UMass Amherst Alumni Association

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Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

Worcester Crowne Plaza
Thursday, March 15, 2007
6:00 p.m.

In attendance: Elaine Barker, Mary Custard, Hal Lane, Sean LeBlanc, Kathleen Mitchell, Kim Sherman, Anna Symington

Absent: Marc Rossen, Mike Fiorentino, Christine Lopes

Staff: Deb Masloski and Kevin Fleming

Guests: Bob Shaughnessey

Call to Order

The meeting convened at 6:10 p.m.

Approval of Meeting Minutes

Motion:  By Elaine, seconded by Mary, to approve the minutes of the February 10 Executive Committee meeting.  The motion passed with one abstention (Sean).

President’s Report
Hal noted that we had about 300 people at the football banquet, and that the student athletes in attendance were mature and well spoken.  He also noted several upcoming events:  Distinguished Alumni Awards (April 11), UMass night at the Pops (May 10), Commencement Ball (May 24), Commencement (May 26), and Reunion (June 8-10).  He urged Committee members to attend these events if their schedules permitted, and particularly pointed out Commencement Ball as one of the best events we organize. 

There was some discussion about a change in Commencement this year.  Elaine informed the group that the names of recipients of the 21st Century Leaders Award would not be announced at this year’s Commencement Ceremonies, and instead will be announced at the banquet.  Several Committee members thought that Commencement has traditionally been one of the best opportunities for Alumni Association visibility, and this change will curtail the exposure the Alumni Association receives for awarding these scholarships.  Deb will talk to the Provost and Commencement Offices about keeping the announcements of recipients during Commencement. 

Executive Director’s Report
Deb noted that the Alumni Association has been quite busy with athletic receptions around the basketball and hockey playoffs, and that there is a hockey reception around this weekend’s game.  She also discussed the likelihood of the basketball team playing their next game in the NIT tournament if they won their first game.  They would also be doing a bus trip to Madison Square Garden should the team make it that far. 

Deb also relayed that the Alumni Association staff is in the midst of undergoing a program review, examining both current and proposed programming as well as resources neccessary to implement them. She also noted that a large component of this process focuses on membership, and several new proposals have been generated.  These proposals include:  new pricing guidelines for members and non-members at events, a discounted Life Membership for alums older than 65, putting Life Member plaques in Memorial Hall, and setting a cap on the number of event tickets that can be purchased by a member at the membership price.  She asked that the Executive Committee members bring these ideas back to their committees for feedback.  Deb also addressed Bill Carroll’s proposal to incorporate obtaining membership in the mission/bylaws and noted that, depending on how this is phrased, it might impact our non-profit status.  She is working to see if there might be a more appropriate place to include this. 

Deb discussed a conversation she had with Sean regarding SPAM filters discarding Alumni Association emails.  Sean relayed that we advertised to over 9,000 email addresses for the wine tasting in Springfield at the Hall of Fame, and we only had 50 people attend.  The fact that we had far less than a 1% attendance rate for a popular style of event at a nice location seems odd, and many club leaders have expressed similar feedback about their events.  Kathleen told the group that all of the Alumni Association emails get filtered into the junk mailbox of her email system, and agrees that there is likely a problem with our emails reaching their intended source.  Deb noted that we are pursuing a potential lead from student affairs on how to get emails past junk filters, as their department has a high success rate of emails being received.  Mary also suggested that the Alumni Association needs to drive people to the website, as well as develop social networking components on our site that complement the popularity of sites such as MySpace.com, Facebook, etc.

Statistics, Metrics, and Reports

Deb noted that there is a large volume of reports and information generated by staff for both the Board of Directors and the Executive committee.  She asked the group if all of the information provided is necessary and helpful for the committee members, and looked for suggestions on how to make information more concise and meaningful to Board members as well as less cumbersome and time-consuming for staff.  The group discussed the idea of flash reports as a potential solution.  These were defined as quick snapshots of significant happenings in the previous 30 days and highlights of anything coming up in the next 30 days.  The committee decided that the monthly Board newsletter already served this purpose.  Several members wanted a quick highlight of recent occurrences, and thought that membership numbers should be included in it. 

Committee Reports
Alumni Career Services:  Kim told the Executive committee that Career Services is in the planning stages for a number of events.  Madeleine Kunin postponed her commitment to speak at an Alumni Association event in order to work on a new book.  There are currently two panelists for the upcoming event in Boston.  Additionally, Bobbie Laporte will be trying to assist the Alumni Career Services committee in turning the event into a structured, 8-week career networking support group.  If it is successful, they hope to replicate this in other locations.  Additionally, they have looked into contacting Jeff Taylor to do an event, but his development officer asked us to wait until later.  Finally, Kim conveyed that the group has talked about the potential of organizing a “women in business” stream, and Kathleen suggested talking with Valerie Falk, Jen Gordon, and Gwen Weisberg, who had previously organized a highly successful women’s leadership conference.

Alumni Clubs:  The Clubs Committee is pulling together plans for a national community service month in April 2008.  This program allows clubs to be involved in a local community service project at the level the club has the capacity for, while still being part of a larger Alumni Association community service program.  Sean also noted that the Clubs Committee will be generating training sessions for this year’s Leadership Conference. 

Audit:  The Committee distributed requests to a number of firms in Western Massachusetts, and received 6 proposals back.  The committee will be interviewing 3 of these firms, and hope to have a proposal to bring back to the Executive Committee at the end of March. 

Communications, Marketing, and Membership:  The Committee is currently looking at the proposed membership pricing structures for joining and for event attendance, and hopes to get other committee feedback on the proposals.  The new business networking cards have been well received, and the Life Member campaign is going well.  There have been some issues with the program that allows people to join the Association and attend an event for free.  The committee is discussing changing this from receiving free event attendance to getting a networking card.

Finance and Investments:  They are currently talking to more investment-management consulting firms, and hope to have something to report in April.  Staff are currently preparing budgets for the upcoming fiscal year, and they will be reviewing these budgets in the future. 

Grants Review:  Norma Heim has now become the committee’s staff liason, and she has done a very good job in guiding the committee to use the grants we award to better market the Association.  There will be future emails to the Board regarding ticket availability for events awarded Alumni Association grants.  Additionally, the committee did not award all the grant money that was allotted to them for this period.

Governance:  This committee has not met yet, but will begin meeting shortly.

Nominating:  The Director and Clubs Representative interviews have begun and will wrap up on Monday.  Rating sheets will be turned in the following day, and Officer nominations will close the day after that.  The committee members will first determine the ballots for the Board positions and the Club Representative, and then determine the slate of candidates for the Officer positions.  In response to a question of whether the process was too cumbersome, Anna replied that she liked the process.  She feels that it ensures every candidate has an equal opportunity, that the 30 minute interview time frame works well, and that having two interviewers on each interview has helped out immensely with clarification and scoring consistency between interviewers.

Programs and Services:  The committee had to cancel their last meeting, but will be meeting shortly.  The Distinguished Alumni Awards Luncheon is on track for April 11th. 

Student Programs and Services:  Kathleen was impressed by the essays students wrote in their scholarship applications, as well as how important the money would be to the applicants.  She thought that everyone should read the essays, and that they would be an excellent plug for the good that the Alumni Association does with membership money.  She wants to reframe alumni mentality about membership from “getting a discount on car insurance” to the realization that membership does good things for the UMass Amherst community.  Elaine noted the need to do research on alums who received awards in prior years to determine their membership status & involvement since, and floated the ideas of requiring involvement in the Alumni Association after graduation and/or providing award recipients with a free year of membership.  The committee decided that, rather than making membership or volunteering mandatory to receive the awards, they would like to send a graduation card to these recipients inviting them to join or volunteer as a way to give back to their alma mater.  Additionally, Anna suggested the idea of using Orientation to promote the scholarships and awards offered by the Alumni Association, and the committee agreed that this would be a good idea.  Kim also thought that providing business cards to graduating seniors might also be a great way to raise awareness among students, and the committee agreed. 

Volunteer Advocacy and Public Affairs:  Deb relayed a message from Christine that they are looking into organizing a dinner with Deval Patrick sometime in the fall if his schedule permits.  They hope to organize it as a fundraiser for scholarships.  The committee thought it would be a good idea to make this a UMass system-wide event, but that the UMass Amherst Alumni Association should take the lead on it given that the majority of the attendees will be from the Amherst branch of UMass.  The committee is also planning on having a presence at the Democratic State Convention that is taking place on campus in May.

Old Business
None

New Business
None

General Announcements
None

Adjournment
The meeting adjourned at 7:40 p.m.