In attendance:
- Ju-Don Roberts
- Jon Dube
- Jody Brannon
- Denise Polverine
- Anthony Moor
- Amy Webb
- Ken Sands
- Jim Brady
- Katharine Fong
- Kinsey Wilson
- Tom Brew
- Christine Montgomery
- Jane McDonnell (Executive Director)
- Sherry Skalko (Editor, journalists.org)
Not in attendance:
- Cory Tolbert Haik
- Katie King
- Neil Budde
- Dick Meyer
Minutes: February minutes. The approval is waived so all board members can read them. Minutes will be approved during next call.
Jane said she will condense the board call to make time for executive session at end of the call.
Jane said we have had several international events in recent week. One in Brussels and one event at Cairo University that resulted in 16 new members.
She said ONA is back to growing membership.
Finances: Neil Budde has sent out to board but we will save until the next call as Neil could not attend this board call. Jane said we have a break even budget for ’09. She said we need to look at expenses and make necessary cuts. Jane is also focusing on reaching out to funders and working on challenge fund.
Budget/Audit: We have a 3rd party company looking at our finances to get everything in order. ERE in NYC will do our audit.
New Initiatives: Jane said the brand new “Support a Journalist” initiative is a success at this early point. We have had several members pay for a membership that an out-of-work journalist can use.
Conference Update: Katharine Fong said she is looking at pumping up the job fair portion of the conference. The board discussed what the job fair charge would be for those attending the conference. More discussion to come on this.
- Keynoter: Katharine is still trying to secure. She is very close.
- Panels: Katharine said the committees continue to narrow down all panels, etc.
- Awards categories have been finalized. Anthony said he is in the final stages of testing the awards entry site.
- Awards partner: Anthony said we are close to signing a contract with a university. We should be able to soon make an announcement on this.
- Conference live-streaming: The board discussed that we may live stream some of the conference live online.
10th anniversary campaign: Past ONA Board President, Doug Fever, will help us rally all former board members to get them all to attend this year’s conference. Jane will send to board members some ideas that we all came up with at the Dec. board meeting.
Executive session: The board went into Executive Session.