Benjamin Schapiro

February 27, 2023

12:30 – 2:00 CST / 1:30 pm – 3:00pm EST

Link: MAPOR SPOTLIGHT of the MONTH:  The MAPOR spotlight of the month goes out to all the teamwork and tag-teaming we’ve been working on, especially Lindsey, Patrick, Benjamin, Rebecca, Erin, & Jerry to get webinars posted, websites reworked for hosting, emails updates, AAPOR meetings attended–thank you to everyone!

MAPOR Documents & Procedures 

  1. Vision and Mission Statements: https://www.mapor.org/about/mapor-mission-vision/
  2. Bylaws: https://www.mapor.org/bylaws-as-amended-august-10-2018/
  3. Robert’s Rules of Order: https://www.boardeffect.com/blog/roberts-rules-of-order-cheat-sheet/

Agenda:

Attendees: Lindsey, Ben, Leah, Curtiss, Erin, Jenny, Patrick, Justine, Kevin, Paul, Rebecca, and Jerry

  1. Approval of last meeting’s minutes 

Approved

  1. New meeting time!  The votes are in–lunch on Friday was well received.  Between email and votes, 8 of us weighed in with a preference and the general consensus is the second Friday of the month wins.  We’ll start in March (given February was another moved meeting due to a Federal holiday). 
  1. AAPOR and MAPOR Code of Conduct  (Justine/Lindsey/All)
    1. Recent AAPOR meeting made it known that we can’t simply adopt their code of conduct, so we’ll need to review and borrow/adopt language (while inserting “MAPOR”) as it fits our organization.  Basically, we can’t just say “we subscribe to the rules of AAPOR” as our formal approach.
    2. We need to ensure our adoption is consistent with our bylaws, and doesn’t require sharing to/from AAPOR on any actions we take.

We will have to change our bylaws because our bylaws specifically reference AAPOR bylaws. We will need a membership vote to change our bylaws. AAPOR can answer our questions but are otherwise disconnected. We need to make this change as soon as possible. We will need to develop a process so that if anyone is ever removed from MAPOR members we have a process for making sure they do not pay for MAPOR membership through AAPOR and refunding their money if they do.  Kevin suggested reviewing the bylaws to see if there is anything else we want to change while we are going to the work of a bylaw vote. Rebecca mentioned the need for a stop gap so we have something in place before the spring webinar goes live. 

MAPOR officers are covered under AAPOR liability insurance, but not MAPOR itself. AAPOR will let the chapters know what price range we should expect. We need to get our own liability insurance as an organization.

  1. 2023 Conference             (Patrick)
    1. Conference support committee 
    2. Check with hotel about 2023 contract plans
    3. Support needed to think about speaker invites, new sponsors under the ‘bridge across the industry’ approach? 

“Of Intersections and Opportunities: Exploring the Potentials of Public Opinion (and Survey) Research” is the proposed conference title. Feedback included dropping the parentheses/survey piece, adding “Communications Research” and adding something career specific to the title if the conference will strongly look at career trajectories. 

Patrick is considering Dan Merkle (ABC) and Gina Walejko at Google for Keynote. Patrick would like speakers who have a survey methodology background but work at organizations that have not traditionally conducted surveys. Justine proposed having a speaker that is early or mid-career to better resonate with MAPOR’s student population. Gina is his first choice for the pedagogy hour. Jenny will share some names with Patrick. Patrick wants a panel for Pedagogy hour. Paul suggested Elliott Morris with YouGov. 

Patrick proposed using a short course slot for a networking event. There was concern about changing the conference schedule. Patrick will move forward with the typical short course schedule, but will look at reworking speed networking. 

  1. Secretary / Treasurer’s Report (Lindsey)                
    1. Financial updates
      1. Checking: $21,008.66
      2. Savings: $47,213.03
    2. Membership list updates
      1. General members: 291
      2. Students: 81
      3. Total: 372
    3. Tentative tasks for 2023
      1. Not for Profit Annual Report filing
      2. Cvent billing – Should we drop our other platforms?

Lindsey will add the new, February members through AAPOR. She’ll pay taxes this week. She hasn’t had a chance to work on getting more routing through Cvent to drop the other credit card platforms. 

  1. Communications & Website                     (Benjamin)
    1. Newsletter
    2. Social Media posts
      1. Update/continue conversation about preferred platforms and questions in survey
    3. Website updates–any update?
      1. GoDaddy & WordPress updates
      2. Login info tracking/sharing
      3. Online Learning getting needed access?
    4. Google Groups
      1. Updating membership (add new folks, remove old folks)
      2. Confirming access MAPOR Google Group for group email
      3. Google Drive:

Ben will get the newsletter going so we can promote the spring newsletter, give a heads up on the bylaws vote, and preview the conference. 

We can ask members on which social media platforms they see our content as part of the membership survey and then adjust our social media approach. 

Ben shared concerns about the website. The set up isn’t ideal and a long-term concern. 

Ben needs head shots from a couple council members to update the EC website. Justine asked to prioritize posting about the spring webinar and getting the online learning committee access to email. 

Some people are not getting MAPOR Google Groups emails.

  1. Survey Subcommittee             (Justine)
    1. Timeline & Staffing

Justine will think about when to send this out so it doesn’t get overshadowed by the bylaws vote or vice versa. Then, everyone will have at least a couple weeks to request questions. 

  1. Awards, Grants, and Support Committee (Paul & Curtiss)
    1. Planning initial meeting? 

They have the structure and invitation ready to hopefully include in the newsletter. They are playing with the idea of giving a support grant for fellows to do the fellowship program. Kevin shared that fellows haven’t expressed financial concerns as their reason for not being able to take part in the program. Instead, the committee will focus more on learning the student’s research interests. They will also look at including information about past student participants in the newsletter and MAPOR, AAPOR, and JPSM listservs so students see the program as something for them. 

  1. Sponsorship
    1. Kevin sent out thank yous to Gold earlier, all in process? (Kevin)

Kevin will thank the silver sponsors and let them know that they will be mentioned on the spring newsletter.

  1. Online Learning Committee           (Rebecca)
    1. Goals for 2023
    2. Requested resources/access update 
    3. Sharing out recordings–modified Zoom recording?  Box?  Google Drive?

The spring webinar will start April 14th and be up to three weeks long. It may include three technical areas possibly including data falsification, collecting paradata, and Excel to SQL. They need suggestions for the data falsification webinar, but they have ideas on the other two. There was discussion about having a Qualtrics employee show how to collect paradata through Qualtrics, but others shared how we may be able to reframe it to make it work. 

They want the fall webinar to be student focused with an overview of the field, putting together a resume, and similar topics. We discussed wanting these webinars to be useful to students at different places in their program.

  1. Other business
    1. In-person or virtual mixers in 2023?

We discussed removing this item from the agenda moving forward. No one is dying to organize a party. 😊

Council members

President – Justine Bulgar-Medina

Vice President / President-Elect – Leah Dean

Past President – Kevin Ulrich

Conference Chair – Patrick Hsieh

Associate Conference Chair – Jenny Marlar

Secretary-Treasurer – Lindsey Witt-Swanson

Sponsorship Coordinator –Kevin Ulrich

Student Liaison – Curtiss Engstrom

Communications & Website Chair – Benjamin Schapiro

Members at Large – Erin Heiden, Rebecca Powell, Jerry Timbrook, Paul DiPerna, Shalise Ayromloo

Proposed Committees

Conference Committee – Patrick, Jenny, Shalise 

Membership Survey Committee–Justine, Leah, Lindsey, Curtiss, Benjamin

Online Learning Committee – Rebecca Powell (Chair),  Erin Heiden, Jerry Timbrook

Awards, Grants, and Support Committee – Paul DiPerna, Curtiss Engstrom

Secretary-Treasurer Support – Lindsey Witt-Swanson, Justine Bulgar-Medina

Communications Support – Benjamin Schapiro, Curtiss Engstrom, Leah Dean