OPEG Meeting Minutes

Minutes for meeting of OPEG Board of Trustees 2-15-08 Conference Call

Rob Fischer, Nancy Hood, Randy Leite, Jan Upton, Debbie Crawford, Rick George, Tucker Handley, Chip Partridge, Shiloh Turner and Marsha Zabecki.

Review of Minutes - Jan Upton: December minutes were approved.

Treasurer's Report - Randy Leite: We are in pretty good shape financially. We have $11,430.59 in checking. The CD is $7,353.29. This gives us a total of $18,783.88. With respect to income and expenses, we're $2,200 ahead of where we were last year. Our revenues are up by about $1,100 this year. Our expenses are only up by about $300. There was discussion about CD earnings from last year. We earned about $11-12 monthly. We have not made any changes in the CD since Randy came on the Board, but moving it to a higher interest bearing account was discussed when Sandy was the Secretary. Interest rates are low right now. Rick suggested that we look into a higher interest account. Concern is our possible need to use some of the funds. However, since membership currently appears strong, this may be a good time to explore higher interest options. Randy is going to research options and present the information to the Board by our next meeting.

OPEG Meeting History - Jan Upton: Jan put together a list of meetings, themes, and speakers since 2004. The only question was whether to add information on meetings prior to 2004. The group said that we go ahead and post on the web page. If anyone sends earlier meeting information to Jan, she will update the list. Rob mentioned that he has put together a list of award winners since 2002. Jan will load this onto the Awardees section of the OPEG web page.

Program Committee Report - Nancy Hood: A Program Committee group (Chip, Shiloh, and Julianne Manchester) decided that the theme would be "Policy Evaluation." We have worked through several ideas for keynotes. We will have two co-keynotes (kind of a cross between keynotes and a panel). Shiloh is the point person for Dr. Ann McCracken, Director at The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati for almost 11 years. She is going to speak on how policy evaluation relates to health and philanthrophy. She should be able to blend practice with the evidence-based examples as well as talk about evaluation from multiple perspectives. She has completed a literature review on policy evaluation. She will incorporate this into a handout that will include references. Chip is working with Dr. Mary Lou Rush who is the Executive Director for Center for Students, Families, and Communities at the Ohio Department of Education. One of her jobs is to manage the evaluation of public funded programs (about a billion dollars in programming throughout the state of Ohio).

Everyone should have seen the Call for Proposals. Chip sent it out via e-mail, and it is now on the web page. We have two tracks. The first is "Policy Evaluation" and the second is "Evaluation Practice." We wanted to emphasize Policy Evaluation, but since it likely does not cut across most evaluators' work, we wanted to broaden presentation opportunities. This should be a model that we can use for other conferences-kind of like the Presidential Strand at AEA and other conferences where we have the main theme and other things, too.

Debbie mentioned efforts to market the session strategically to United Way and other funders (such as the Grantmakers Forum) that have an interest in policy issues. Shiloh will contact the Grantmakers Forum and Debbie will inquire about statewide dissemination to United Way of Ohio. Shiloh will also follow-up with the Health Policy Institute of Ohio.

Rob noted that in 2005, we had a panel with Mel Mark about using evaluation to influence decision-making. He verified that the upcoming session is on how evaluators can approach the evaluation of policy, not necessarily influencing political decision-making per se. Although one cannot completely take this aspect out of it, the keynote speakers have been asked to talk about frameworks for policy evaluation, best practices, and possible challenges. We are not limiting the scope to just legislative policy, so this is another difference with the 2005 sessions. We are including organizational policy and community policy, as well as legislative policy. We are defining policy broadly.

The main point of the Spring Exchange is for evaluators to exchange information, and we have not limited the presentations to policy evaluation. For the people who came to the policy session in 2005, there is a very different lense on it from the keynote perspective. And even though we have explicitly invited presentations on this topic, people can submit papers on all areas of evaluation practice.

We will have as many breakout sessions as makes sense based on the proposals received. We will aim to provide a mix of policy and practice throughout the day. We will continue with the schedule of breakouts before lunch and after lunch. The closing activity will likely be determined by the actual proposals received, as one or more might serve as a good closing activity. We are using a different model, as we are not going to have the keynote play as major of role throughout the day as we have in recent events.

With respect to the mailing, it needs to go out by late March. Jan had Kinkos prepare an estimate with an estimated total count of members and non-members (N=600). The total cost with standard mail (2 weeks) is approximately $700. The total cost with first class postage is about $100 more. The mailing will include: 1) Rob's letter; 2) OPEG information - on back of Rob's letter; 3) Program - 4 pages double-sided; 4) Registration - single page; and 5) Nomination Form Awardees/Board Elections - single page. Although the group recommended omitting the Nominations Form, Jan forgot and included it in the mailing. It can be eliminated next year. Mailing will go out in late March. With Standard Mail, it will be delivered in mid-April.

Debbie recommended getting a second quote from the administrative services consultant (Renee) who provided an estimate to clean up the mailing list. [UPDATE: Renee's quote was higher than the one from Kinkos. Renee did not have the capability of producing a "bad" address list. Thus, the Board decided via e-mail to move forward with Kinkos.]

The group discussed possible reductions to the mailing list. Finally, we decided to send the mailing to the full database, as this is one of our main communication tools.

Rob discussed the need to cut cost. However, even when one of the Board's non-profit organizations did the mailing, the cost was still over $600. Much of the cost is the postage. In recent history, board member organizations have absorbed a substantial portion of the cost. Kinkos will give us a list of all addresses that cannot be bar-coded.

The problem with the membership/mailing list is that people become members in different ways. If Randy receives money for a membership, Randy sends the information to Chip, Chip then sends a request to the person to complete the membership information survey. Debbie got a bid from Renee to check for duplicates, current addresses, and e-mail. Before we send the estimate to Kinkos, there needs to be an initial cleaning of the database. Renee recommended merging the databases, creating a master list, and creating columns for participation in each meeting. She is only charging $15/hour. We will need some of her need time before and after the mailing. Jan will put together a list of items included in the mailing so that Renee can put together a bid for the entire project. The Board agreed to move forward with having Renee do preliminary work on the mailing list (agreed to a maximum of 16 hours or $240). We will then extend this as needed.

[UPDATE: The final total number of members plus non-members on the database submitted to Kinkos was 681. The final Kinkos bill was $758.79. Kinkos completed all activities on March 31, so the mailing should be delivered by mid-April. A total of 66 addresses on the mailing list could not be bar-coded. Jan sent this list of "bad" addresses to Renee/Debbie for review. Jan is currently waiting on Renee to return her edits on this list.]

Membership Committee Report - Debbie Crawford: We now have three people in the Membership Committee, and Rick may also join the group. They are going to review organizational memberships. Nancy pointed out that Julianne Manchester on the Program Committee is also identifying organizations with which we can circulate information. There will likely be some overlap with the organizational membership discussion. Nancy will share Julianne's contact information with Debbie so that the two activities can be better coordinated.

Chip also asked that everyone review the Members Only web site and provide feedback to Jan.

Rob noted that we might also want to send an e-mail to people on the database who are no longer members, encouraging them to rejoin OPEG.

Other Business:

Updating of Board Binder Materials - Rob Fischer

Chip needs to review and will then send to Rob. We will revisit in April.

Awards and Nominations Form

The Nominations Form needs updating. Jan will send the last version of the form to Chip, and he will revise. He will also set up the elections survey. He asked about the policy for sharing election results. Last year, he was the only one monitoring the tallies. He will share the list of winners and order of votes to the Board via e-mail. Rick will handle the awards.

Newsletter - Rick George

Rick is going to talk with Debbie. He is aiming to finalize the newsletter in March. [UPDATE: Newsletter is now on web page and an e-mail announcement was sent to members.]

Next Meeting: Friday, April 11, 2008 at 9:30 a.m., conference call.

Submitted by: Jan Upton