June 17, 2009

Board of Director’s Meeting

2009-06-17 5:30pm EST
Via conference call through Calliflower.com – unrecorded.

Attendees

Kristen Guskovict, Secretary
Patrick Benz, Treasurer
Carolyn Kissane

Wayne Moses Burke, Executive Director

Commitments and Decisions

• All
  • Everyone on the board should be involved in OFF financially- even if that financial commitment comes from hosting small fundraisers
  • Secretary (Kristen) will revisit commitments at the beginning of each board meeting when presenting the minutes
• Patrick
  • send Kristen minutes from committee meetings held prior to decision to collapse committee meetings into monthly board meetings
  • finalize the bank account
  • work with Carolyn, Wayne to develop a small ‘test run’ fundraiser in New York in July and a large fundraiser in September
• Kristen
  • work with Wayne to develop a small ‘test run’ fundraiser in DC in July
  • work with Wayne on record keeping, saving emails and board decisions and determining what constitutes a decision
• Carolyn
  • work with Patrick, Wayne to develop a small ‘test run’ fundraiser in New York in July and a large fundraiser in September
• Wayne
  • send out email announcing Social Networking site(http://openforumfoundation.org/community)- and informing audience that OFF is now open to taking donations
  • revisit previous contacts to reconnect and update them, and potentially ask them to donate
  • work with Carolyn, Patrick to develop a small ‘test run’ fundraiser in New York in July and a large fundraiser in September
  • work with Kristen to develop a small ‘test run’ fundraiser in DC in July
• Next Meeting
  • Tuesday, July 14th 5:30pm

Full Minutes

• Review of last meeting’s notes (Kristen)
  • The minutes from the five official board meetings are now available at Openforumfoundation.org
  • Wayne mentioned that we have made numerous commitments in the past few months and asked how we could check in on them
  • Group decided that commitments and decisions should be revisited at the beginning of each board meeting in order to track individual commitments and obligations

• Updates (Wayne)
  • Social network is up and running, although currently invisible on the home page- will be more accessible within the coming weeks
    • Working out the bugs to see how to use the site and ensure that it remains user friendly
    • No direct link from the OFF website to social network area- once the site is more populated it will be made visible
  • Colby Hopkins, intern, is helping with fundraising research.
    • Wayne and Colby are using the Social network aspect of the site to communicate and keep track of what they are doing on a regular basis
  • Bank account update
    • Patrick is putting items in the mail today for Wayne
    • Need a minimum of $5 to open the account
    • Will deposit enough to also use the account to pay lawyer fee for processing the 501C3 (approximately $1000)
  • Meeting with different developers
    • Wayne continues to be optimistic- but the project is not coming together as originally envisioned
      • Having trouble engaging larger companies- most need initial deposit to conduct analysis and present quote
        • We have not received any quotes from big companies
        • Most big companies would need $50,000-$60,000 just get to the point of informing us how and what they were developing for us
      • Wayne is changing direction and looking back at the idea of creating this as an open source project
        • Would make finding a freelance developer easier- numerous people in the DC area who work on open source projects
        • By using this method we could hire a project developer/freelancer who would then hire a team of developers in open source style
        • Patrick noted that this is a critical issue – since this is the platform that we will be working off of
          • Clarification: we will still pay a main developer but use the open source style of development- making hiring a developer easy, we can go on-line and get numerous quotes, we can also look at reviews of the companies on-line
        • Challenge: Managing the development and the organization would be too much- we would need to hire a project manager
          • Project manager would be someone who knows the concept and the software and would work closely with Wayne
        • Volunteer vs Paid Project Manager
          • Would need to be paid, but could use interns and volunteers at the development level
          • We need to balance waiting for the money to start vs needing to start to show what we can do and receive more funding
        • Idea: Bigger funders may be more interested once we have letters of intent from developers, etc
          • Letters of Intent could include legislators, with starting place at:
            • Online Director for House Democratic Caucus- who works to unify and standardize the democratic party’s e-media sites
            • Online Director for Republican Senate Caucus- Works to unify Republican e-media sites
              • Both are excited about the project
                • Would want to engage both at the same time/beginning to extend feeling of ownership
  • Open Government Innovations Conference July 21st & 22nd
    • Wayne to participate in Panel on citizen engagement
      • Good way to gain publicity- increase community
    • Chief information officer and Chief tech officer for the Obama administration will be speaking at the conference

• Compensation (Wayne/ Ellen)
  • Not discussed

• Fundraising (Wayne)
  • Need a fundraising plan- what do we want to accomplish and who do we want to target
    • Initial budget had a mistake in the spreadsheet.  Our capitol campaign budget goal is $350,000 not $450,000
    • Initial budget is $175,000 towards the development of the platform
      • Uncertain as to if this is enough, will likely not know until we are approximately $50,000 into the project
  • Fundraising deadline has been set serendipitously
    • Daniel Bennett will present our work as proof of concept at conference in September if development is far enough along
  • Discussion of pay-pal and acceptance of donations
    • Pay-pal takes 3% of each donation
    • Google check out takes same but once we have our 501c3 no percentage would be taken
  • Do we want to establish benchmarks to our fundraising
  • How will we raise the money
    • foundations are long-term engagements
      • There are 2-3 who can be approached without a 501C3
        • However, because they are obliged to give to 501C3s they may still hesitate, they would need approval from their board to fund us
        • Our 501C3 will be available sometime between early September and early December
      • Colby has begun researching larger donors who have donated to similar projects (i.e. CMF)
    • Wayne has been researching fundraising and reminded all of us that this is about raising friends not funds (i.e. long-term engagement, commitment)
      • First engage, then make ‘the ask’
    • Looking at our communities- we have two types: those who are involved and may not be in a position to donate (may even be pushed away if we ask), and the type who want to be involved and whose best way to be engaged is through funding
      • There are also the community members who would fall into both above stated categories- everyone is a potential donor
    • What type of government funding is available- funding focused on e-government
    • Initial ask
      • Email invite to social media site- and note that we are now open to donations
      • Donate options will be added to website as soon as account is open
      • Wayne’s networking will now be both networking and fundraising- strengthening those connections
    • Board donations?
      • Everyone on the board should be involved financially
        • Board’s financial donation can be increased by hosting fundraisers
      • Wayne did not see this as a board function initially- concerned that if board was developed with funders that it might decrease the legitimacy of the organization
        • Board agreed that the board’s role is to support the organization in whatever way is needed – right now funding is needed
          • Especially in the beginning, the board can take on any role
          • Board needs to contribute to expanding the OFF network
      • Fundraisers
        • First fundraiser to be held in NY in July after Wayne’s conference- to maintain momentum and increase community (Patrick and Carolyn to work with Wayne)
        • Second fundraiser to be held in DC- potentially at Kristen’s housewarming party (Kristen to work with Wayne)
        • Also suggested that Wayne use his upcoming High School reunion as a fundraiser- in part
        • LARGE fundraiser- to be held in September during the conference that Daniel Bennett is talking at – again to maintain/increase any momentum created from that presentation
          • Large fundraiser could raise $5-10,000 if each board member commits to bringing 5-10 people
          • Create virtual fundraiser (perhaps through second life) to take place with fundraiser in NYC
      • Additional funding idea: look at tech companies and their corp giving programs
      • Reminder- now is a tough time to fund-raise
        • Looking into stimulus money
        • Use smaller fundraisers as ‘test run’ to larger fundraiser
• The Board Book (Ellen)
  • Not discussed
• Next meeting date? (Ellen)
  • Wednesday, July 15 or Wednesday, July 22
    • Neither date worked- next board meeting Tuesday July 14th

The Agenda