NGFFL Board meeting minutes, Jan. 13
The NGFFL Boad conducted its monthly conference call on Jan. 13. Some highlights:
- Overview of officer roles
- Discussion of Gay Bowl timeline
- RFP for Gay Bowl XI
- Bayou City Brawl update
- Rules discussion
- Elections formate
Please find the minutes of that meeting after the jump.
NGFFL Board Conference Call Agenda
Jan. 13, 2010
Jim Buzinski, Jered Becker, Cyd Zeigler and Lance Burage joined the call.
Bayou City Brawl update
Referee clinic might be taking place. Lance said his participation and the NGFFL’s participation should depend on how many teams Houston gets. Right now, Russell and Ricky from Houston said they have interested from eight teams. Their tournament is March 12-14.
Discussion about whether this event should be NGFFL-sanctioned and should the NGFFL send a rules or refs rep there. Lance will look into it.
Molly Lenore joined the call.
Welcome to new board members
How the board has operated; our philosophy.
Goal is to build concensus on the board, not to divisively win 4-3 votes.
Jim has been frustrated by people being late to calls and having a lack of input from board members. There is full agreement to be on time and communicate better.
Shawn Albritton joined the call.
No one can act unilaterally; Issues (like giving an invitation to a city for the Gay Bowl) must be voted on by the board.
Each board member’s role and tasks
Commissioner (Jim Buzinski) is the public face of the group and sets tone and agenda. If there’s a tie, he gets a second vote.
Director of Communication (Cyd Zeigler) focuses on communication to the membership from the board to the members and within the board. Board will funnel communication through the Director of Communication. If you need to change who the contact of a city is, contact Cyd.
More and more communication will be done through the Web site (www.ngffl.com). All board members and all city reps will have posting privileges on the Web site to foster communication; contact Cyd for your log-in. We want more cities to post what’s happening in their cities.
We will start issue-oriented posts (like recruiting players) on the blog from time to time to foster ideas.
Treasurer (Peter Goulet) collects the dues. If a city misses the deadline to pay dues, that city will not be allowed to have a second city. He will give monthly financial statements to the board.
Gay Bowl Liaison (David Donohue) is the go-between for the Board and the host city. He will also work on the Gay Bowl RFP and bids. This person will also coordinate the elections every year and work on obtaining not-for-profit status.
GSB XI Bidding dates:
March 1 – Submit a bid
March 10 – Board meeting to discuss
April 14 – Vote on host city
Fundraising and Sponsorship (Molly Lenore). This person oversees all NGFFL fundraising and sponsorships. A committee will be created to work on this issue. Work with the Gay Bowl sponsors so each city is not having to build sponsor relationships from the ground every year. Create template fundraising and sponsorship documents for cities to use for themselves.
Outreach Director (Jered Becker) will identify people in new cities to start their leagues and with existing cities to help grow their leagues. Seattle is a distinct possibility for a new team. Also Cleveland.
Has two committees working with him: Fundraising ideas; and Recruitment.
Jered wants to figure out ways to build regional tournaments and events so smaller teams and leagues in various regions can help one another.
Get members of existing cities to get their friends in new city into contact with organizers in new cities.
Rules Coordinator (Shawn Albritton). Build working relationship with the Referee Coordinator. Identify issues with the rules and decide how to take action on them. Shawn will have rules issues to discuss at next month’s Board phone call. Time to open up to proposed rule changes will be January-February, and the February NGFFL Board conference call will be about Rules. We will collect Rules proposals between now and then and then discuss in February.
Jim wants to revisit the overtime rule that you can’t get a first down in overtime.
Referee Coordinator (Lance Burage). Identifying plan for officials, recruiting referees.
Elections
Jim has a proposal to change elections. Instead of electing per-position, we would have open board positions that were not tied to particular positions. Once elected, the board would reconstitute and appoint positions.
Timeline for the tournament
Deadlines for payment for tournament, second cities, rosters. Need to be cognizant of cities’ needs and whether they will be able to field a team.
Someone has tossed around the idea of creating a free-agent list that undermanned cities could pull from. Still, all residents of cities need to get the permission of their NGFFL rep to play for any other teams.
To prevent a player from playing in the tournament, does a city need to provide reasons for keeping a resident in bad standing? Or can a local league black-ball a player for any reason they want? What is the standard? Jim will come up with some ideas on what standards the NGFFL should apply.
As the tournament gets more popular, we need to start considering expanding to four days or having multiple locations in a city for the tournament.
One of Jim’s goals for this year is to come up with a standard online Gay Bowl registration system. Jim will work with Phoenix and handle its development. Molly recommended LeagueUSA.com.
Not-for-Profit status
Looking for an attorney to handle this pro-bono and get NGFFL not-for-profit status.
