April 7, 2020 - NAC Meeting

Archive of Projects/Programs National Advisory Council (NAC)
1

Attendees

NAC: Ben, Em, Tyrek Veronica, Bonnie, Sabrah, Melanie, Janet, Thad,
CFA: Hashim, Veronica, Filsan, Meredith, Tom

Pre-Reading

Purpose

NAC & Network team convene to make decisions, discuss strategic questions, and show up for and with each other as leaders of our Network.

Outcome

  • Deep dive & decision on:
  • Clarity on / Visibility into:
    • NAC Chair opening
    • Priority Action Areas
    • EITC Brigade work
    • Go-forward Fellowship plan

Process

  1. NAC Chair selection (10 min)

  • Review job description

  • Propose election process

    • Email nominations to “brigade-info@codeforamerica.org” over the next two days (deadline eod Thursday?)
    • Get permission to nominate someone other than yourself)
      1-2 minute video to capture your thoughts (spirit is to be lightweight)
      Suggestions: format other than a video are ok too.

  • Concerns

    • Heavy lift. Experience from previous chair was that the role competed with other priorities.
    • Responsibilities could be leaner if distributed across the entire NAC
    • Suggestions: Co-Chairs for backup and redundancy. Rotating chair so intensity of responsibility is contained to a few months
    • NAC Chair can prioritize acting on this feedback after being seated.

  • Agree on timeline

    • Nominations received by EOD April 9
    • Completed by EOD April 14
  1. Deep Dive: NAC Steering Document

  • Breakout Groups

    • How will the NAC make decisions as a group in 2020?
      Share out: Decision-making: Enumerated some things that NAC had decided in the past. Ben suggested that we plot them on the diagram that

    • What deliverables will the NAC produce in 2020?
      Share out: How likely they are to happen. A few things were must-do. Also national day. We spoke about “Should do” items, “could do” items. Didn’t get to “won’t do”. Next steps.

  • Please keep in mind that not all NAC decisions will rest with the entire group. E.g. Some decisions will rest with the NAC Chair, and some may be made by subcommittee.

  1. EITC/ GetYourRefund — Tom (5 min)
  • Background: What is/Why GetYourRefund?
  • We knew we could only accomplish this work by involving Brigades from the beginning
  • Pre-COVID, we were focusing on a “constellation approach” (new phrase I just made up) of adjacent projects w/Brigade leaders partnering with local VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) sites
  • Due to COVID we’ve had a dramatic increase in interest from new VITA partner organizations (since they’ve shut down in-person tax prep)
  • Hence, the Brigade integration pilot has been focused on spinning up a “Partner Enablement Team” to streamline onboarding for these partners so we are able to bring on as many of them as possible.
  • The Partner Enablement Team focuses on projects related to partner onboarding and scale – for example 1) design projects around what the ideal journey looks like, 2) producing resources that alleviate confusion, and, once team members have learned enough about the product, 3) providing direct support to partners (sometimes locally, e.g. Code for Tucson)
  • The leader of the Partner Enablement Team is Diana Laster (Code for San Jose) and she’s been doing an amazing job. Come join us on our weekly Wednesday call if you want to learn more. (s/o to Bonnie!)
  • Our immediate next step is to begin recruiting for the Partner Enablement Team. We have a small team (5 or so) committed members now, and we are hoping to expand to about a dozen that can answer partners’ questions. We expect we will need at least 20-30 people to get involved to make that happen.
  • Please help by amplifying the email you see about it later this week within your regions/brigades/networks, and by encouraging interested brigade members to join the Rapid Response workshop on Monday!
    • Once email comes out: share with volunteers. New member could be a good audience. Bonnie thinking about what that looks like. Encourage brigades you have relationship with people
    • What about projects that don’t have github repo’s on the COVID project status
    • Bonnie: Watch some videos and read some documents, you are qualified to help in a specific way. Then you can grab tasks from the relevant “swim lane” in the kanban board that is relevant to the stuff you read.
    • Melanie: Help use cases and connect with the broader documentation efforts she is spearheading.
    • Meredith: this is a BFD :slight_smile: major props all around, esp Tom. Trifecta of opportunity. People power needed and we’re doing it.
  1. Proposal: Open NAC hosted Zoom Meetings
    Context: Informal discussion Friday during office hours about how to better connect with people in the network led to conclusion that there are two types of connection we need:
  • between NAC and brigade leaders to help support them
  • between everyone to form the relationships we need to be able to collaborate
  1. Heads Up Items (IF TIME, otherwise will be communicated via email)
  2. Close (10 min)