Board meeting minutes January 4, 2023

by | Mar 1, 2023 | 2023, Board Minutes | 0 comments

The National At-Home Dad Network

 

Board Meeting Agenda

 

1/4/2023 9:30 PM EST / 6:30 PM PST

 

  1. Call to order 9:38pm
  2. Roll Call Brock absent due to illness and Gerard was a little late
  3. Approval of December minutes Board Meeting Minutes 12/7/22 Grady motioned to approve, Sergio 2nd approved Unanimously 
  4. Committee Reports
    1. Convention Committee
      1. Ticket sales All 10 early tickets have sold
      2. Speakers Speaker on Imposter syndrome done, Reached out to Charlie Berens told to go through his agent
      3. Hotel Block Bookings have begun

We are going to invite Greg Clapp to join us for a segment of the board retreat. We will ask Greg when is best for him Saturday so we can build the agenda around his schedule.

  1. Social Media and Marketing
    1. Featured volunteer for the newsletter All of these guys have stepped up and jumped into service. We do need to make sure we tell the guys when they are going to be featured to prevent social anxiety. At that time we should request a short bio and a headshot. We need to spotlight both who they are and what they are doing. Ideally the spotlight will be written by someone working closely with the volunteer who has direct experience to report. Motion to select Joshua Berntsen from Matt, second from Danny. Passes unanimously. 
      1. Patrick Wilbraham
      2. Joshua Berntsen
      3. Quetzal Torres
      4. Kyle Denny
      5. Ian Smithdahl

Sergio brought up getting LinkedIn included into our Hootsuite posts. Sergio will bring it up in Slack to get it included. Gerard sent a message to the Instagram account talking about the content. There is nothing on our account except calendar days and the podcast. We need to be posting more about Dad. We should be sharing more Dad content. We need to look into the resources the CityDads use. Perhaps we can use the partnership to begin pushing out more content. Keith brought up the idea of potentially paying a person to do the social media posting. Sergio volunteered to take a more active role in our social media to begin pushing more content. This will need to be coordinated with Brock.

 

  1. Membership
    1. Creation of past member archive Archive of past members has been begun in drive.
    2. EOY Cards and member email All sent. We need to get better contact info from speakers. An email is not enough.
    3. Renewal email for 2023 Matt will get the first draft of the renewal letter into slack this month.
  2. Sponsorship/ Fundraising
    1. Have we found a volunteer? No volunteer identified yet. Quetzal has begun that search. Greg is actively looking for convention sponsors. This is separate, however with the new focus on membership sponsors have become less of a priority 
  3. Scholarship - closing date for nominations 6 weeks out from the convention is not enough time to coordinate flights etc. July 15th was chosen.
  4. J.D.E.I Will be meeting on January 25th. There is a need to fundraise for the committee. A major goal is to be able to support speakers with a stipend. Sergio spoke with Joe Saucedo. He is interested in speaking. They want to fundraise to bring specific speakers to the convention. Keith suggested there is probably a grant program to bring in JDEI speakers but we don’t know where to look. Sergio will ask around to some of his contacts. A grant could even be used to finance JDEI education to the board. The resources need to be available for the future. There was a person who mentioned grant writing experience to the board in the past but that didn’t pan out. We believe it was Tom Drenthe and also Steven Shaffer expressed an interest. Danny brought up the idea of paying a grant writer with  commission on grant funds secured. Sergio mentioned creating a profile on some grant sites and was encouraged to do so. Sergio suggested that we reach out to his contact that makes PVC patches with velcro backing. We can get some of these printed with a logo or FACES to sell as a fundraiser. The cost is about $2 each and Sergio sells his for $10. Matt and Sergio will reach out to the contact for pricing and get artwork requirements in front of JHG for us to get the process started.
  1. Pillars Report (F.A.C.E.S)
    1. Family
      1. New T-shirt design four designs were proposed option 2 was the favorite by far. We can get it onto the spring store along with past convention shirts. Then we can make the availability known to members to create some buzz. Matt will reach out to Brian Gordon for permission to reprint the Raleigh “ducks” shirt.
    2. Advocacy
    3. Community
    4. Education
      1. Matt will get the survey link emailed out using the 2022 member list before the end of this week.
    5. Support
  2. Treasurer’s Report 01/2023 Grady and JHG will coordinate a meeting with Chase to get Grady full access to a physical Chase branch to make deposits. We do need to confirm that $5 of each membership is going into the scholarship account. We do need to look into setting up a separate account for scholarship funds.
  3. December Slack Discussions and Votes
    1. BBC contact
      1. Have we thanked them for their consideration and made sure that they know we are available to them if needed? 
    2. Book Club
      1. Kyle Denny wanted to make the book club an official TNAHDN group; the board welcomed the idea.
      2. We will make sure the book club remains in Kyle’s hands as long as he wants
    3. Eqimundo MenCare meeting D.C.
      1. What can we do as an organization to effectively partner with Equimundo as well as the other Fatherhood based organizations involved? We need to continue the conversation and interaction with the organizations involved. Kenneth Braswell is interested in having JHG on his podcast and coming to HDC
    4. Brescia University in Canada student research request
      1. Were we able to connect them with the dads they needed?
    5. Holiday Letter
    6. CNN contact
      1. Have we reached back out to the producer to cement the relationship? Keith has talked to CNN and connected on LinkedIn. We need to start to maintain a contact list for future press releases.
    7. Do we need a director to be the specific contact for Research/ Media interview pairing and scheduling?
    8. Ordering and Mailing of Holiday cards for LTMs and former speakers
    9. Verge store standing
    10. Budget set for Hogan Hilling award Plaque
      1. 4 votes for $40 and 2 for $50
      2. Final vote on plaque budget Matt motioned for $50 Danny seconded Passed unanimously 
  4. Old Business
    1. Membership Drive
      1. We missed out on December 
      2. Hard Schedule of January and early February
      3. How can we use the Podcast and Webinar to highlight membership? JHG will be the January webinar guest to talk about the benefits of membership. The podcast is already doing great work in promotion. Sergio suggested we also share the webinar info out onto LinkedIn. The podcast will begin announcing the new members as a little motivator and thank you to new members.
    2. Website
      1. Current status Transfer is complete with a few wrinkles with the new member transfers but overall it is going fine. Keith has been checking paypal daily to check on payments. Matt can begin filling this role.
      2. Adding a link to the Verge store Matt will put together a format to get the verge link and password info onto the website
      3. Adding discount code for Spring to the members area Is up on the members area.

Keith needs a Bio from Gerard

  1. New Business
    1. Member Payment information
    2. Updated Members list
    3. Past members archive
      1. Do we have past convention attendee information from eventbrite? Keith will get Matt the attendee information on past conventions from Eventbrite to rebuild past member lists.
    4. Board Task list reminder We all need to be checking this channel more often. We can all tag ourselves. Matt will periodically tag  @channel to jog people’s memories. We will also begin to delete tasks as they are completed.

Motion to Adjourn JHG motion to adjourn at 10:44 pm eastern Charlie seconded. Vote is unanimous.