Dec 20, 2025 | J-KOA National All-Hands Meeting December 2025

Attendees: Koya, Toni, Eric, Danielle, Andrea, Lily, Oscar, Harini, Ana

Notes

• (15 min) Ice breaker: Questionnaire White Elephant o Questions from this list will be assigned a random number in a specific category. Each attendee can ‘open’ a question, and they must answer whichever question or prompt they open. Attendees can then either choose a different question to ‘open’ or they can ‘steal’ a question from another attendee who has already opened one. Each question may only be ‘stolen’ a maximum of 3 times after being ‘opened.’ 

  • Eric: Number 14: What is something you want to do but haven’t done?

    • Start a clothing line!

  • Oscar: Number 8: Name 3 things you and the group have in common

    • We’re all nerds

    • We all want to work with the community

    • We all like sweet treats

  • Danielle: Number 23: How close and warm is your family? Do you feel like your family is

    • American standard: 2/10 because she feels like American families exhibit a different type of warmth and closeness

    • Asian standard 7/10 because there’s a high level of expectation and emotional disconnect but they find pride and emotion based on success

  • Andrea: Number 31: Tell the group something you like about them already

    • I like that they’re all bubbly

    • Everyone gives really good energy

  • Kevin: Question 12: If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one ability, what would you want?

    • Grace towards myself (TEAAAAAA) Quit running scenarios

  • Lily: Question 36: Share a personal problem and ask the group how they would handle it

    • Stealing Eric’s question: travelling the world/finding a place to travel! Problem 1: money, Problem 2: making travel decisions

  • Toni: Question 24: How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

    • We have a great relationship! Love her and I hope to be like her

    • Always been super supportive of me pursuing my goals and dreams

    • Loves unconditionally

  • Koya: Question _: If you were to right a book about your life, what would your first sentence be?

    • “She forgot to take her pill”

• (10 min) National Director updates 

  • National operations 

    • Active membership (volunteer) rate across two states is roughly 30 percent!

    • Abstract accepted into CU Anschutz’s Healing the Divide Symposium 

  • Branch operations 

    • Branches getting more and more independent!

    • Bring shout out to Andrea and Oscar for holding down the fort

  • Nonprofit status 

    • We are officially registered for 501(c), can become a 501(c)-3 within like a year or so

    • Advisory council recommendation: “write the book” for future branches to be able to grow and run themselves successfully

• (25 min) Breakout rooms: each national board member will breakout into a room with the branch-equivalent members to develop SOPs and strategies for operations as well as any long-term goals 

  • Room 1: National Director and Presidents 

    • 
      

  • National President, TEKS Directors, E&A Directors 

    • Activities in the Future

      • Bring back the smaller experiments and fun experiments to the students to bring the non-mentor volunteers back in

        • Following the fair for that rest-of-the-year engagement

      • ‘Professional attire’ type of donation for students

        • Mid-January after taking data on students

        • Meant to help prepare students for the fair

        • Anything we want to do with the campus, we can, we just need to do a contract

    • Background check needed for any volunteers!

      • Same process as TEKS Mentors for outreach volunteers

    • Establishing Partnerships in the Bay Area for the New Year

      • Demos in San Jose and Berkeley, have those schools be our base points for expanding outreach in the future

      • Volunteers: Just the board (Lily, Harina, Brian, Andrea) for now

    • Partner new mentors with previous mentors

  • National Historian and branch Historians 

    • Website updating needs to take place

      • Reached out to Historians to reach out to all their board members to collect data

      • Website needs to be updated to be ADA Compliant

      • Backlog all meeting minutes, newsletters, the abstract and any articles to be accessible on the website (either separate tabs or in the blog)

      • Website update deadline for January 19; data collection deadline January 12!

    • Aurora KOA and Bay Area KOA Socials

      • If up and running, not following J-KOA’s instagram

    • Share Drive best practices

      • Upload your meeting minutes into your corresponding folders!!

    • Paperwork Processes

      • Establish policies for collecting sensitive information

      • Separate intake forms for Bay Area KOA and Aurora KOA volunteers, each board responsible for relaying information to National Board to get background checks

      • Koya to help look into policies to establish processes to streamline the background check process

      • Historians to relay requests to Toni to initiate background checks

        • Background checks only for volunteers the schools are not running background checks on

        • Reach out to Boston/AST about what background checks they would be willing to run for our volunteers post-fair

  • National Treasurer and branch Treasurers 

    • Financial Foundation Management System in the works!

      • Policies/SOPs

      • Reimbursements

      • Ordering materials

      • Everything the money touches is our kingdom (Mufasa voice)

    • Both branches should be self sustaining when using J-KOA Money