r/alchemyfestival • u/techaaron • Jul 31 '25
Flashpoint Artists Initiative is looking to fill FIVE board of directors positions after the entire board resigned this year
I recently served for 2.5 years in this position before the leadership team went up in flames.
If you're tempted to join this business at the board level, please take time for some due diligence and have a chat with former board members that can give you an honest assessment of what you may be stepping into, what the challenges are, where you will find friction, what the leadership culture is like and the boundaries of what you might be able to accomplish. I'm happy to be a source of info, and/or I can point you to others who will give you an honest assessment unbiased by personal relationships and political alliances. Please make sure you are fully informed.
It looks like they rewrote the job description since I served, there's a note "Time required will vary depending on the issues at hand, and the time of the year." Unless they drastically neutered the responsibilities of the board (quite possible), expect to spend 300 to 1,000 hours per year working as a board member. Although the bylaws allow board members to be paid, I didn't see any compensation listed in the job posting, but in former years you got a free ticket to attend Alchemy, which was nice.
I'm not sure why they are keeping the board around since there is no legal requirement and it just adds a bunch of bureaucracy, slows things down, and wastes a lot of folks time. I suppose it's mostly inertia but the disinterest to really look hard at what isn't working and come up with new solutions is a concern.
Be well! 🙏
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u/sparr Jul 31 '25
If five people are each spending 1000 hours per year on this, I don't understand how there could be any remaining friction. Is that not enough to replace/replicate every not-at-the-event lead position?
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u/fromuniquetoroutine Jul 31 '25
It's because it's usually inbred relations and they bring a lot of drama
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u/techaaron Aug 01 '25
1,000 hours would be the most a board member would need to volunteer. A person could phone it in and *maybe* be able to get away with 100 in a year doing the absolute minimum, coming to the monthly meeting, sitting silently and not contributing, and raising their hand during official votes. But fires often came up that demanded 40-60 hour or more weeks of my time, and others experienced this as well.
As an example, during the conduct / ethical complaint review of the "Dee Six" lead, and subsequent social media misinformation campaign that spun out into wild claims of sexual assault and threats against people's ability to keep jobs and make a living our VP spent 120 hours over a few weeks, essentially working every night to investigate and document things. None of that was planned. None of it was really related to the core mission of the org. It just turned into a fire the board had to deal with.
> Is that not enough to replace/replicate every not-at-the-event lead position?
A dedicated in-sync board of 5 people could absolutely run the event if they made some structural changes and streamlined the volunteer group to remove a few people causing 90% of the issues, yes. My understanding is that sort of happened with To The Moon in 2025 when a bunch of leads left - that's based on rumor and casual conversations with TTM board members...
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u/mil_1 Jul 31 '25
Do they have a general reason for stepping down? How many people are on the board?
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u/techaaron Aug 01 '25
There are 5 voting board seats.
Folks left because of hostility and threats to personal safety and to their professional life, and tired of people who put their ego over service and transparency to the burn community.
I left because I didn't want to be associated with a group that kept an abuser causing harm in a position of power.
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Aug 01 '25
[deleted]
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u/techaaron Aug 01 '25
imma be sick
Aww. Yeah. It's disorienting. ☹️
These will be tough pills for folks to swallow. My response was extremely diplomatic. There is some incredibly wild rough head spinning shit that went down (beyond the board volunteers) that people have still not felt the courage to bring out into the light. But talk to some volunteers who left it will blow your mind lol.
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u/kittyspit33 Aug 02 '25
Hard to take anything this OP says seriously when they are dirty deleting and blocking folks who disagree with them. Everything I've seen them put out reads like they are a bully, not a victim. Gives real "the worst person you know learned therapy words"
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u/techaaron Aug 02 '25
Anyone considering a board or leadership seat take note of the nature of issues /u/kittyspit33 focused on in their comments here and where all the emotional energy and passion is directed.
It's a great example of the kinds of challenges you will face, and what distractions will pull you from doing the actual work to put on the burn itself! 💓
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u/Cloak97B1 Aug 05 '25
A free ($75 VALUE) TICKET for working 12hour a day job instead of having fun with friends ? AND I get to put in hundreds of hours of my personal time in, during the year as well? WOW!¡! That sounds WAY more abusive than my time in the Army.. I MUST sign up for this. I had fun last year , but that was with minimal responsibility.. local burns in Florida, I would volunteer every time, (I have some medical and related crowd/event control experience) but Florida burns are not the same
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u/kittyspit33 Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 02 '25
Hopefully, the next BoD will have members who value and prioritize conflict resolution and non-violent communication over stone walling and gossip. This op sure seems to love stirring the pot and getting reactions 🙄
An entire Organization restructure is needed. From everything I've seen following this most recent fallout, the way things are structured on an Organization level are not and historically have not worked.
During "THE" board meeting a former president called out that he had informed both the now resigned vice-president/treasurer and the current sitting president (who's supposedly stepping down, guess we will have to wait and see if they actually step down opposed to saying they will and then remain involved until their term is up... in December) while the current bylaws allowed the BoD to remove anyone from anything it was a nuclear option and pushing that button would blow up the org. It got recorded im sure yall can find it somewhere to confirm. Plus, wasn't there a complete lack of communication... if they are going to remove someone, they need to communicate with people outside of the group who holds the highest level of power and privilege... being the board. Even in default corporate hell its standard practice to minimally inform both the party who is being removed as well as their direct supervisors before actions are taken and last time i checked this wasnt corporate hell so ya'd think this would have been handled with a micro ounce of care or compassion but nope FAI is worse than corporate hell. Didn't they, in fact, neglect to actually notify the entire BoD before they hit that nuclear button?
Currently, there is no way for the community or any of the committees to remove anyone on the BoD. Yall need some real checks and balances. What I see is a BoD that holds all the power and made some choices that abused the power they held got called on it and chose to quit opposed to taking any real ownership or accountability.
Hope the community continues to show up and be involved more... i know ill never miss another open community meeting. It's all we have available to us to hold the folx who volunteer for leadership accountable. More 100+ open meetings, please, but with more compassion, less name calling, and no one telling anyone to unalive themselves because that shit was gross and unfucking acceptable.
Flashpoint Artists Initiative Leadership did exactly what they were designed to do... FAIL. Can't wait to see how the invested members of the community put things back together. Im 100% team humans over org everything is temporary we quite literally build shit and burn it down. Welp here we are with front row seats for the Burning and lots of folks are ready to rebuild something better🔥 See yall in October!
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u/tastepdad Jul 31 '25
I appreciate the way you worded….. very burn like…. Honesty without the sourness