May 20, 2009

Board of Director’s Meeting

2009-05-20 5:00pm EST
Via conference call through Calliflower.com – unrecorded.

Attendees

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

Wayne Moses Burke, Executive Director

Commitments and Decisions

• All
  • Board will read “The Board Book” by William G. Bowen and discuss at next meeting
  • Board will test out ’social media’ phase of website and discuss at next meeting
• Ellen
  • work with Wayne on Compensation plan and present at next board meeting
• Kristen
  • look into how to save emails for board decisions
• Patrick
  • bank account set up
• Wayne
  • Social networking/wiki up and running
• Next meeting
  • June 17, 2009 5:30pm!

Full Minutes

• Housekeeping (Kristen)
  • Past minutes- new policy for approval
    • Board will be given an amount of time within which to approve the minutes
      • Timeframe: two weeks after the minutes are published to the board
      • The minutes will be made public as soon as they are approved (i.e. two weeks after the minutes are sent to the board)
    • Unless otherwise specified by a specific board member it will be considered approved
• Updates (Wayne/ Shadee)
  • Website
    • Website is wonderful. Beautiful.
    • “always a work in progress”- please let Wayne know if you see something that needs correcting or improving
    • Creating a back page to house things such as board minutes
    • Have received good response from it!
      • And Wayne has Open Forum Foundation M&Ms!!  (From his sister for his birthday)
    • Is there anything that Wayne needs from the board at this point regarding the website?
      • Wayne doesn’t think so…
  • 501(c)3 status
    • Submitted application May 5th
    • We are anticipating a 6 month wait
      • Apparently applications are sitting for 60-90days before being reviewed due to backlog
  • Networking
    • Spoke with Carolyn Kissane- she helped Wayne clarify that networking/community building are closely tied to our fundraising strategy
    • Asking people to get involved, both financially and personally
    • Project seeming more viable due to network that is already being created
      • Daniel Bennett- more or less created the current communication system used by Congress (referred to throughout CMF report)
        • He is helping to write the e-government standards for the world wide web consortium
      • Hoping for his further involvement with us
      • Using specific architecture to create our platform & creating standards of how aggregation should happen.  Focused on how E-government should happen
        • This should make our system more open and accessible
• Board training
  • Thinking of board training
  • Found book: “The Board Book: An Insider’s Guide”
  • Proposed to read ‘book club’ style – book is written like an op-ed
    • How to recruit new board members
    • How to be engaged
    • Executive director board relations
  • Board agreed that it sounded like a good idea
    • Board will each buy the book
    • Book may also be available at your public library
  • If anyone comes across other books or articles- please feel free to share and include for discussion
  • Discussion date: NEXT BOARD MEETING!
    • Shadee may not be able to make it, she will be traveling abroad- will read book and contribute notes
    • 20-30 minute discussion on next call (regarding book)
• Project list
  • Kristen to look into how to save emails for board decisions
    • potentially somehow in Open Forum Foundation/google website
  • Patrick? Bank Account
    • Patrick will look into it
    • Ellen suggested ING (we can apply online)
    • Wayne suggested potentially Shore Bank
    • Patrick was looking to that same model in NY, with little success
      • Potentially Independence Community Bank? No dept devoted to non-profit
      • not a lot of advantages in going there as opposed to larger institution
    • Wayne and Patrick to follow up on Friday
• Compensation (Wayne/ Ellen)
  • Wayne put a lot of work into this
  • Proposed: percentage of increase by meeting certain pre-defined goals
    • Good in motivating people to get the work done- but there is no relation to revenues
  • Concept of rewarding people for goals needs to be linked to increased revenues- concerning.
    • If they make 10% of their goal, do they get 10% of the revenue set aside for increases?
  • Goal- of creation of this guideline- three stages
    • Create guidelines
    • Determine what Wayne’s compensation would be
    • Create a system that is fitting with other organizations methodology
  • Fixed salary based on market value of the position
  • Non-profits have caps on the salary a person can make – annually
  • Early stages may not have bonuses but should be built in from the beginning
    • Dependent on revenue
    • Create goals tied to furthering the goal of the ageny
    • Point: Can’t be a set amount- has to be based on a percentage of money that is available in the budget
    • Point of clarification- not currently talking about bonuses but talking about annual compensation
  • “feels uncomfortable not to have the money to pay you for your performance, so we don’t want to sustain this model”
  • Companys plan increases annually- based on what has happened and the revenue that has come in, also based on various growth factors, etc
    • Should be able to link your performance based increases to what is accrued in the bank.
    • Wayne disagrees with salary increases being connected to what’s available in the bank.  Salary increases should be connected to…
  • Ellen: Three factors that will drive the salary and salary increases:
    • Market value of the position and the person in it
    • Performance
    • How much money you have in the bank
  • Should be determining a salary and a schedule of payment of a salary
  • If we determine that what increases are possible we could also determine a cap of how much could be paid
  • We need to cap it because:
    • We need to know what the maximum amount we need to raise for salary.
    • Also because of something that Wayne read in IRS documents- IRS wants to see a cap. To ensure that organization is not benefiting one person, as a non-profit.
  • Looking at the salary as it could be now, as it could be on a national organization, international organization
    • Percentages explained in the proposed strategy are associated with the percentage difference between the salary range
    • Guidelines are based on reaching the top of the salary range
  • Do we want to be complicated?- the Compensation guidelines
  • Looking at this as a promotional increase: Going from the ED of a local non-profit to the ED of a national non-profit to the ED of an International non-profit
  • Ellen is going to work on the Compensation guideline to simplify and still allow Wayne to reach the goals
    • Instead of defining as is- we need to define local vs national vs international
  • To our benefit to be specific- because philanthropic organizations would like to see what we’re working towards
  • Wayne and Ellen will be work on this and re-present at the next board meeting
• Fundraising
  • What is our strategy and how will we build our community?
    • Met with Carolyn on Saturday
      • She has 3 HS students who want to do intern work around social media
      • Wayne & Shadee  will meet with them around creating a social media strategy
      • She is looking to get a MS student involved in fundraising research
    • Struggling with how to engage citizenry (social media strategy)
      • What medium do we use?
        • Setting up a Wiki in the back of the website- that will have a social networking option
        • Be able to sign up and help develop
  • Met with Kenny Ames at Capitol Advantage-
    • Prove you’re not competition
    • How are you going to benefit what my business is doing
    • Good first connection
  • Hoping to get Social networking / wiki option by the end of the week!
    • Board will test it and give feedback
• Next meeting
  • June 17, 2009 5:30pm!