Our founding board members are Anne Mitchell and Roxie Speer. This structure meets the minimum requirements for a nonprofit in Colorado, the state in which our Articles of Incorporation were filed.
We are in the process of establishing a larger board to bring more ideas and experience and voices to the table. After our board is fully formed, we will update information about our members and their roles on our Board of Directors page.
In the meantime, we wanted to have more than just Roxie and Anne provide preliminary adoption of our Bylaws and Conflict of Interest Policy in preparation for submitting our 501c3 application to the IRS.
To achieve this goal, we convened two “pre-board” meetings in mid-May 2021 to review the contents of these documents and provide an opportunity to answer questions and obtain feedback.
The structure of the meetings was essentially the same, except that the second meeting was shorter due to fewer attendees and also the free Zoom meeting cut us off. Both meetings were recorded and are available for viewing below.
Minutes of Pre-Board Meetings, May 2021
To include as many coaches as possible, an open invitation was shared on Teacup’s Slack channel about 48 hours before the scheduled weekend calls, as follows.
Minutes
1. Quorum
A quorum was declared based on the presence of the following Teacup team members, serving in a pre-board capacity to provide preliminary adoption of our Bylaws and Conflict of Interest Policy.
May 15th Attendees
May 16th Attendees
- Anne Mitchell
- Antoinette Jordan
- Christine Magnussen
- Jessica Haynes
- Kristen Mercurio
- Maureen Katoll
- Mary Anne Hjelmfelt
- Anne Mitchell
- Daveda James
- Dawn Phillips
- Luciane Mesko
View video from Saturday,
May 15, 2021 at 11:00 am, Central time
View video from Sunday,
May 16, 2021 at 1:00 pm, Central time
2. Introductions & Board Updates
We introduced ourselves in each meeting and then Anne walked the attendees through our draft Bylaws and Conflict of Interest Policy, in preparation for submitting our 501c3 application to the IRS.
Anne reminded everyone that Teacup Wellness is legally permitted to operate as a non-profit and solicit donations without yet having been granted 501c3 status.
The caveat is that we must make all donors aware that donations are not tax deductible. The donation form informs donors of this matter.
Teacup can also apply for grants and other funding while we are awaiting 501c3 approval. We will share the final application materials after submission to the IRS
We discussed the next steps regarding establishing our formal board of directors. Subsequent to the meetings, materials were shared on our site for coaches to review when deciding whether to volunteer for a role on the board; see information about our Board of Directors Nominations.
The initial financial statement will be shared during our first official board meeting, which will be scheduled after the two founding board members have voted on our formal board. You can view our current financial status here.
Very little in terms of outreach is planned until at least 15 coaches are onboarded and active profiles are visible in our directory, which is expected to occur by the end of May or early June, 2021.
3. Adoption Teacup Bylaws
Reviewed and adopted our Bylaws.
4. Adopt Conflict of Interest Policy
Reviewed and adopted our Conflict of Interest Policy.
5. Next meeting
Our inaugural board meeting will be held as soon as we have established our formal board, which is expected to occur by mid-June, 2021.