April 27, 2009

Board of Director’s Meeting – Fundraising Strategy

2009-04-27 5:30pm EST
Via conference call through Calliflower.com – unrecorded.

Attendees

Shadee Malaklou, President
Kristen Guskovict, Secretary
Patrick Benz, Treasurer

Wayne Moses Burke, Executive Director

Commitments and Decisions

• All
  • Write down their ‘elevator speech’ re: Open Forum and how they describe it.
    • No more than three sentences.
    • Please send to Wayne by Monday Close of business
• Wayne
  • Contact everyone individually after receiving these ‘elevator speeches’ to discuss how we understand OFF and help prepare us for promoting the organization to potential funders and community members
• Shadee
  • Integrate additional information from these minutes into the original fundraising strategy proposed by Wayne on google docs
  • set up next meeting on Calliflower
• Next meeting
  • May 20^th at 5pm

Minutes

1. Overview of Principles
   1. Reach out through existing networks
   2. Active research on who we should be pursuing
2. Corporations (and how reach out to people)
   1. Making connections with
      1. CRM vendors
      2. E-advocacy vendors
         1. ‘Communicating with congress’- working group (one way to connect with potential community)
   2. Research corporations who have an interest in or history of funding this type of project
      1. look at the ‘Reporting to congress’ report- who funded that?
   3. Look into tech heavy foundations (Microsoft, google, etc)
   4. Initial connection of simply filling out an application for funds is ineffective
      1. Need to start by talking, creating the relationship, finding out if our project is an interest of theirs, potential for us to be referred to others- further build our community
      2. People who manage foundations and corporate giving programs are approachable people and we have a good idea to share with them!
   5. Who will do the reaching out
      1. All of us (including Danny and Wayne)
      2. Our varied geography is a value here (Patrick can do face to face with some in New York, Shadee in CA, etc)
   6. How do we educate people on what we do
      1. Need very basic explanation
      2. Wayne has already begun to develop resources and we can train those who are willing to reach out (mock conversations, elevator speeches, etc)
   7. Elevator Pitch (has to be clear, concise and perfect- 30 to 60 seconds)
      1. Elevator pitch is a good exercise for all of us
      2. We are already talking about OFF- lets perfect it
      3. Decision: each of us will write down our ‘pitch’ – no more than 3 sentences. Wayne will work with us to finesse
         1. All ‘pitches’ sent to Wayne by Monday
         2. Wayne to follow up with calls to each participating board member individually
3. Large and small donors
   1. Sustainable funding built from a variety of sources including dedicated large and small donors who will (in part) make up our community
4. Foundations
   1. Build relationships with potential partners while we await 501C3 status
      1. Status update: Fine tuning with Attorney- should be in the hands of the IRS by the end of the week
      2. Wayne to apply for an Employer Identification
5. Embassies
   1. New Partner and fundraiser mentioned that connecting with Embassies might be a way to help us with seed money. Diaspora communities often contact congress.
      1. Look into other public affairs and diaspora groups
   2. Obvious partner- OFF wants to make this technology available internationally in the future, make connections now
   3. Will have to further discuss our ability to remain independent while accepting funding from governments (will need to create guidelines)
6. Are we missing anything?
   1. Congressional Funding?
      1. Conflict of interest?
   2. Stimulus money?
      1. 1% of every line item goes to administrative projects- we could be eligible
   3. State and local government funding?
      1. Needs further research
7. Need to prioritize and differentiate between seed money and sustainable funding
   1. Hopefully seed money donors will become sustainable donors
8. What are our priorities
   1. Corporations
   2. Large private / individual donors
      1. Danny developing plan to findpeople to partner with
   3. Embassies
9. Three things that we need to pull all of this together
   1. Speak common language
   2. Research
   3. Social networking (to further all of the above and develop community overall)
10. Next steps
    1. 3 sentences / elevator speech
    2. 10-15 min conversations with Wayne next week (perhaps to include FAQs that he receives)
    3. Formulate central / uniform pitch
    4. Research plan
       1. Brainstorming for additional corporations
          1. Danny researching companies
       2. Set up meetings (address their needs and how OFF solves)
       3. Large donors (both something that evolves and something that Danny is researching)