Board Meeting Minutes 10-15-26

by | Nov 4, 2026 | 2026, Board Minutes | 0 comments

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Board Meeting Minutes
10/15/2026 9:30 pm Eastern/6:30 pm Pacific

 

  1. Director check-ins (2 min per person)
  2. Call to order: Time: 9:47pm EST
  3. Roll call
    1. Present:
      1. Outgoing President – Chris Griffin
      2. Current Vice President – Danny Mercer
      3. Current Secretary – Dale VanVlerah
      4. Returning Board Members – Jeffery Bernstein, Joshua Berntsen, Kyle Denny, Josh Mosley, Kiernan Ocampo
      5. New Board Members – Tito Nieves and Steven Wentzel
    2. Not Present (excused since meeting was rescheduled):
      1. Outgoing Treasurer Paul Gordon (it was his birthday)
  4. Budget Committee
    1. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wMFmk8LF9oxBARLTLwhu38z8XnvDDsd-fSL4wJmTmws/edit?usp=sharing Motion of Approve: Danny, 2nd: Kiernan, Motion Passed: 9-0
  5. Executive Board Elections
    1. President
      1. Nominees
        1. Danny Mercer is voted in as the new president
        2. Joshua Berntsen
        3. Kiernan Ocampo
    2. Vice President
      1. Nominees
        1. Joshua Berntsen is voted in as the new vice president
        2. Kiernan Ocampo
    3. Secretary
      1. Nominees
        1. Dale VanVlerah continues as secretary
        2. Kiernan Ocampo
    4. Treasurer
      1. Nominees
        1. Josh Mosley is voted in as new treasurer
  6. Ongoing Business
    1. Chicago HDC Wrap-Up – there was some confusion about ticket prices and what they covered – survey responses were kind of all over the place with some good experiences and some bad experiences – a vast majority of complaints were about the hotel and not the convention itself
    2. Website Updates – still trying to get more access for Kiernan – password reset requests need president credentials to be able to be processed, Danny will be working with Kiernan on that
    3. Trademark renewal – trademarks (Dads Don’t Babysit and The National At-Home Dad Network) are up for renewal – Chris last spoke with lawyer in July and there hasn’t been updated information as of yet – we have until early 2027 to renew our trademarks
  7. Items to be discussed in Slack
  8. New Business
    1. Planning Team Autonomy – Danny taking over as Planning Team Operation Team Lead, but will be involving other team leads as well
      1. Budget for convention – the budget for the convention has previously been based on ticket sales, but we are now moving toward an actual budget for the convention – Josh and Tito will work on having a budget for
    2. Board Retreat Planning
      1. Location – New Orleans would be ideal, but could be cost prohibitive. Pittsburgh was thrown out as a possibility, but discussion and timeframe will be moved to Slack
      2. Timeframe – discussion will be moved to Slack
    3. New Orleans scouting trip – Steven has offered to do a scouting trip to New Orleans
      1. 5k route
      2. Hotel tour
      3. Community project
    4. Future convention sites
      1. Four or five city rotation – the span of members in the US is: Central – 54, NE – 39, NW – 6, SE – 18, SW – 15, as well as 4 international members
      2. Drury locations – we would like to find Drury locations, but would be willing to move away from Drury if we were to find a place and hotel that worked for us
    5. Huddles, not Zoom.
      1. Internal to our main system
      2. No possible break-ins.
      3. Can not sit in the 'room' until it starts (Con)
    6. Slack landing page
  9. Motion to Adjourn - Motion: Dale, 2nd: Josh, Motion Passed: 9-0, Time: 11:30 EST