OPEG Meeting Minutes

Minutes for meeting of OPEG Board of Trustees 9-21-06 Maryhaven in Columbus

Present: Rob Fischer, Marsha Zabecki, Randy Leite, Debbie Crawford, Rick George, Chip Partridge, Sandy Lock, and Nancy Hood

Participants via conference call: Jan Upton and Kelly Burgess

Vote on Appointment to Fill Remainder of Buck Buchanan's Term: Motion to fill replacement with Nancy Hood was done via e-mail following Buck Buchanan's resignation in August. There were no objections to Nancy Hood becoming the replacement. Nancy stepped out of the room during her formal appointment to the remainder of Buck's term through next June. Nancy has been very active in the planning of the Fall Workshop.

Minutes: Minutes from the July 21 meeting were approved (these have been posted on the web page).

Treasurer's Report: Sandy reviewed the Financial Statement through August 31^st. She made a correction: the checking, savings, & CD interest should be changed to $75, resulting in total revenue of $20,075. We did well this year. Year-to-date revenue exceeded the budgeted amount by a little over a $100, and we were more than $3,000 under on our budgeted expenses. Year-to-date income was $20,252.38. Our total expenses were $16,744.99. Our net was $3,507.39. This income and expense statement was done on a "cash basis" (means actual expenses paid out of the checkbook during the period 9/1/05 through 8/31/06 and actual cash/checks received during this same time). This has not yet been reconciled with the August bank statement, as Sandy had not yet received that, but she will follow-up on that. These, however, are good figures. Checks cleared well and she has all the deposits. Not accounted for in these totals (at bottom of financial statement): There is outstanding revenue of $300 (membership fees) and conference fees of $625. In September, Sandy paid two conference calling bills (127.27), covers through July. For people at the meeting, Sandy provided a printout regarding the outstanding revenue and expenses. The total in the checking account as of 8/31 is 9,544.62 and the CD has a value of $7,089.56, resulting in cash available of $16,634.18 as we go into the new fiscal year. Rob noted how exciting it was that the projections and actual figures were in close alignment. Sandy pointed out that last year, we put in an amount to help with administrative tasks, but we did not use it. Overall, we had a good, productive year. We went into it with a realistic budget and stuck with that budget. Marsha asked question about the budget for upcoming year. Sandy explained that is something that we need to decide. Rob suggested handling this by e-mail. Randy will send out a draft budget. We need to approve prior to our next Board meeting. The Board approved the budget and applauded Sandy for all her work as Treasurer.

Sandy mentioned that she does want to follow-up on the outstanding revenue. Apparently, Ohio State Patrol is one of the hardest to collect (6 memberships). Sandy received an e-mail apology the previous day. They are in the process of initiating payment. Apparently, there is some confusion about which year the membership covers. Membership is on a calendar year (January through December). Ohio State agencies run into problems because they can not pay the membership. They can pay registration only. Sandy went ahead and followed up on the delinquent accounts, since it was her last month as Treasurer, and she did not want it to fall on Randy.

When Sandy took on the Treasurer role, she had a bit of a problem getting a signature card for Cincinnati. She typed up a "Certificate" indicating that Rob authorizes Randy to manage the account. She thought this might make it easier for him when he takes the signature cards to the bank. She indicated on the letter that it had "Board approval," but if this is something that we don't want to do, then we do not have to move forward with it. If Randy does not have it and goes to his bank and has a problem, then he will be stuck. The Board approved the "Certificate" letter for Randy.

Membership Database: Debbie explained that Sandy has been managing the membership database, largely because it is tied to payment of fees. Chip offered to take care of managing the membership database. He said that he would periodically send it to Randy. There was a question of what happens when Randy receives a membership payment. Debbie will send Randy the mail from the post office. Chip explained that Randal intended to develop an on-line membership database system. A check should be submitted after the membership database is updated. However, people can still submit paper only to Randy. If the on-line version is the master, then there will need to manual entering of paper submissions. Sandy has been keeping all the information in an Excel file-used for membership, addresses, and everything. When people sign up, they send in paperwork and a check. We don't want to have duplicate databases. Perhaps we should update database at the conferences and membership drives, as these are the only times there are a lot of memberships.

We need to have a designated Master Database. We need to start having member numbers (would make it easier in terms of matching). Chip then said that the Master should be the file maintained by Randy, as the majority of entries are going to be mailed in. Chip will then send any of the on-line updates to Randy. We want to keep it as simple as possible. Provisionally, we are going to move forward with this. Randy will bring file to Fall Workshop so that it can be updated as people pay fees.

Program Committee Report: At our last meeting, Marsha noted that she was encouraged to proceed with reserving the Fawcett Center for our spring and fall 2007 conferences, so she did. The Spring Exchange will be May 18 and the Fall Workshop will be November 16. Both are on a Friday. Hopefully, we will get the contracts signed and returned to OSU so that we will be locked into these dates. Marsha was hoping to have the Fall Workshop Program finalized by the end of August, but that did not happen, but it will be ready for mailing soon. [Update Note: Marsha sent out the "final" Fall Program on 9/21. This version was mailed to people in the membership database and was posted on-line.] There was some discussion about adding another presenter to the FERPA panel. If another person is not found, Chip will take on a larger role in the presentation. Marsha was having the same problem with the HIPAA. [Update Note: Since the Board meeting, the HIPAA session has two presenters that are replacing the original presenter who was unable to participate. The FERPA session stayed with one presenter and Chip.] Sandy will use the Membership Database (over 600 listed) for the Fall Workshop mailing. Sandy will continue to be the point person on the database until things are completely shifted to Randy.

Marsha submitted an article about the Fall Workshop to the AEA newsletter. Rob noted that the AEA asked him if we wanted to do a mailing to AEA members in the state (may or may not be OPEG members). If we want to do this, we need to get it approved. Do we want to do this? Would think this could be expensive? Are there a lot of people that are AEA members but not members of OPEG? Some AEA members in Ohio may not realize that they need to join OPEG-they may think it is part of their AEA membership. Rob explained that we can do AEA mailing at any time, but AEA must approve our mailing. Rick asked if we could send AEA members a letter inviting them to join OPEG. Nancy suggested that we send out letter as part of sending out information about the Fall Workshop. Marsha noted that we should begin tracking who is an AEA member. Chip noted that this is part of the on-line membership information.

Rob asked Debbie to follow-up with AEA since it deals with membership. We would like an electronic list of AEA members in Ohio. We could then e-mail them a letter and the Fall Workshop Program. The last time we got a list, there were only about 45 people, and 10 of those were OPEG members.

Marsha mentioned that a possible topic for Spring Exchange is the graphic presentation of data. Briefly discussed possible keynote. Debbie noted that if we can't find a keynote, then we could possibly get 1-2 members to present on this topic. How to do an effective PowerPoint would be a topic of interest. Another possible paper topic is technology.

Program Committee scheduled their next meeting for October 9. [Update Note: This was later rescheduled for October 11.]

Rob said he had everything for CEU application for the Fall Workshop.

Nancy is in the process of contacting publishers to donate books for a raffle at the Fall Workshop. She mentioned that she had one possible book that she is currently reading, Applied Ethics for Program Evaluation (1995). She also has a graphic relevant for ethics which she forward to Board members.

Other Business:

AEA Affiliate Group - Tim Champney and Rob two years ago attended a meeting of all the AEA affiliates. At the time, there were only 20, and now it is up to 35. That group received some funding from a national foundation to meet to discuss how the affiliates might work together and how AEA could facilitate the work of the affiliates. There was another meeting at the AEA conference. They are now trying to figure out what the continuing role of this group should be. The main products have been a start-up kit for new affiliates. Tim and Rob participated in this, as we represent one of the "old" affiliates. They are kind of at a point where they are having an identity crisis. AEA has asked the steering group-who do they represent? They are not a real entity. They have been using the AEA line for meetings (example of expenses associated with the group). This is just to let you know this is going on. For OPEG, we were trying to look at the upside of the group, and the main thing was the opportunity to establish a relationship with other nearby affiliates such as Michigan. Maybe we could do a shared meeting. That's not happened. It is hard enough to bring together our own people. There will be a couple of sessions at the AEA conference discussing affiliate collaboration. In the AEA e-mail, they also asked if OPEG wanted to have a table at the conference.

Newsletter - Rick said that with the Fall Workshop coming up, he plans to incorporate that material into the newsletter. He asked if anyone on the Board is going to have a digital camera at the meeting. One article could focus on the benefits of OPEG. Rick could do informal interviews with non-Board members to get their views. Maybe he could do an interview with Michael Morris. He will send out an e-mail with story ideas. He was planning to do the newsletter after the workshop-possibly sending it out in early January. Could Rick use his university graphics department? The cost would be less than $300. Sandy noted that there was a budget line for the newsletter at one point, but since we did not use it, it was removed. We usually have three mailings a year: in January for membership renewal, one in March/April for the May Exchange and another in the fall. We might want to reconsider including the membership mailing with the Fall Workshop. We then only have two mailings. A lot of our members combine payment of their membership with a conference fee anyway. Maybe we need to modify Rob's letter. Sandy suggested adding a line specifying that the membership would cover 2007 if they pay with Fall Workshop. Marsha planned to add the needed lines to the registration form.

Nancy had another idea about doing a newsletter article about different types of evaluators. It would be helpful to profile members so that members can see there are different paradigms.

Awards Chair - Kelly agreed to be the Awards Chair. We should begin thinking about people who should be Evaluator of the Year. It is good to begin thinking about possibilities for awards now.

Next meeting: December 1, 2006 at 10:00 a.m. conference call.

Summary of Needed Follow-up:

1. Nancy Hood Appointment - Need photo and background information for web page.
2. On-line membership database - Need additional information from Chip on data elements that need to be included. We also need to further discuss the process with Randal (the webmaster).

Submitted by: Jan Upton