January 2014 Strategic Planning Committee Meeting Minutes

January 2014 Strategic Planning Committee Meeting Minutes

Location: 201B, Rutherford South, University of Alberta
Chair: Caylie
Members present:

• Doug
• Sarah
• Chris Chan
• Leila

Key Components of our Strategic Plan

• A collaborative Google doc is available here: EBC Strategic Plan 2014-2019
• Executive summary (to be completed last)
• Mission (completed by previous board)
• Vision (completed by previous board)
• Values (not determined, but may be useful)
  • this committee would like to pursue organizational values; it may be fair to ostracize certain behaviours
• SWOT analysis (completed during November board retreat - will require further analysis, as well as input from Justin, Coreen, and Matt)
• Goals (not yet started)
  • do these capitalize on SWOT opportunities?
• Key performance indicators (not yet started)

Committee Involvement

• To what degree is each person on the committee able to be involved?
  • Will this cover the amount of work that needs to be done to reach our organizational SMART goal of having a 1-, 3-, and 5-year strategic plan by next fall?
    • Leila: able to attend every meeting, but may not be able to contribute to work outside of committee meetings
    • Chris Chan: has personal ideas as well as institutional history, and is able to help write the plan
    • Caylie: available to attend meetings, and help with research and writing
    • Doug: available to attend meetings, and help with research and writing; may need help gaining institutional memory and parsing things out
    • Sarah: available on a case-by-case basis; available for some meetings and tasks, particularly research
    • best to ask for specific commitments from committee members

Goals, Membership, and Survey

• Ideally, EBC members, staff, board members, volunteers, and the general public (and others?) will have some input into our goals. In order to do that, we will need to devise some sort of survey or interview process in the next few months (preferably weeks).
  • Who is able to help create, distribute, and analyze this data?
  • To whom and how should we distribute it?
  • What kinds of information do we want/need to obtain?
• Recent conversations in both policy and strategic planning committee meetings have involved questions about EBC membership and how its benefits are more closely tied to the BikeWorks shops than our other services. (I [Caylie] recognize that there are some people who have an EBC membership simply to support the organization and not to use the shop - do we have numbers on this? Do we have numbers on how many The Spoke/You Can Ride Two/one-off educational/etc. program participants purchase memberships, or do they receive them for free?) In the November board meeting, Neil brought up that EBC has a number of programs and services, but for years I have used “EBC” and “BikeWorks” interchangeably, and my impression is that others do too. This has implications for who our survey gets sent to and who it doesn’t if it goes out to “membership,” and therefore has implications for our organizational goals and the direction we take with advocacy.
• Just as a reminder, our services include:
  • BikeWorks
  • Women & Trans Days
  • Rentals
    • Bikes
    • Bike Trailer
    • Racks
    • Facility
    • Boombike
    • Generators
    • People-powered parties
  • Recycling
  • Youth and Adaptive Programs
    • The Spoke
    • You Can Ride Two
    • You Can Bike Too
  • Education
    • Public courses
    • Private Courses
    • Lunch and Learn
  • Bike registry
  • Doctor Bike
  • Community-based projects
    • Complete Streets Strathcona
    • West Downtown Complete Streets
    • Alberta Bicycle Commuters’ Conference
    • Cycle Edmonton
    • Bikeology
    • Ghost Bikes
    • Bikes on Transit
    • Advocacy
• Chris Chan: most members are those who have bought bikes, and the second largest group of members are those who have bought memberships to use the shop
  • members who receive a membership with a bike are not particularly committed to the organization, and most are lower-income
  • those who purchase memberships tend not to use BikeWorks, and tend to be higher-income - these are the most engaged members, and many used to be involved in EBC
  • the people who get memberships for BikeWorks typically don't renew their memberships
• Doug: use what data we can to empower the organization (particularly in advocacy) - therefore, membership management is important (i.e., a membership database)
  • Chris: we currently have a spreadsheet that has all that info. Chris has started a database - which makes it easier to analyze reports - but it's not finished (he was volunteering then). Now there are some good point-of-sale systems for free, so it is NOT worth it to try to make our own custom system
  • Leila: The Good Life has a new membership database - Leila will follow up to learn a little more
  • Chris: the data is there, we just have to do the analysis
    • Excel scripts
    • determining which metrics to use
    • the data only goes back to 2012, so it is difficult to tease out trends
    • Chris wants to do another membership drive with mailouts, but there is no data to prove whether this pays for itself
      • either way, a membership drive with mailouts has value in terms of engagement
        • Doug: let's try to develop those trends over 5 years
• We did a SWOT analysis, but we haven’t really dreamed big. Can we spend some time talking about big ideas and things that we love from other cities, without editing out any ideas at first, to see where that could take us long-term? What is the best way to do this? In person? By e-mail? By online poll? I’d suggest that the best way to brainstorm for something like this is to have a bunch of people together in person, feeding off each other’s ideas, over a short period of time (1 hour?). When could we make this happen?
  • Doug: we need to align ideas with a set of values
  • Chris has a goal for the city (our vision) and ideas of how to do that (which is our mission) - see EBC General -> EBC Plan
    • BikeWorks is important as a business, but not our primary reason to exist
      • Caylie: good business is run by looking at the market, not looking at how you want to run your business

Charitable Status

• I [Caylie] believe that Doug has taken on the position of point person for this. Our business model and the place of charitable status will likely play a big role in this strategic plan. We will require input on this from staff, board members, EBC members, and volunteers, and we will also need to work closely with the advocacy committee to ensure we meet the required criteria. Furthermore, accountability into what we do on an advocacy level will need to be accounted for to maintain charitable status. We may find out that we have more capacity to advocate on behalf of cyclists in Edmonton, and we may find out that this transition will hinder current and future efforts based on limitations; we won’t know until that kind of information is tracked.
  • Doug: accountability is key; only 10% of resources can be devoted to advocacy - is this hard data available from an auditor's perspective?
  • Chris: advocacy only applies to specific things
    • direct lobbying
    • telling members to write councillors
    • have to be specifically advocating for a policy change from the government
      • going to meetings to discuss the width of bike lanes, for example, etc., isn't classified as advocacy
  • Caylie: can the policy and advocacy committees get together to develop a volunteer tracking policy and practice?
  • Sarah: we need a percentage on advocacy resources for applications
    • Action Item: Chris is to get these numbers (i.e., a quantified percentage of resources); Sarah, Doug, and Matt to follow up
    • Action Item: Steve assigned to figure this out from volunteers (Caylie to get in touch with Steve)

Brainstorming

• Sarah: we should have a less-formal meeting to brainstorm - maybe at the launch of the new BWS?
  • What would we like the board to be like?
    • time commitment, etc.