Kevin Ulrich

MAPOR EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MONTHLY MEETING Notes

December 17, 2018

12:00 – 1:00 CST/1:00 pm – 2:00pm EST

 

Attendees: Kevin, Ipek, Mary, Josh, Dana, Colleen, Ned, Justine, Ashley, Ron, Josh, Sara, Allison                                                         

Welcome New Council Members: Introductions* Mary Losch, Justine Bulgar-Medina, and Ashley Hyon

Welcome to new council members. Justine will take over for communications.

  • 2018-2019 Council Transition             (Ipek/All)
  1. Monthly meeting schedule
  2. MAPOR Google Group; Google Drive; Website; and MAPORnet
  3. Committees/new roles/transition meetings

Third Monday of the month for meetings going forward. No one objects to this schedule, although we will need to move the meeting next month because of the MLK holiday. There may be other months we may need to move but we will take it one month at a time.

Ipek updated the Google group for council. New folks have also been added to the Google drive. Ipek sent an email with a link to the drive. Please let Ipek know if you do not have access.

Kevin will add new members to MAPORnet. Also will add those who provided an email in the member survey. Kevin will update. We do not remove people from this list.

Please reach out to Ipek if you would like to be added to a sub-committee. Please have your transition meeting with the person who is leaving your role soon if this has not already occurred.

  • 2018 Conference Debrief             (Ned/All)
    1. All expenses paid/conference hotel receipt?
    2. Thank you notes to sponsors/any unpaid invoice?
    3. Conference overview
    4. Issues brought up at the business meeting

Expenses ave been paid and the hotel has cashed the check. Thanks to everyone for taking part in making the conference a successful event!

Allison provided thank you cards to sponsors the previous year. Allison and Ipek will meet and discuss about what to send out to sponsors.

We need to figure out if we need to add briefs or another session. Especially if we have another increase in the number of submissions. We may have another space that would provide another room next year.

What should we designate as an appropriate amount of money to set aside as “operating reserves”?. Mary: you want a minimum of a year of operating expenses set aside. Having those earmarked is a sign of a healthy organization. Kevin, Mary, and Ipek will look into how much we should set aside and what this amount should be. Can we reach out to other organizations to see how much they have set aside? After we know this we can come up with a policy, and then present it to council to vote. Ron suggests having this on the agenda for the next chapters meeting.

Patrick is pulling the presentations off the laptops and we may post these on the website.

  • 2019 Conference                       (Dana/Sara)
  1. Conference support committee
  2. Other items

If anyone would like to join the conference committee, please reach out to Dana.

Dana has reached out to a potential key-note speaker, she is waiting for a response. Pedagogy hour is waiting on the response from the key-note but she has ideas about who she will contact next.

  • 2020 Conference Hotel Contract Update      (Ipek/Ned/Ron/Sara)
    • Proposals from Embassy and Marriott

Contract expires after next year. We are in the process of re-negotiating the contract with the Embassy Suites. We also have a proposal from the Marriot. We will review the contract proposal from Marriot and see what kind of offer they can make us.

Ipek will provide more info on this during the next meeting.

  • Member Survey Update                               (Kevin)
  1. Survey closing date
  2. Preliminary results
  3. Next steps

We now have 150 completes and 13 partial completes. The last reminder to non-respondents went out this morning and the survey will close tomorrow (12/18). Historically, we have had 180-190 responses to the survey, although the denominator from past years has not been consistent.

Executive council were removed from participating in the survey. The logic is that because there are so many council members, we don’t want to push the data in a more positive direction. If the membership is unhappy with something, we don’t want it watered done by our responses. Plus, council provide their input and ideas when we discuss and interpret the results.

Kevin will clean the data and think about which open ends to code. Please reach out to Kevin if you are willing to help with the coding. Ipek will check back with Kevin a week or so before the next meeting to see where he is at in the process.

  • Treasurer’s Report                               (Kevin)
    1. Updates
    2. Membership list updates

Checking: $17,575.52

Savings: $45,018.03.

We are in good shape financially. As discussed previously, we need to think about how much we can set aside for operational reserves. We will also see what input members had in the member survey on this topic.

Cvent is offering a new service called “Cvent flex system” which could eliminate the need for us to rely on Authorize.net and iPayment – each of which take a cut of our revenue. Having funds transfer through several systems is costly and makes tracking challenging. Kevin will put together the costs associated with staying or switching to the new system. We will discuss at the next meeting.

  • Mixer    (Josh/Colleen)
    1. Date/time of the event
    2. Other logistics

Next event will be in Ann Arbor – Josh and Colleen are organizing now. Originally targeted for Tuesday, February 12th. People that Josh discussed with said the weekday/weekend date is not so much of an issue. Josh and Colleen will make a decision about the date – either the 4th, the 11th, or the 15th. Some council members will be able to attend but it will depend on the date. We will make a decision by mid-January so that we can send out the communications.

  • Communications                             (Justine)

Justine would like to come up with a calendar of events for the year that highlights key events throughout the year to ensure communications are going out when they need to be. We will solicit ideas from council members about other dates to go on the calendar.

  • Website                                 (Josh)

Josh confirms that we can put presentations up on the website although it would take a considerable amount of time to upload each one. He suggests making a public Google drive folder where all presentations could go out and people could see them if they had the link. We need to make sure that those who said no about going public do not have their presentations go into that folder. We asked if they would be willing to have them public when they registered.

Josh would like to have a session where he can teach about how to update their pertinent info on the website, but we can do this at another time. Please reach out to Josh if you require access to editing.

  • MAPOR mission statement next steps              (Mandy)

Mandy and Ipek will touch base on this before the next meeting.

  • MAPOR purchases with new logo          (Ipek/Sara)

This will be an item for next month. Sara should be aware that we need to come up with a plan for purchasing updated MAPOR stuff.

  • Webinar              (Patrick)

Ipek and Patrick have ideas for webinars. More on this next month. Please let Patrick and Ipek know if you have any ideas for future webinars.

  • MAPOR history project     (Ipek)

Ipek will reach out to Paul about the next steps.

  • Election software investigation          (Ron/Ipek)

Our rates of voting were lower this year and this is the impetus for this consideration. Ron and Ipek will discuss in the upcoming weeks about using a different software.