MAPOR EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MONTHLY MEETING AGENDA
April 20th, 2020
12:30 – 2:00 CST/1:30 pm – 3:00pm EST

MAPOR MOMENT of the MONTH: Our MAPOR Moment of the Month is for everyone who contributed to our huge webinar, blowing-out all records. Special thanks to Patrick for organizing that and making it happen during COVID-19.

Attendees: Ned, Justine, Kevin, Ipek, Stephanie, Patrick, Mary, Sara, Leah, Ashley, David

Agenda:
I. Approve February minutes (Ned)

February minutes approved. No March meeting/minutes.

Leah Dean (new member): starting at RTI DC office next week. Volunteering as ad-hoc member of exec council.

II. MAPOR at AAPOR (Ned)
a. Actually may be something
i. Meetings being set-up
Might be something virtual, in conjunction with the AAPOR virtual conference. Is there interest from the chapters to have a mini virtual meeting? Ned supports some type of MAPOR participation – he will continue to join discussions, see how it evolves, and report back.

III. Treasurer’s Report (Kevin)

Checking: $28,562.66
Savings: $45,023.94

Doris Graber listed MAPOR as a remainder beneficiary in her trust. Kevin has been in communication with the legal group distributing the funds for the last few weeks. They indicated the amount to be distributed to MAPOR will be approximately $7,500, which is almost twice their original estimate. They will be sending a check to Kevin within the next week however Kevin may not be able to get the check until the stay at home order has been lifted.

Membership list updates:
334 Members
76 students (23%)
258 non-students (77%)
Tax filing:
MAPOR non-profit status for state and federal is up to date for the year.

Membership survey: 153/528 = 29% RR, AAPOR RR2 (2 partial completes)

Kevin cleaned the dataset and posted a copy of the data to the Google drive. There is an SPSS file available and he will post an excel file today. Kevin asked if someone was willing to create set of response frequencies for the data. An example from last year is posted with this year’s results.

IV. Webinars (Patrick)
a. HUGE Spring webinar with Rebecca Powell
b. Fall: AAPOR short course or other presenters?

Final count was 238 registrants (~127 through AAPOR email); peak 144 attendees (~120 attendees stayed through the end of the session). Comments from people at small local gov’t offices who expressed strong interest in learning R. Variety of fed agencies – FDA, USDA, Census. Overall, a successful publicity event.

AAPOR will still have on-line short courses, so MAPOR could pick one to use as our fall webinar. Also, some suggestions for topics came through member survey.

V. 2020 Conference (Sara/David)
a. When do we come up with a remote plan?
i. Hotel implications?

Discussion: Need to come up with remote plan soon. We need to investigate hotel contract to see by which date we have to make decision. Contract language is not clear. We need to be cautious and not assume we can move forward as normal. Multiple options to consider: keeping dates but going virtual, rescheduling to later date, just skipping the 2020 conference. Need to keep in mind restrictions that universities are putting on travel and non-essential expenditures. Kevin will reach out to CVent and see what solutions they might have for virtual conference hosting. Discussion that we should decide on format before sending out first invitation for participation – need to think about what content is most appropriate for the MAPOR membership (may be different than AAPOR). Should we do a brief survey to members, on the topic of virtual conference? Consensus is that we don’t want to open up to too much input.

Motion to change 2020 conference to remote format. Approved by Council.

Ned will contact hotel.

Will decide on messaging to membership soon – will send out early May.

Discussion about free registration for students, increased emphasis on paper competitions, etc.

b. Speaker Updates: Trent Buskirk has agreed to lead our short course on interactive graphics with R (shout out to Patrick for suggesting him!) and Claudia Deane , VP of Research and polling expert at Pew will lead our keynote (shout out to Jenn Agiesta for suggesting her!)! Sara is still working on a pedagogy hour speaker – like to build on the theme of measuring identities and making research more inclusive and have been looking for folks who work in measuring demographics such as race. If anyone on council has seen or heard of any interesting presentations please reach out!

c. Call for Conference Participation and Student Paper Competition Announcements – will be working on this towards the end of the month.
d. QUESTION: should the call for participation address or include a tentative plan? Eg, we plan to move forward with our schedule as usual (or do we build in more time for abstracts?
e. Student Paper Competition Award Updates – will be included in above announcements. Maybe send separate communication to MAPOR and AAPOR listservs after announcements go out?
f. Abstract management programming and review updates

VI. Communications (Justine)
a. Newsletters for 2020: May (Spring), October) Fall
b. What other communications in spring?

Will include some data from member survey, updates on the decision to go to virtual conference, small segment on MAPOR to AAPOR. Maybe delay the Spring newsletter a bit, until we have more solid information.

VII. Summer/Fall 2020 Mixer (Evgenia/Lindsay)
a. Ann Arbor in August or September?

No discussion today. We’ll see how things evolve. Glad we fit in our Chicago event!

VIII. Past President (Ipek)
a. Student award subcommittee

Will continue paper competition. If virtual conference is free, no compelling reason to pursue making awards.

Evgenia will continue to update the university list, to try to target departments for membership.

IX. Sponsorship (Allison/Mary)

How much drop will there be in sponsorship? Maybe not a big concern because we won’t need as much sponsorship if we don’t have in-person conference. We need to consider how best to frame sponsorship requests – what is compelling in the environment of a virtual conference?

Usually the push for sponsorship is summer, and the goal is to get funds in time to prepare paper conference program.

X. Website (Ashley/Patrick)

Nothing to report.

XI. Other business?

Discussion of communication with members in general – make sure we have solid information before we share it.

For May meeting, Kevin will prepare a review of the budget, and what the impact may be on not holding an in-person conference.

Committee Composition:

I. Conference (Sara, Dana, David)
II. Sponsorship (Allison, Mary)
III. Webinar (Patrick, Lindsay)
IV. Website (Ashley, Patrick)
V. Student Award (Ipek, Ned, Kevin, Dana, Evgenia)