WRFI -Meeting Minutes- December 2022

 WRFI Board Meeting Minutes, 12/13/22

 

In attendance:

-Peter Bakija

-Fred Balfour

-Bryan Roberts

-Joseph Haefeli

-Carlos Gutierrez

-John Young 

-Robin Elliot

-Joe Romano

-Corinne Shanahan

-Felix Teitelbaum

 

Meeting commences at 6:05 pm.

 

1) Approve consent agenda (minutes of 11/22 meeting). Joseph moves. Carlos seconds. Motion carries 7-0.

 

2) Committee Reports:

 

-GovCo: Fred reports starting out a mission to send out brief 2 sentence report from GovCo meeting. Meeting covers bylaws. Contacted NFCB for support on refitting bylaws, checking for templates. CEO (Sally Kane) pointed us at 3 stations that are similar, and will help us tweak our bylaws. Discussion of community advisory committee. Felix mentions listeners who become members. Fred mentions lack of annual meeting. Joe asks about overall governance form—what kind of governance are we going to follow? John mentions the bylaws being very old. Lot of things have changed since it was created, and we should think about what our responsibility is to our membership, should we give a role to volunteers. Felix asks questions about the “updated” mission statement, which probably was written in 2015. Suggests to table mission statement update, and we work with the mission statement on the website. Questions on public participation in meetings.

 

-Development Committee: Reports that we got various matching funds, possible we will not get the grant we applied for.

 

3) Financial Report:

 

-Development committee put together a strong application for the Tompkins County Recovery Grant. Grant is up in the air. We got positive comments, and then got 0 points out of 25 points for program alignment. Felix is confused as to how this happened. Got information that there was not a clerical error, so we got the scores we got. Robin reports that they asked for no lobbying, but lots of organizations seem to be lobbying. Robin’s sense is that the process will take longer than just one meeting. Grant received requests from 100+ agencies. ReUse is in a similar situation, and plans on reaching out to Grant Committee and legislature. Meeting on Tuesday, 12/20. Felix suggests interacting with meeting. Suggests interacting with legislature. Bryan indicates that he spoke to a legislator, and that the Grant supports Human Services, and we are viewed as Entertainment Media, and suggests that the grant is shut off for us on that front. Robin indicates that the scores were not the defining factor on how people voted for grant applicants. Felix wonders if our value as a station is not fully understood by the people involved. John wonders if the legislature does not understand us, and wonders if the opaque process is problematic, and that the process is worth questioning. Joseph suggests that there might be a problem in their process. Felix suggests that other people have made a similar claim. There is agreement that the Development Committee can advance ideas and the next step here. Felix feels that we need a News Director. Possibly finding other grants to fund a News Director.

 

-Park Grant interim report for the 2022-2023 due March 31st. Application for the next 2 year cycle due in Dec 2023.

-Fund Drive: Fund drive was tremendous outpouring of volunteer support. Joseph indicates it sounded good. 61 calls came in. $5500 comes in immediately, with annualized new subscribers, we hit $6700, plus annual income. Felix suggests we need possibly alternate income streams. 11 new monthly subscriptions, 22 new one time donors. Currently at 607 members who have given in the last 24 months. Discussion of spreading two drives out over 6 months (Spring/Fall). 

 

4) New Transmitter: New transmitter (89.7) turned on today, at 50% currently. Seems like it is working reasonably well. Cortland might be our new good target audience, as it seems to be broadcasting South and East.

 

5) GM Work Report: Studio A falling behind. CCAP grant expires tomorrow (14th), Felix will attempt to mitigate. We need to do late year large donor contact, will have some numbers of people to contact.

 

6) Visit from three potential Board Members and interviews. Board interviews and discusses three potential members.

 

Meeting adjourns at 8:09.