide about governance:

Decisions on Governance

We will have a core group of people (4, 5, 6, more?) who will make sure that the tasks and roles are covered for our Sunday dances.

The core group members will serve 6 month terms, with term-limits, to make sure that we maintain a vibrant and involved community-led organization.

The core group members’ terms will be staggered (with half-or-so of the old members leaving and a new half-or-so of core members entering (probably every three months)) to ensure continuity and prevent burnout.

The core group members do not have permanent roles or tasks assigned to them as individuals. Rather -- as a group they will determine how the individuals in the current group will oversee the management of tasks and roles.

We imagined that the core group will coordinate a group of community volunteers to handle many of the tasks and roles.

As core group members leave their roles (at the end of their terms), new openings will be announced in advance to the community and we will hold regular (quarterly?) larger community meetings to select (accept?) new core group members.

The core group does not at this time make visioning and research decisions on behalf of the Portland Community Dancers, but instead coordinates the visioning and researching process. The larger community makes decisions of this nature at our larger (quarterly?) meetings.

We also made some decisions about next steps.

Decisions about Next Steps

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, Nov 13 from 7 - 9 pm at Kellie’s house (198 High St, Portland. 3rd Floor Door on Left).

As part of our agenda, we aspire to finalize decisions about how and when we will select our first core group so that we can announce it to the greater community and include everyone who is interested in the

process.

We also are likely to include time to discuss and make progress on some of our Visioning and Research issues. Extra interest was expressed around the mission statement, finance management, and membership.

Thanks to all who have attended and helped with this so far. If you have any questions you can call our number (207-200-8149), email us at portland.me.dancers@gmail.com or find us on Facebook at Portland Community Dance.

See you on Sundays!