Minutes – Oct. 14, 2011

Online News Association Board of Directors Meeting

In attendance:

  • Christine Montgomery
  • Josh Hatch
  • Cory Haik
  • Meredith Artley
  • Katharine Fong
  • Jody Brannon
  • Will Sullivan
  • Amy Webb
  • Ken Sands
  • Anthony Moor
  • Robert Hernandez
  • Rob King
  • Jane McDonnell (Executive Director, ONA)
  • Sean Connelly (Web Editor, ONA)
  • Jeanne Brooks (Community Engagement Manager, ONA)
  • Teresa Hanafin (Nominations Chair)

Not in attendance:

  • Jim Brady
  • Liz Lufkin
  • Katie King
  • Jon Hart (General Counsel, ONA)

Old Business

Board Elections
Election outcome (Jane McDonnell, Executive Director)

The preliminary results of the Board election are in. Voting closed at 5 p.m. yesterday. She’ll be notifying the slate and we’ll announce publicly on Oct. 20.

  • Voter turnout: 14.3%: 296 voters (out of 2,075 members), with 1,585 votes cast.
  • For comparison, last year, voter turnout was 20.5% (371 voters out of 1,816 members) and in 2009, voter turnout was 14.6% (225 voters out of 1,537 members).

Conversation around recruiting board members to run and then them not winning the election. And conversation around board members who were not re-elected and how they will still be engaged.

  • Liz Lufkin will continue to work on the strategy committee
  • Anthony Moor will continue to advise on the awards

Conversation about encouraging membership to vote. One idea was to have voting booths at the conference, as well as incentives such as giving away iPads, changing the ‘meet the candidates’ to a mixer with drinks. Teresa Hanafin and Katharine Fong will look at how to increase voter turnout and will bring a plan for the Jan. board meeting.

Finances and Development

ONA11 Revenue/Expenses update (Jane McDonnell)

  • Most of conference registrations and sponsorships are in. Still calculating expenses but the conference was successful. We also came in under budget on a few expenses. We had a lot of help from the conference chairs that kept cost down.
  • We will be taking a look at the total finances with Chris Shaw, our planning consultant, from a strategic standpoint.

Amy Webb question: Did we get feedback from conferences? Jane: We intended to have a way to collect instantaneous feedback but didn’t get to it. We just did a general survey. We will analyze it and get that to everybody.

Strategy update (Jane McDonnell)

Chris Shaw has worked on the outline and is now working on the executive summary. We will pass that along to the advisory committee.

  • Cory, Katie and Robert still need to give input to Chris Shaw.
  • Next step will be a full business plan draft, and putting together the job description for the business dev slot that we will be hiring for in December.
  • Josh Hatch question: What will the role of the Board be in the draft of the ad for
  • the biz dev person? Jane: The board will be part of editing the draft.

Dates being decided on the January 2012 board meeting in Washington DC; also planning May board meeting in San Francisco at the Hyatt Regency, the venue for ONA12, possibly the 18th and 19th.

Membership

Events (Jeanne Brooks, Community Engagement Manager)

  • Jane: We are going to be working over the next month on our strategy for working on structure for member events and volunteer leaders for ONALocal. More information will be coming out about that over the next two months. We’ll have more structure now that we have the website.
  • Jeanne // Activity: ONABoston is organized and working toward monthly events. It is quite diverse. When I meet with groups I am trying to help them think about what their goals are. Also to be efficient. ONADC has an October event at the National Press Club that filled up in 10 minutes. Next event will be ONALA. ONAPhilly had a successful event at WHYY.
  • Jeanne // New developments. I will be reaching out to ONASF local leadership during the site visit there in December. My goal is to host an event between now and then. I will be working to identify leadership there. I will also meet with ONASeattle people and focusing on the West Coast. I am talking with azcentral.com about a group there as well. We’ve started a new group at Columbia University, ONAColumbia, which could be a partnered group with ONANY. There is interest in Portland, Oregon, and also activity in Austin.
  • We’re researching how to get registrations completed at local-level events wiith alternative means like Squared.

Website redevelopment update (Sean Connolly) Ran out of time