2019 Statement of Intent Julie Harris
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My name is Julie Harris and I am running for board of directors for Dallas Makerspace. I am Julie-Harris on Talk. I have been an add-on member since 2016. I created and paid for this new account in order to run for board of directors and I am willing to pay $60 per month should I be allowed to run. It is my interpretation of the following rule that I can run with the approval of the chairs of Infrastructure and Finance.
Voting Rights
All members start off as Supporting Members, with no voting rights.[5]
A Supporting Member must have been a member for the immediate past 90 days to become a Regular Member. Exceptions will be considered on a case by case basis jointly by the Infrastructure and Finance Chairs.
A member’s application to change from Supporting Member to Regular Member must be submitted: Thru the DMS Voting Registration site at https://votingrights.dallasmakerspace.org allowing you to add or remove your own voting right Via email to [email protected] from the email address registered on their account, Thru other electronic registration approved by the Board of Directors. Rights will be effective upon receipt of the e-mail or electronic registration. Members added via the Family rate will not be allowed voting rights. https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Rules_and_Policies#Voting_Rights
I am currently working as a corporate controller. I have more than fifteen years of experience in accounting that includes a mix of public and private accounting. I have extensive experience cleaning up financials, increasing department efficiency, developing policies and procedures and managing expense reports and credit cards. That said, I am not promising to work miracles as I know enough to understand that a financial clean up can be a more than full-time job for a year or two and full disclosure - time will always be a challenge for me. I also want to make it clear that I am not interested in blaming or judging anyone who has spent their time volunteering for free to help with DMS accounting. I appreciate the work of everyone because I understand how much work is likely involved and how accounting can easily become overwhelmed and understaffed.
My focus for DMS would be to improve transparency, particularly around financial transactions and to empower teams to improve separation of duties around financial transactions and possibly Talk administration.
My 2019 goals for DMS would be:
1) Use a DMS Finance e-mail address for communication with outside accountants that is accessible by members of the finance team.
2) Determine which, if any, communications should be privileged. With the help of the lawyer determine if members of the finance team should sign an NDA but at the same time separate governance of the finance team from the board and create a process for finance team members to report concerns.
3) Reconcile bank accounts monthly if they are not currently being reconciled.
4) Review processes for transaction entry and consider ways to streamline and become more efficient.
5) Assist committee chairs by tasking the finance team with publishing monthly committee financial reports so they can put their valuable, volunteer time to better use and not have to learn accounting in addition to everything else they do for DMS. Ideally, this would involve creating a standard financial report template that includes beginning cash, plus cash receipts, less purchases equal ending cash and interested chairs could review for accuracy before the report is published.
6) Increased transparency around procurement, particularly credit card transactions.
7) Reduce handling of cash wherever possible.
8) Leverage my corporate experience, specifically experience reading and negotiating contracts to assist the expansion in any way that I can.
Other 2019 interests include:
1) Research forum software and consider switching. Specifically, my concerns include the absence of a block or ignore feature and the possibility of admins reading private messages without being logged. This will not be my decision and I would not be heavily involved due to interest #2.
2) Separate Talk administration from the board. Discuss whether or not board members should also be Talk moderators and admins.
3) Discuss proxies. I am not sure what the “right” answer is but I don’t think I could vote to confirm a chair who shows up to an election with more proxies than people attending the election.
Nominated by: Erik Smith, Scott Blevins, Ken Purcell, M. Blatz, Stephenie Webb
