January 06, 2009 « Open Forum Foundation

Board of Director’s Meeting

2009-01-06 5:30pm EST
Via conference call through Calliflower.com – unrecorded.

Attendees

Ellen Williams, Vice President
Kristen Guskovict, Secretary
Patrick Benz, Treasurer

Wayne Moses Burke, Executive Director

Commitments and Decisions

All
- Send first person bios and pictures to Wayne by Jan 30
- Three committees
  - Marketing – Kristen is chair
    - first: Jan. 28th – 5:30
  - Fundraising – Ellen is chair
    - first: Jan 20th – 5:30
  - Community – Patrick is chair
    - first: Jan 21st – 5:30
  - meet monthly
- Board meetings
  - quarterly
Wayne
- Send FJC app to board
- Share CMF proposal with board
- Set up video conferencing for board meetings
- Figure out how to record meetings
- Send monthly update to board
Patrick
- Work with Wayne on finding a bank, setting up accounts, etc.
Next meeting
- Shadee will give update on Board trainings
- April 9th, 5:30pm

Full Minutes

Open of meeting
- Shadee sends regrets- Ellen to chair
- Kristen learning Google docs
On-line Bios for Board of Directors
- Kristen and Carolyn need update in first person
- Photos of board
  - Wayne asked for photos to add color to the site
  - Board agreed to give photos
  - Began discussion on what format- head shot type
  - Board members should send in photos for the website by January 30^th
Updates (Wayne)
- Gateway to Gov
  - Program working on similar type of civic ID project in 20 states
  - Was going to try to be the fiscal sponsor of Open Forum Foundation
    - Wayne felt that it would be simpler to use a professional fiscal sponsor who provides this service
- FJC fiscal funding opportunity
  - Based in NYC
  - Takes care of funding for non-profits and philanthropists
  - Example donor can make donation to FJC and FJC can manage the donations made out of that account
  - With fiscal sponsorship agreement- donations are made to them in our name, it can earn interest and when we need money we can withdraw money as we need. Has electronic banking system
  - Wayne applied December 20^th- takes 3 weeks to process
    - Application included budget and fundraising plan
    - Wayne will send application to Board to review
  - Once finalized we will be able to begin to collect tax deductible donations
- Congressional Management Foundation (CMF)
  - Organization founded in the 70s to improve how congressional offices manage their staff through research, training and resources
  - Currently very active with the freshman congressmen
  - Wayne has meeting on January 15^th
    - Wayne sent them a draft proposal of how we could work together
    - Wayne to share that proposal with Board
  - Step 1: They are taking an academic approach Planning on conducting survey groups up front- Hill staffers, advocacy groups and constituents. Make certain that the program proposed will meet the needs
  - Step 2: Develop fully project one – to help propel them into their next stage of work with the changing political economy
  - Recently released a report called ‘communicating with congress’ based on a decade worth of research
- Also setting a meeting with the on-line publicist for Congressman Honda
  - Will connecting with the congressional management foundation get us linked into the Obama presidency?
    - Not likely- CMF is focused on Congress
    - But, if Obama makes social networking as a part of the presidency it would be short-sighted not to include this in Open Forum Foundation
      - This may not resonate with Project One, but is inline with Open Forum Foundation
      - Open forum foundation needs to establish itself with this long-term vision that is easy for constituents all over the world that is up to date with technology to be used by governments all over the world to improve themselves and the lives of their citizens
- Kristen raised concern about this being a lot for one man to do
  - Wayne agreed, he needs more people involved. Needs to form partnerships and get people involved in a productive way.
  - Wayne suggested setting up board of advisors- still working out how to develop that to help it feed where we want to go
  - Wayne asked board how do we move forward, how to engage board into the development of organization.
- Traffic on website is up to 20-30 people/ day
  - Statistics are confusing some say we are getting 3-12 a day others say 20-30 a day
New steps forward for Board of Directors (Shadee)
- Board training- Options seem not worth doing or very expensive
  - Update tabled until next meeting for Shadee to update us
- Are we getting the Open Forum emails
  - Patrick and Kristen expressed that the emails are forwarded
  - Concern about not having more day to day contact
    - Suggestion web-conference calling suggested
    - All present have webcams!
    - Potential to use skype.com
  - Should we record these meetings?
    - Kristen votes yes (as secretary)
    - Wayne to figure out by next full meeting
- A need for more day-to-day involvement
  - Wayne needs help in taking this forward
  - Would like to see board divorced from daily operations- in the long run, but for now… not feasible
- Committees are needed to (as suggested by Shadee):
  1. Lead the search for new board members
  2. Develop a long-term vision for the organization (Can be based on current Vision Statement)
  3. Develop a marketing strategy that includes improving the appeal of the website (Things to think about: What demographic are we trying to appeal to?)
  4. Think about fundraising issues and tactics (Things to think about: Should we be taking donations from corporations and/or the government? How do we find individual donors?)
Discussion:
- Kristen suggested grouping the four committees up top into two committees since we only have 5 board members
- Patrick suggested that all board need to be involved in finding new board members
- Ellen suggested that each of us work with Wayne individually on each of these things and then bring all the info together at next board meeting- Fundraising is the most important right now. So each of us should be working on this
- Kristen volunteered to work with Wayne on marketing
- Do we take funding from government and Corporate? Attack all three (Corporate, government and individual donations)
- Long-term goal is something that Wayne needs to leave till later
- Long-term vision should be fluid for right now, Open Foundation Forum is too young, and too much focus on that could limit what we can do
- Proposal create 3 groups: Lead the search for new board members, volunteers, partners, etc; Marketing strategy and fundraising with expenditure allocation
  - Kristen to take Marketing
    - Patrick has contacts with pro-bono marketing programs
  - Ellen to take fundraising
    - Kristen has experience writing proposals and is willing to help
  - Patrick to look for New people
  - Shadee and Carolyn to be invited to take part
  - Propose that committees meet monthly and Board meet quarterly
- What sort of reports do we want Wayne to provide us with? Will a monthly email with updates suffice?
- Salary for ED once money starts rolling in (Things to think about: How should the organization compensate ED for early stages of work? How will salary change once Project 1 is off the ground?)
  - What should the baseline salary be
  - EDs in DC of similar orgs make $75,000
  - Wayne proposed that Salary start from our incorporation date
  - Can we back pay him from when he started full-time on this (at a lesser salary)
    - Patrick brought up how difficult it is to fundraise when it looks like the money is going towards salary (although all programs have overhead)
    - Cost breakdowns will be made available to all funders
- Next meeting date?
  - When will we next meet as a group?
    - Next meeting April 9^th 5:30
  - When will the committees next meet?
    - Marketing Jan. 28^th – 5:30
    - Community Jan 20^th – 5:30
    - Fundraising Jan 21^st – 5:30
- Wayne needs to keep us more updated- he will send out email update monthly
- As treasurer, Patrick will work with Wayne on finding a bank, setting up accounts, etc.

The Agenda

Review of last meeting’s notes (Kristen)
- Can we post this on Google Docs?
- We need each board member to update their bio online so that it reads in 1st person, and also to include a picture of themselves as part of their bio
  - Kristen & Carolyn still update
  - All board members need to post a picture. Can be casual.
Updates (Wayne)
- Gateway to Gov
- FJC fiscal funding opportunity
- Congressional Management Foundation (CMF)
- Traffic on website is up to 20-30 people/ day
New steps forward for Board of Directors (Shadee)
- A need for more day-to-day involvement
- Committees are needed to:
  - 1) Lead the search for new board members
  - 2) Develop a long-term vision for the organization (Can be based on current Vision Statement)
  - 3) Develop a marketing strategy that includes improving the appeal of the website (Things to think about: What demographic are we trying to appeal to?)
  - 4) Think about fundraising issues and tactics (Things to think about: Should we be taking donations from corporations and/or the government? How do we find individual donors?)
- Executive Director – Reports/ Salary (Wayne/Shadee)
  - What sort of reports do we want Wayne to provide us with? Will a monthly email with updates suffice?
  - Salary for ED once money starts rolling in (Things to think about: How should the organization compensate ED for early stages of work? How will salary change once Project 1 is off the ground?)
- Next meeting date?
  - When will we next meet as a group?
  - When will the committees next meet?