December 12, 2013 CAB Minutes

Community Advisory Board Meeting Thursday, December 12, 2013 – 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Ron and Linda Yanke Family Research Park 220 E Parkcenter Boulevard, Room 510 Board Members in Attendance: Mary Reiman, Chair Erin Duran David Lombardi Shikhar Sarin Cornelia Sprung Kerry Carnahan Ellis Marilyn Shuler

Dede Ryan Emily Walton Dave Fotsch Tony Shallat Randi McDermott Kay Alspaugh Susan Giannettino

Staff in Attendance: John Hess, General Manager

Tara Cooper, Recorder

Guests in Attendance: Aaron Cross, MBA Student Sheena Coles, MBA Student

Joshua Whitworth, MBA Student Kenny Lock-Smith, MBA Student

Maria Trebby Shelby Zepeda Christine Collins Andrew Crisp Azam Houle Vicki Lawson Leta Neustaedter

***************** Call to Order – Mary Reiman Chair, Mary Reiman, called the Boise State Public Radio Community Advisory Board (CAB) meeting to order at 6:04 p.m. Four Boise State University MBA students were in attendance to give the presentation regarding the market research survey results. For the benefit of all members, introductions were made by everyone.

Tara asked that all members review the master contact list for accuracy and let her know what changes may need to be made. She will send out a finalized document via email to all members. All new CAB members were also asked to complete a board composition matrix form. Tara will send this out via email to all new members as well.

MBA Market Research Survey: Top Line Results – BSU MBA Students The students submitted a presentation summary (included at the end of this document) to all members with the top line results from the survey that was sent out to our membership. The survey was sent out to 8,818 members of whom fifteen percent responded.

The group discussed the results and several individuals felt that other areas in the community (opera, etc.) are also seeing the changing demographics and shifts in technology usage. The BSPR management 1|Page

team will be reviewing the results and will start to discuss how work plans may need to be tailored to reflect what we are finding out. Currently we are looking at a tale of two stations: a radio station and a digital station. In the spring we will be doing a survey with non-listeners to get comparative data.

Approval of October 2013 Meeting Minutes – Mary Reiman No discussion on the minutes as submitted.

Motion: Maria Trebby made a motion to approve the minutes; seconded by Emily Walton. The motion was passed unanimously.

Sub Committee Reports – Mary Reiman Advocacy (Emily Walton): Emily encouraged all members to visit the site protectmypublicmedia.org and sign up for updates and leave a testimonial about how public radio impacts your life. The House just approved a budget deal that approves two-year advanced funding for FY16-17 that will gives us a little protection regarding our funding allowing stations to look at long-term planning and insulates local stations from political influence. This is good news for us! The advocacy plan going forward is to target elected officials in the Treasure Valley and Wood River Valley (initially) and ask them to sign on and express their support for BSPR. This support will then be used for advocacy at the congressional level.

We have a tailored urban and rural version of the support letter. We want to make this local and personal and get the business community involved as well. Our next step is to divide up the work to go out and talk to people and get them to sign on. The group plans to meeting again in mid-January to divide up the work.

Programming (Erin Duran): Kristin and Erin met with John and Paul in September to get a better idea of what the committee’s role should be going forward. The group wants to be as involved as possible in community events and will continue to explore what that will look like going forward. The group will meet again in the new year.

Sustainability (Cornelia Sprung): Cornelia has been working with Kelly on submitted some grant opportunities. Cornelia is working on categorizing a large list of available grants that we were provided from the university so that next month when the station has some pro-bono time from a grant writer we can utilize that time the most effectively.

Mary noted that when the station goes public with the Capital Campaign in January she would like to have 100 percent CAB participation. If you do not know if you have contributed to the campaign, please contact Tara Cooper or Kelly Palmer and they will help get you the information. Mary will be following up via phone with all the individuals who haven’t contributed yet. Before the station can go public, at least $500K needs to have been already raised so that we have an attainable goal for the public phase.

The station set a goal to raise $550K for the initial “down-payment” phase of the campaign. In total, the station needs to raise $1.1 million for the renovations.

Sub Committee Membership – Group Mary asked that all members sign up to be on one of the various committees going forward. Below is what everyone volunteered for: Advocacy Members: Emily Walton*, Susan Giannettino, Randi McDermott, Tony Shallat, Andrew Crisp, Dave Fotsch, Vicki Lawson, Christine Collins, Kerry Carnahan Ellis, Maria Trebby, John Hess

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Programming Members: Kristin Mathews*, Mary Reiman, Azam Houle, Shelby Zepeda, Marilyn Shuler, Dede Ryan, Leta Neustaedter, Michael Zuzel Sustainability Members: Cornelia Sprung*, Mary Reiman, Kay Alspaugh, Maria Trebby, David Lombardi, Kelly Palmer Nominations Members: Mary Reiman*, Cornelia Sprung, Maria Trebby, Shikhar Sarin, Randi McDermott Marketing Members: Shelby Zepeda*, Camille Oldenburg*, Shikhar Sarin, David Lombardi, Kerry Carnahan Ellis * indicates committee leader Station Report – John Hess John thanked everyone on the board for their participation. He noted that he was very proud of the CAB and all the work that everyone does in the community. He also wanted everyone to know he appreciates all the advice given to the station.

Fall for the station has been exceptionally busy. Construction on our new broadcast center began August 1 and will finish in the next few weeks. We don’t have any equipment installed right now, but that is our next step. John will be taking everyone who is available on a tour of the facility after the meeting adjourns.

Annually, the station participates in a benchmarking study done through the Development Exchange.

We submit all of our audited financial numbers as well as many other public radio stations across the country and the Development Exchange takes our numbers and compares them to the numbers from the other stations similar to us. These benchmarks help to drive our metrics for next year.     

In Membership we’ve seen a 30% increase in the level of individual giving at the $1-$240 range (which is the majority of our membership).

Our cost to raise $1 has gone down 30% to 16.4 cents.

Our total amount of members has increased 12% We’ve raised $109K from our major donors (those who give over $1K).

Our index number is 56% - this indicates that we raise 56% of the funds needs to operate. The higher the index, the better.

Today is our first day of our 3-day fund drive. Today we partnered with the Idaho Food Bank to help benefit both organizations. This was a great partnership and we are hoping to do more of these in the future with other groups that may not have as much exposure in the community. Our reserves have really been depleted due to the construction so we are working hard to increase membership dollars and decrease expenses.

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Adjourn – Mary Reiman There was no further discussion. The next meeting will take place on February 13, 2014 from 6:00-7:30 p.m. at 220 E. Parkcenter Boulevard, in the new BSPR community room.

Motion: Dave Fotsch made a motion to adjourn the meeting; seconded by Maria Trebby. There was no discussion and the motion was passed unanimously.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:31 p.m.

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