October 18, 2009

Board of Directors Meeting

2009-10-18 11:00am – 5:00pm EST
Washington, DC

Attending

Meeting Minutes Summary

INTRODUCTIONS AND ELECTION

We opened the meeting with a round of introductions, as some of us had not yet met in person.  Prior to this Board Meeting, nominations for the Board roles were solicited from each board member, and after our introductions, we were informed by Wayne of the nominees.  We unanimously agreed on the new positions, which are indicated above under “Attending.”

Our discussions and decisions have been categorized and summarized as follows:

MISSION/VISION

We decided that one of the most important goals or mission points of the Open Forum Foundation is to actively encourage government representatives to be more responsive to their constituents.   In order to accomplish this shift, we discussed the following action items:

• Create a draft list of at least 10 Tenets of Responsive Representation by Sunday October 25, 2009.
• Arrange a one-day forum or mini bar camp to be attended by selected Hill staffers and others who can review the tenets and narrow them down to three.
• Design and produce a one-page handout to highlight the mission/vision and three Tenets, along with a description of the current activities of Open Forum Foundation, which include GovLuv and CongressCamp.
• Arrange lunches, parlor meetings, conferences and so forth with Hill staffers to advise them on the use of social media and promote the Tenets.

We believe that the above activities constitute a viable strategy for promoting responsive behavior from representatives, especially if the 2010 elections are included as an incentivizing factor.  Once a critical mass of representatives have adopted the Tenets, then constituents will begin to trust that they will get responses and thus engage with GovLuv and other tools to engage in communication with them.

LIST-BUILDING CAMPAIGN

A blog will be created that allows constituents to write about the experiences they’ve had when contacting their representatives – both positive and negative.  The blog will allow people to vote on the stories, most likely via re-tweets on Twitter.  Users may also be able to rate the three Tenets by what they consider a priority.  We also discussed a gaming element or contest where the prize for a constituent would be a face-to-face meeting with their representative (although we acknowledged that this would be difficult to guarantee at this stage).

One of the benefits of creating such a blog that requires some sort of user registration is that a database of names and emails will be generated, which can be utilized for fundraising campaigns and for informative newsletters.

FUNDRAISING

Beginning immediately, Wayne will endeavor to meet with five of his contacts per week and ask for donations from each to the Open Forum Foundation of at least $250. Wayne will report to the Board on these efforts on a weekly basis.

Meagen Ryan, Marketing Strategist at Rock Creek Strategic Marketing, made a special appearance to help the board talk through its fundraising strategies.  We decided to adopt a three-pronged approach to fundraising, which includes:

• Micro-financing – each member of the Board will ask ten of their contacts to donate to the Open Forum Foundation and/or invite their contacts to local fundraising dinner events in November that Wayne will attend and speak at
• Website contributions – Wayne will ensure that the website design is updated such that the donation buttons are much more obvious and user-friendly.  A donation request can be added on to the list-building campaign as well (see above).
• Large contributions (longer-term strategy)  – Wayne will cultivate relationships with people who could be potentially large donors and invite selected members of this category to serve on a Board of Governors (see below).

EXPANSION OF THE BOARD

• Board of Directors – each board member will suggest at least one notable person, by November 15^th, whom they think should be invited to join the Board of Directors.  Our goal is to increase the number of people on this board to 15.
• Board of Governors – Wayne and members of the board will continue to cultivate relationships with people who could contribute large funds to the Open Forum Foundation and who could be invited to join a Board of Governors, whose responsibility would be to both donate and raise funds.

BUDGET/FINANCE

• We believe that the Fiscal Year for the Open Forum Foundation should run from November 1^st – October 31^st.
• The Board asked Wayne to update the budget as specifically as possible (detailing costs for meetings and activities) for each three-month quarter.

CONFERENCES

The Board agreed that Wayne should attend the PdF event in Barcelona, if financially feasible.

NEXT BOARD MEETING

November 15, 2009 at 7:00pm EST