Board Meeting Minutes

The December 2015 meeting of the New Wave Corp. Board of Directors was held on the 15th day of December.

Board members present were Dan Hemmelgarn, Heather O’Connor, Laird Okie, Philip Rabbitt, Tao Weilundemo, and Curt Wohleber. Station Manager David Owens was also present.

It was suggested that a notice should be sent via email to board members as a reminder of upcoming meetings, one ten days before and one the day before.

The minutes from November were approved by voice vote. Approval was proposed by Laird, seconded by Philip and carried by voice vote.

The audit by the CPB is generally completed in February. They will be meeting with Cara shortly.

Financial Report:

A motion to approve the financial report was made by Curt, seconded by Tao, and carried by voice vote.

General Manager’s Report:

CoMo Gives is ongoing through the end of the month. Current total donations are at $700. Social media promotion is welcome to ask people to consider donating.

Outreach events:

-First Fridays- January will be the next, and may involve participation from the station but proximity to the holidays may be prohibitive for having enough volunteers to participate.

-Diversity breakfast is upcoming.

-Annual meeting and board of directors election: will be held at Unity Center at Broadway and Clinkscales. Alex, Heather, Laird, Ellen, Tao, John Betz, and William Dellinger are known to be candidates. The meeting date is January 17, 3-7 p.m. Short biographies of candidates should be sent to David within the week. The terms being filled are 3 three-year, 1 two-year, and 1 one-year.

There was an outage this weekend on Sunday morning. The tower had a modular fault error.

Also Sunday morning, there was a headphone issue in which only the right channel is coming through. Philip has noticed that there’s a possibility that one or two of the lights on the tower are out.

Unfinished business:

A budget meeting will be upcoming. A model budget is easy to print out and work with for this meeting.

Community Advisory Board has met. The members in attendance were Shelly Botts, Tom Verdot, Jack Wax, and Peter Yronwode. They proposed producing a PSA asking listeners to give feedback. Dan Hemmelgarn also attended the meeting. Tom Verdot took notes and distributed them to other members.

Website: Tao met with Charlie, the current webmaster, and set up a blank WordPress site at dev.kopn.org. He has been seeking ideas from other public radio stations as far as what they do on their sites, and will solicit ideas from members and community about what folks would like to see happening to the site. He is also moving on getting access to the database.

Lease negotiations:

Dave Dalton is the one currently interfacing with us more than any family member. Dick Dalton is the other son on the scene, and Warren is still in an assisted living facility.

The Socket tower negotiations were brought up by Philip, and there is no news on this front. Dan is planning to contact Socket to discuss the plans and see where their interest currently stands.

New business:

Dan has sent out a list of questions to all the board members. The questions are:

• What are the biggest challenges to KOPN’s success going forward?

Answer 1. money, space, technology (existing and expanding), lease, equipment..

2. How can staff time be prioritized to apply for and manage grants effectively?

Answer 2. Grants are the logical pool of money that can be leveraged outside of CPB and donations. Tao brought up the possibility that we could outsource this to a grant-seeking professional who works in exchange for a percentage of the grant money if and only if it is secured. We might seek a capital grant to replace the airboard; potential sources are Boone Electronic, Boone County Family Trust, ABC Labs, or the organization that operates CoMo Gives, the Community Foundation of Central Missouri. Operations grants are also welcome but capital grants would take a front seat.

3. What is the plan for air board replacement?

Answer 3. The first step is to get the news room functional.

We have a board that can be installed in the production room.

We are in the process of migrating from a P2P network to a server which was bought with the Boone Electric grant.

4. What is the plan for getting the news room (front production room) back to functioning status?

That may get started March or April.

5. What are our options for raising more funds without increasing fund drives?

6. Has increased frequency of fund drives yielded greater year over year financial support?

Financial support has remained steady with the increase in frequency of fund drives. That is to say, less money is secured in each drive, and the greater frequency of drives is yielding the same total fundraising that was formerly accomplished with fewer drives.

7. How long has David been the G.M.?

Oct. 2003- present

8. When is the last time David has had a performance review?

2-3 times, every 4-5 years

9. When is the last time David has had a raise?

It’s been a while.

Dan moved that we put on the agenda for the January meeting the plan to work up a performance review. At 8:00 the meeting will go into closed session to develop a performance review for David.

An additional question from Philip: if David is out, who is able to take care of technical issues?

Generally, Rich Winkel, Mike McGowan, John Betz, or Sam Griffin would be called upon. A list of names is posted on the wall in the studio.