Minutes from the Board Meeting February 3, 2008

Meeting Location:   Conference Call

Minutes prepared by:   Barbara Zoloth

Approved by unanimous vote of the board on:   February 17, 2008

Attending:

Absent:

Next Conference Call:

The agenda was not published at least four days in advance of the meeting as required. Because all seven members of the board were not available, the Board agreed that we could conduct the meeting, discuss agenda items, cast straw votes, and submit email or Yahoo Group votes for any matters which required formal action by the Board. The following items were discussed:
  1. Name of the organization:

    After considerable discussion, the group agreed on the following name: North American Same-Sex Partner Dance Association to be abbreviated NASSPDA.

    Agreement was first reached on using "Dance" instead of "Dancesport".

    The next discussion was on the use of Same-Sex (vs. Equality), which the group generally felt better described what we are and would also be better understood by a wider audience.

    Finally, we agreed to add the word "Partner" to help distinguish what we're about from the greater sense of the word "dance". Some if us preferred using "ballroom", but it was suggested that too many people (at least in some regions) interpret that as having the limited definition of standard or smooth dances but exclusive of Latin, rhythm, swing, etc. We landed on this choice as being the clearest and also the most easily understood by the widest audience. We recognized that some people may think it includes forms like country western (which is not our primary focus), but we felt we could make our focus clear enough in places like our mission statement to take care of that.

    • We agreed to call for a vote on:

      North American Same Sex Partner Dance Association

      with NASSPDA as the abbreviation.

  2. Maintain Calendar of North Amercian Competitions:

    Richard and Barbara offered to take on the task of creating such a calendar on the organizational website. No vote was required.

  3. Bylaws and Structure:

    Rather than go into a detailed discussion of bylaws, we agreed to identify some subtasks and to designate sub-committees to address them off-line. The particular tasks identified for now are:

    • Membership and dues structure: Richard, Winter, and Barbara volunteered. (Sonja will assist)
    • Mission statement: Pat, Benjamin, and Citabria volunteered. (Sonja will join this sub-committee)
    • Board terms and how Board officers are chosen: Richard, Winter, Benjamin, and Barbara volunteered
    • The attending members hoped that Sonja would offer to assist on one or more of the sub-committees.

    Issues that came up in the discussion of bylaws and structure:

    • One concern will be identifying what benefits members receive.
    • Other topics that were raised but put off to future meetings were voting procedures (including how to define voting members and what items do they need to vote on) and committee structure.
    • Benjamin referred us to www.lectlaw.com/forms/f162.htm This site is for the Lectric Law Library which provides forms for not-for-profit organizations with a general outline. Their suggestion is to be as precise as possible in filling in the forms because states have differing requirements.
  4. Social Dancing:

    We discussed the importance of supporting social dancing. We all agreed to the need to remember the importance of the social dancers. What will social dancers get out of being members in this association? Richard suggested that their primary benefit would be what the organization will do to create support for maintaining and growing social dancing.

    In Germany where there are same-sex dance clubs, the majority of the club members are social dancers who don't compete although part of the dues pay for competitors' expenses.

    One possibility is to consider lower entry fees to events for members vs. non-members. We will consider this at a future date and in terms of specific events.

  5. North American Same-Sex Championship:

    It was proposed that the Five Boroughs Competition in NY in August 2008 be designated the North American title event. Per Benjamin, Richard and Solomon (the organizers of this event) are definitely interested in this happening. Benjamin is scheduled to meet with them next week and will begin discussions with them if the Board votes to approve this.

    We discussed different ways this could be implemented and all agreed that the simplest and most preferable approach, at least for this year, would be the following:

    • Specify that, for the 208 Championships, we will use the same rules as have been used for the previous 3 years of US Championship events
    • Designate that the winners of the 4 main divisions (men's & women's standard & Latin) be awarded the title of North American Champions with the possibility of adding a Show Dance category.
    • The title will be the North American Same-Sex Partner Dance Champion [Note: is this contingent on approval of the organization's name?]

    We had further discussion about future North American Championships with the following points raised:

    • The organization should, at a minimum, pay for the awards.
    • It would be ideal to designate a time window within which the NA Championships are held.
    • We would very much like the title event to move around geographically.
    • The possibility was raised of the 2009 title event being in St. Louis.
    • Update from Sonja: They would prefer to wait until 2010 to host.
    • The organization that put on the Out Games in Montreal is planning a North American sporting and cultural event in Vancouver in July 2011. Pat has committed to putting on a same-sex ballroom competition at this event, which could also serve as the 2011 North American Championship title event.
    • Board members are likely to participate in these championship events. (Benjamin shared that he will be judging at the Five Boroughs event). We agreed that Board member participation in this event in any capacity is not considered to be a conflict of interest.