Board of Directors (BoD)

Structure Overview: how the Board is structured, how elections are held, document hierarchy (needs an update)

Coordinating Committee

Board of Directors

DoC Intro

One major lesson I’ve learned is that every year 550 members form a deep connection to their specific co-op house. I absolutely love the strength, support, and passion that exudes from our 16 unique co-ops. There has been a lot of discussion on how to create that same level of support for the entirety of “the ICC.” So I’m hoping to use this platform to shift this narrative of “the ICC” as an ambiguous administrative entity to the foundation that allows for the connection to specific co-op homes. What happens to one of us, impacts us all.

Therefore, welcome to my house, Rochdale. We’re located at 337 E. William and offer four floors of chaotic cooperation in service of our community. Our amenities include a convenient downtown location, multiple open office spaces, cable/internet, multiple computers, printing and duplication, delicious candy, crafts and HeRSTORY (archives, organizational data, etc.) We’re proud to introduce the newly renovated basement that includes a shower! Now folks can bike and/or exercise to the House without smelling up the joint. Our leadership team consists of:

• Our President (GM Nick)
• Our Board Rep (DoC Mvp)
• Our Work Manager (DHS Ron & HSC Lenny)
• Our Treasurer (DFS Ann)
• Our Maintenance Manager (MD Geoff)
• Outside Maintenance Managers (Danny, Andrew, Deric)
• Our Education and Food Steward (DET Patti)
• Our Social Chair (AOC Susan)
• Our Tech Steward (DoC, John, Mohammad)

Our 47 housemates turnover every year

Veterans: CoCo
First-Second year housemates: BoD & HP’s

As one could imagine, we face similar strength, support, passion and challenges as most houses. We have to do dish raids after committee and team meetings, we hold meetings that last for hours on end, we struggle with folks doing their work chores (Member Assistance Program), we never have enough parking, we laugh, cry, and discuss cooperation for far too many hours than humanly possible. We learn from the various backgrounds, degrees and experiences that walk through our doors yearly. We try our best and yet we can always do better-be better-as a community.

The purpose of Strategic Planning is to set overall goals for the ICC and to develop a simple, easy to articulare, and shareable plan to achieve them. We developed and approved a five-year plan during the Summer of  2018 through member brainstorming sessions, staff meetings, and BoD workshops. The Strategic Plan consists of:

• ICC Vision: The “dream” of the ICC; what we wish/hope/want to be
• ICC Mission: A clear, succinct statement of who we are and what we do
• Co-operative Principles: Statements that define the underlying structure of our community
• Member Wishlist (MWL): This is a positive restatement of the problem being addressed that begins to point toward the desired outcome. Members unearthed and defined these issues through three sessions open to all members. These describe what is important to members.
• Long Term Objectives (LTO): Helps us achieve broad, long-term outcomes by providing a structure, focus, and consistency over the five years of the plan. These describe what we want to accomplish in the long term.
• Annual Objectives (AO): The AO specifically describes what must be done to achieve our long-term strategic objectives. These describe what we can reasonably accomplish in a year.

Long Term Planning Steps

Short – Term Planning Steps – 1 Year

Some other planning thoughts:

• Planning works best if done on a regular basis
• The most important thing about planning, besides doing it, is remembering that you can’t possibly do all the things that you’d like to do. Our fertile brains will always have MANY more ideas than we can accomplish.
• Appreciate what does get done! Give yourself and others lots of praise and positive feedback.
• Understand & accept that we won’t all agree 100% on 100% of topics.

This is a new process. . . it’s going to take some time to review and finalize next steps.

1-5th: Members pay charges

6th: Members who haven’t paid will be fined $15

Treasurers will be given a report of housemates charged with late fines (starting in October)

16th: Members who owe over $500 will be sent a Tier Status Notice

Next Month we begin again, in addition to activating Tier 2 Notice to Quit + File

The chart below shows the number of members at each house that has a balance of over $500. Futuristically we’ll include the number of members who have received late fines (they were suspended during the Sp/Su and not processed in Sept. given houses still setting their budgets so charge posting gets delayed.) Trends we’ve seen thus far are that several members carry a months balance, meaning they pay Sept in Oct and Oct in Nov and mostly are caught up by the end of the term. Additionally, we have several folks who over $1,000 and have not taken any action to address the debt. We will need to make some decisions soon about our thresholds and when we are going to pursue eviction and the house role in accountability for the floating folks.

October Update: We processed late fees for the first time. We had 65 folks charged on the 6th and as of the 10th we’ve had almost half pay their balance. That means the $72,000 debt reduced to $26,000.

The Finance Committee

The VP for Finance is responsible for chairing the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee convened 9 times for 1.5 hours each between June and August. The Finance Committee discussed topics such as new house policies for credit cards, changes to the ICC investment policy, and new post-SBA processes on the house and Finance Department levels. The Finance Committee also developed inclusive and equitable ways to evaluate international student scholarship applicants. 

During these meetings the committee evaluated: 28 Fall/Winter MLK Scholarships, 3 Spring/Summer MLK Scholarships, 2 payment plans, 1 ICC Spring/Summer Affordability Scholarship, and 1 Fall/Winter MLK Scholarship Appeal.