MAPOR EXECUTIVE COUNCIL MONTHLY MEETING MINUTES
Bob Davis
January 24, 2022
12:30 – 2:00 CST / 1:30 pm – 3:00pm EST
Zoom invite

Attendees: Kevin Ulrich, Leah Dean, Benjamin Schapiro, Jerry Timbrook, Evgenia Kapousouz, Hillary Hanson, Erin Heiden, Y. Patrick Hsieh, Rebecca Powell, Justine Bulagar-Medina, Bob Davis, Dana Garbarski, David Sterrett

MAPOR SPOTLIGHT of the MONTH:  The MAPOR spotlight of the month goes out to new members Erin, Ben, Rebecca, and Jerry. Welcome aboard and we appreciate your willingness to serve on the council! 

MAPOR Mission Statement

We provide high-quality educational and conference programs to encourage scholarly exchanges across disciplines and geographies, broaden member access to mentors and resources, and bolster opportunities for leadership and innovations. We join forces with AAPOR, academic institutions, and government and industry employers to develop a thriving community that supports all MAPOR members, including students, scholars, and professionals in every stage of their career.

MAPOR Vision Statement

MAPOR is a leading voice in public opinion, survey, and social science scholarship, methods, and practice among regional professional associations. We are an inclusive and supportive community that enables our diverse members to achieve their educational, professional development, and networking goals. 

Meeting notes:

Meeting started 12:30PM Central

  1. Approval of last meeting’s minutes 

Approved by Unanimous consent.

  1. Conference Survey Data (Kevin)

Kevin reviewed Review of survey highlights

  • 201 surveys sent, 114 completes – 57% response rate.76% in person very

Conference Survey Highlights

Keving led a discussions about the conference survey.  Key areas include:

General conference satisfaction / attendance comparing in person vs virtual.

  • In-person more satisfied than virtual (76.1% Very Satisfied in person vs 45% Very Satisfied virtual), but the difference is less noticeable when looking at top 2 box (97.2% in person vs 87.5% virtual).

Discussion for 2022 conference in person vs virtual

  • Three main drivers for virtual attendance were concerns surrounding Covid, convenience, and scheduling.    Convenience factor is a good reason to offer a virtual offering.  10.6% would attend virtually and 9.7% would attend as a mix in the future.
  • Most people who would attend in person next year cite easing of Covid and dissatisfaction with the technology/experience as the main driver to return to in person.  
  • While the hybrid model does expand participation to those who were not able to attend, 44.4% of in person said virtual attendance ‘somewhat or significantly took away’ from the in-person experience.

Student support grants

  • 33/36 students did not participate in a student grant program
    • 21 were not aware of the program.  This provides an opportunity to educate students that funding is available.  There was general discussion about how to best reach out to students directly and/or through professors, mentors and other student organizations.  Justine mentioned that she has seen diminishing returns for communications because at some point the students are not getting/reading the alerts/emails.
    • 12 already had / didn’t need funding for the conference
    • 3 participated in the student grant program

Evgenia observed that this survey only addresses those who did come, not those who didn’t come so we are not informed to their reasons for not participating.  Dana also observed that putting this on the survey increases awareness of the program.

The results on the survey regarding the amount of out of pocket expenses student incurred was discussed.  Evgenia brought up that the need for money will vary greatly depending on the student’s location.  For example student’s in Chicago will not incur hotel expenses.  Patrick suggested that since the average out of pocket cost for students was $66 ($91 for those who spent some money) some students were likely not including hotel expenses in their calculations.  Kevin suggested that we may want to consider breaking out the expenses by category in the future.

Student paper

  • Allyson Holbrook is working on a subcommittee for student paper, potentially adding a ‘non-student co author’ category.
  • Evgenia suggested that we should start the process for discussing how we are going to do this next year.  For example defining the amount of contribution to determine if a paper has a  ‘non student co-author’.  
  • General feedback
  1. 2022 Conference             (Leah)
    1. Conference support committee 

Leah  researched the costs for maintaining Zoom licenses year round for the conference. The base pricing is $150 / year / license ( e.g. 4 = $600 / year,  5 = $750 / year).  This includes  1 GB cloud storage per license.  There are additional add ons for more than 100 participants – $50 per month more to expand to 500 participants.  This ‘large meeting’ feature can be activated on a month-month basis.  In addition there are expanded cloud storage options available that can be activated per month.  Rough estimate is that a year round Zoom license will cost $1000 / year to maintain Zoom as a sustainable add on.  This was provided for informational purposes only and was not voted on or approved by the council.  We will have a more formal proposal as we get closer to the annual conference.

  1. Check with hotel about 2021 contract plans
    1. Leah had questions about the level of detail of what needs to be finalized before signing the contract.  For example do we need to know if dinner would be plated or buffet, if the short course would be virtual / in person, and what the conference schedule would be. Kevin and David conveyed that the hotel is flexible and the contract is just establishing a reservation for the dates and a minimum $ spend.  Specific details will be identified later.
  1. Leah will reach out to hotel today for more details on contract and will reach out to members for ideas for speakers.
  2. Kevin – Guess is that they will secure the space and then punt the details as we get closer to conference.
  1. Secretary / Treasurer’s Report (Lindsey)                
    1. Financial updates
      1. Checking: $25,482.49
      2. Savings: $46,971.99
    2. Membership list updates
      1. Lindsay is working on compiling a member list.  Details discussed in next month’s meeting.
  1. Tentative tasks for 2022
    1. Member survey for 2022?
      1. Details discussed in next month’s meeting.
    2. Not for Profit Annual Report filing
      1. Details discussed in next month’s meeting.
    3. Cvent billing – Should we drop our other platforms? (Will be discussed in next month’s meeting)
    4. MAPOR address ‘move’ to NORC building (Will be discussed in next month’s meeting)
      1. CVENT
      2. Chase bank
      3. IRS
  1. Communications                     (Benjamin)
    1. Spring newsletter

Benjamin will circulate a draft of the spring newsletter to council by the end of the day today.  Will be reaching out for specific content for February newsletter.  Potentially it will be postponed pending member survey results.

  1. Website                           (Hillary)
    1. Updates

Hillary – New members will be updated today on the council page and will apply WordPress updates.

The question came up as to whether Hillary should be applying updates to the WordPress database / addons.  Patrick (2021 webmaster) informed the council that each month you log in there will always be messages to upgrade and spam messages.  He spent time last year reducing the number of plugins to only those used by the website.  The webmaster should feel free to accept updates unless you see something that requires additional payments.

  1. Awards, Grants, and Support Committee
    1. Meeting on January 11

Bob & Evgenia met with Mentors / students to discuss the experience with the MAPOR Fellowship program.  The overall experience was positive.  Bob will meet with 1 more mentor later today and will provide a more detailed report.  In general the timing of the program was sufficient, although Evngenia proposed that we need to balance giving the students more time to apply (potentially accepting applications into March or April) against having enough time in the program to deliver something for the conference in November.  Bob suggested providing additional structure would help the program.  Evgenia added that the structure still needs to be flexible to allow room for individualization.

  1. Sponsorship (Dana)

Sponsorship calendar doesn’t really start until June.  John will provide additional notes to allow documentation to stand alone as it move from past president to past president.

  1. Online Learning Committee           (Justine)
    1. Meeting to discuss goals for 2022
    2. Webinars
    3. Other events? 
      1. Resume review? 
      2. Speed networking?

We are going to start with speed networking as our first event for Feb/March.  Goal for committee is to do something every 4-6 weeks in spring, slow down in the summer and pick up in fall.

  1. Other business
    1. Mixers in 2022?

Timing is uncertain.  Kevin challenged the group to think about how can we piggyback to other events / conferences.  AAPOR has so much built around it already we should think about other conferences with which we can have a breakout dinner.  Justine added that we can consider adding on to virtual events in addition to in person.

New Business

Patrick led up a discussion about potentially adding job announcements as a service to our sponsors. 

Kevin – Concerned about timeliness of information and suggest that we post to AAPORnet.  Evgenia posed that rather than posting information we post the job application directly so that if the job is closed the link will say so.  Benjamin added that we could consider using social media but we should also consider the implications of MAPOR providing  an ‘endorsement’ of the position and how it might upset some people / companies.  Kevin suggested that we might be able to mitigate this through the inclusion of a disclaimer.  The net recommendation was that we should steer these opportunities to AAPORnet and MAPORnet.

Meeting adjourned at 1:21PM Central

Council members

President – Kevin Ulrich

Vice President / President Elect – Justine Bulgar-Medina

Past President – Dana Garbarski

Conference Chair – Leah Dean

Associate Conference Chair – Patrick Hsieh

Secretary-Treasurer – Lindsey Witt-Swanson

Website Coordinator – Hillary Hanson

Sponsorship Coordinator – Dana Garbarski

Student Liaison – Evgenia Kapousouz

Communications Chair – Benjamin Schapiro

Members at Large – Bob Davis, Erin Heiden, Rebecca Powell, David Sterrett, Jerry Timbrook

Committees

Conference Committee – Leah Dean (Chair), Patrick Hsieh, David Sterrett

Online Learning Committee – Justine Bulgar-Medina (Chair), Erin Heiden, Rebecca Powell, Jerry Timbrook

Awards, Grants, and Support Committee – Bob Davis (Chair), Evgenia Kapousouz

Secretary Treasurer Support – Lindsey Witt-Swanson, Kevin Ulrich 

Communications Support – Benjamin Schapiro, Justine Bulgar-Medina, Evgenia Kapousouz

AAPOR Conference Committee – TBD

GO MAPOR GO!