Board Minutes: June 25, 2013

BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING
BLOOMINGTON COMMUNITY RADIO, INC.
June 25, 2013, 7:00 p.m.
Hooker Room, City Hall, 201 N. Morton St., Bloomington, IN

I. CALL TO ORDER / ATTENDANCE OF BOARD MEMBERS:
The meeting was called to order at 7:11pm.
Members Present: Joe Estivill, Matt Pierce, Richard Fish, Maria McKinley, Kevin Jones,
Carolyn VandeWiele, Chad Carrothers and Cleveland Dietz, Pam Davidson

II. REVIEW/APPROVAL OF MINUTES
Richard Fish made a motion to amend the minutes to include the effective date of Chad Carrother’s resignation as General Manager, June 30, 2013. Matt Pierce second and the motion passed unanimously.

Carolyn VandeWiele then made a motion to accept the minutes as amended.
Richard Fish seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

III. ELECTION OF OFFICERS
PRESIDENT:

Carolyn VandeWiele nominated Joe Estivill who accepted the nomination. Matt Pierce – Second

There were no further nominations and no discussion.

The nomination passed by a vote of 5:0:1 with Richard Fish abstaining.

SECRETARY:
Chad Carrother nominated Maria McKinley. Matt Pierce – Second

Discussion – there is a thumb drive with everything on it for a handbook

The nomination passed unanimously.

TREASURER:
Chad Carrothers recommended Matt Pierce

The board reviewed the duties of the Treasurer: to balance the check book, keep paperwork filed in a timely fashion, ensure tax filings are done, work with GM on budget, check numbers every few weeks, provide oversight and creative forward thinking on financial matters.

One consideration: Chad knew our system top to bottom, Cleveland does not. Chad strongly urged the Board to find an accountant with a public spirit who would be willing to serve.

Kevin Jones suggested that we should look for someone who could fulfill the functions of treasurer rather than narrowing it down simply to an accountant. The board decided to postpone election of a treasurer while we review the board matrix for needs and look for an accounting expert, CPA, or other financial whiz with interest in radio who would fulfill our needs. Chad can act as a consultant and Stampfli & Assoc. has a Quickbooks expert we can call on with questions in the meantime. After the discussion, Matt Pierce proposed that we appoint Joe Estivill as our acting  Treasurer until an alternative can be found.

Kevin Jones – second
The proposal passed unanimously.

IV. TREASURER’S REPORT
For four months out of the year we have a positive balance sheet. Those four months are Spring and Fall Fund Drive, and CPB Grant Funding 1 (usually February) and 2 (usually November). The other months we have negative income which is typical for organizations that are funded as we are. This is our first true Balance Sheet in many years – our records have been corrupted by bad data. Laura Cullison from Stampfli & Assoc. did an audit of our books and made corrective general journal adjustments to fix our Quickbooks records.

Some highlights:

• We don’t file depreciation because we are a non-profit
• Real estate – assessors value
• Assets values – is this cost basis? Look at it as accounting value – the current market value for what we might get from insurance or for sale if we sold everything

We can not rectify the line intangible assets line because we don’t know what this actually represents. Laura Cullison was uncomfortable writing this off at this time and wanted to put their heads together at Stampfli & Assoc to figure out what this is before making a final adjustment.

Profit and Loss and Budget Notes:
Income:
We fell short on Grant income in 2012-13; due to the sequester, we received less money from the CPB than we had budgeted. Some of this income may eventually be returned.

We had no new grant income other than grants we have filed in past years (eg. MLK grant)

Membership income was up 7%

Contribution income is income not associated with a particular drive (drives are given a definitive start and stop date for accounting purposes), This is now folded in under membership as a subset of that category.

Merchandise – We have removed this from budget as we don’t really sell anything, there are logistics issues, and we have decided to use “merchandise” as premiums instead. This is a standard model – to accept donations and give things as a gifts – we may look at merchandise again in the future but not now.

Expenses:
SUTA (State Unemployment Tax Act) is low; in our annual budget we spread this amount evenly over the 12 months. However, we only pay SUTA on the first $9-$10,000 of an employee’s income and then don’t pay further. We elected to leave it in the budget as it is, as it gives us a cushion.

Advertising and promotions – The purchase of 3000 stickers for 20th anniversary went over budget. This item has a limited shelf life so we didn’t order the usual amount but we are using them for our anniversary events.

The Billboard looks great – one is situated just south of the Gosport tower on 37 South.

Supplies – The overage in supplies is directly related to upgrades in “the cage” – to purchase equipment to outfit three reporter stations (Note that some of this expense was budgeted for the 2013-14 year but in actuality was paid for in May and there will be a few hundred dollars in related expenses that will appear in the June P&L).

Most expenses came in under budget

Engineering expenses were well under budget. The amount put in the budget was based on previous years when we had a bunch of engineering expenses – STL replacement, etc.

We have insurance on the transmitter; two years ago we upped our insurance to give us full translator coverage as well.

WFHB Endowment does not appear on the balance sheet – currently our endowment stands at about $34,000 and we roll over the income back into the Endowment every year. At the present time only about $4000 of that money would actually be available for WFHB to use. A long term goal for the Endowment would be to run off this income – we would need in the range of $2,000,000 in funds to cover our entire budget.

The Board discussed applying for a new Matchstick grant in 2013. We do not have a good record with the Community Foundation on this issue – We applied two times in the past but the then GM and treasurer were not invested in actually making this happen and thought we had other more pressing needs and so did not make our goals. Previous efforts to engage with Community foundation did not have involvement of the full board, and they will want to know that we are fully invested before they will work with us again.

Brian Kearney has expressed interest in doing an endowment drive.

Pam Davidson suggested an IRA Charitable roll over could be an incentive for people to invest. The board decided to put this on the agenda for next month to discuss further.

V. GENERAL MANAGER’S REPORT – Cleveland Dietz

Chad’s official last day is today.

Co-Pros: MCHC Roaring Twenties Event

Our contract with Bloom Magazine has been renewed. It has a $11,700 listed value and consists of a full page ad every other month in each of the 6 current magazines that Bloom produces. We may look into being included in the new magazine that is coming out but it may not be as useful to us as it’s focus is directed towards short term visitors.

Pam Davidson – card in Bloom for fund drive that people could send in – suspect there is a policy against this – ask

We are getting closer to our new website rollout – a template has been selected and the committee is working on it now.

Early Summer Web Drive – going on now through July 4. This is web-based only with announcements on air for promotion. Ghost Brothers of Darkland County – we have 30 deluxe box sets to give away for $120 pledge or more. In addition, pledges will be entered into a drawing for Forecastle Festival passes.

Our online contribution set-up now has an ACH choice option. The information still has to be entered manually but people can provide us with contact info for us to call them back and set it up. We could put a payment processor online but it would come with a monthly fee.

WFHB Display at City Hall: The closing reception for the Display will be at 5:30 p.m. on Friday – movers and
shakers can come out and meet station personalities. Display is fantastic (comes down Saturday). Maria McKinley spoke with Alycin Bektesh about doing a video archive of the exhibit that we can put up online, perhaps have Emily Jackson do a walk-through talking about what is on display. It was also suggested that we submit it to CATS and the Monroe County History Center.

There was an article in the IDS on Monday June 17th by Kate Thacker “WFHB celebrates 20 years of radio”. http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=93167

We have made a lot of progress on the cage – structurally it’s still up in the air but there are three new news stations inside – we have a lot of overflow needs, especially when IU is in session – and this will allow more of our reporters to have a place to work and alleviate back ups. We are still figuring out what the issues are in terms of finishing the actual studio – on the one hand there was the impression that the door was open to progressing, on the other hand we have been given the impression that “it will never happen.” The Board asked Kevin Jones to talk with Ivy Tech to determine what the issues are and what we need to do to move forward – Chad and Cleveland can provide him with needed background info. At this time the rest of the Board was asked to be hands off. Good documentation is important. In the past too much of what was done was not in writing so there were no records and things were left open to misunderstandings and miscommunications – We need to fully document all negotiations going forward. If we can’t get a good background for the negotiations – then we will need to start from scratch. Kevin can handle the negotiations with Cleveland and bird dog it through – if they get to a stalemate then they bring it back to the Board for further discussion.

FCC Public File Update: Nash Hott has completed the FCC Public File update – we are completely up to date in
the Blue File Cabinet and with online on website/public file.

Underwriting: We need more active underwriting team members – Beth Moses is going dormant for a
while and our other team member has not been very active. This is a commissioned position – earning 20% for new contracts, and 10% for renewals. The last Firehouse Follies had no sponsors – and we lost about $1000 on the project. Mike Kelsey has put out a call for sponsors for the Follies. This foreshadows the need for the Development Director position – we have plenty of leads – but we need someone who is capable of selling them. Where do we look for sales people? Where are there opportunities for people we haven’t asked lately – a suggestion was to use students from the Grad School. A concern is that the message be consistent – do we have a job description? Need to set up a best practices group to help work with this and there hasn’t been a development or marketing committee for some time.

VI. COMMITTEE COMMENTS -posting and access to minutes via Google docs:

https://docs.google.com/a/wfhb.org/folder/d/0B9mSvX05f5vzMTIxZTdiMzMtNGVhYi00MjAzLTllZjktMWUzY2M4YjU5NGU4/edit

VII. OLD BUSINESS
a.) Strategic Plan Timeline
The Board tabled our discussion on the Timeline on Strategic Planning until the next meeting to give new members time to read the plan – it was suggested this might be the main focus of the July meeting. The full Strategic Plan is available on the website. We will resend the the color coded priorities info to Board members.

Issues:Richard Fish questioned that the plan identifies two currencies – money and man hours but felt that we have not done a cost benefit analysis in terms of man hours. The current plan has been discussed, approved and voted on by the Board of Directors. We will review and make changes to the plan over time; however the task force that developed within the plan are tasked with creating the tactical plans for each section of the plan as currently voted upon.
People who are interested can contact task force leaders to contribute to the development of tactical discussions.

VIII. NEW BUSINESS
Committee Assignments:
Alycin Bektesh requested that Maria McKinley serve on NPAC Committee.
Carolyn VandeWiele would like to serve as a Board liaison on this committee.

The Music Committee is also looking for two new Board members.

Board members should look at committees and decide where they can be useful.

The Board expressed their thanks to Chad Carrothers for all of his service to WFHB and wished him well in his future endeavors.

Move to adjourn
Richard Fish second
The meeting adjourned at 8:38 p.m.