Region 4 of the National Association for Interpretation
Executive Meeting Minutes
Nature Center Auditorium, Pokagon State Park, Angola, IN
10 January 2007
Call to order: 1:14pm
In Attendance: Ginger Murphy (Director), Julie Champion (Deputy Director), Amy Roell (Treasurer), Leslie Witkowski (Secretary), Deb Nofzinger (Publications Chair)
Introduction to Meeting: Murphy thanked everyone for coming early to go over the agenda for the board meeting on January 12. She also encouraged the officers to sit down and put together their thoughts about what our values are as leaders of Region 4 Following are the values that Murphy strives for, for the Region:
· Voices for interpretation
· Great & useful services
· Building leadership
· Involve members into the group as soon as possible
· Be responsive to members concerns & questions
· Be on time with reports & info. requests
· Fiscally responsible-service oriented
· Fellowship
· Things we do represent interpretation as a profession
· Appreciate one another
· Mentors to each other & other members
· Idea exchanges & networking
· Support one another
· Information & resource sharing
Update on National News – Murphy
NIW 2006
- Approximately 1,200 people in attendance
- A task force is being developed to address whether the name of the National Interpreters Workshop needs to be addressed and whether the structure of the workshop needs to change.
- Paul Caputo is working on designing a new logo for the organization. Since we are bringing on additional countries to participate in NAI, the logo needs to be applied on an international level as well.
Interpreting World Heritage 2007
- Murphy will be attending this conference so she can get a better understanding of it to share with members of Region 4.
- It will be held, March 25-29, 2007 – Vancouver, British Columbia Canada.
- The 2006 conference was in the black and was well received by the majority of the attendees.
- South Korea would like to host the conference in 2008.
o NAI has developed cooperative agreements with South Korea and China. They will be called NAI Korea and NAI China.
o There is no up front cost to NAI to bring these countries on board as a part of the organization. They will receive all publications and forms as pdf’s and NAI will receive money for their membership dues.
o Right now NAI staff is spending minimal time in working with these two countries.
National Strategic Planning Meeting
- Murphy will attend this meeting in February in Denver.
Definitions Project
- The committee met last in November 2006.
- The purpose of the committee is to get professionals together from all walks of interpretation and environmental education to talk about and define what exactly interpretation & what environmental education are.
Products & Services Policy
- Form was created to determine whether or not Regional fundraising efforts would involve any legal risks and if there would be any insurance liabilities as well.
- It will also serve the purpose to make sure Regions and Sections are not competing against one another for fundraising purposes or against National either.
- Before a Region or Section goes forward with a new fundraising project, the form needs to be filled out and, if designated indicators are marked “yes,” the form must be sent in to National for approval.
ACTION ITEM: Julie Champion needs to put into the Region 4 Procedure Manual that any contract over $1,000 needs to be looked over by the National office.
Ethics & Conflict of Interest
- This revised policy now allows NAI to contract with board members for services, which was not the case in the past. The prior policy limited the use of a wide variety of expertise in many areas. The new policy requires disclosure of potential conflicts in voting, and provides controls and disclosure of dollar amounts to prevent abuse of the freedom to contract with board members.
National Business Plan 2007
- The budget this year is very conservative, but there are several items in the business plan that will move the organization forward. The plan is available for review on the website.
ACTION ITEM: Julie Champion should talk with Deb Tewell about what needs to be done to get us up and going for our Regional Workshop in Ontario. Ginger Murphy will also discuss with Tim Merriman any concerns there might be for hosting a Regional Workshop in Ontario.
- Action Items from 2006 minutes were reviewed for completion.
ACTION ITEM: Ginger Murphy would like to start doing an e-update, to supplement the newsletter, to the members addressing 3-4 different topics.
E-Newsletter – Murphy
- Deb’s server should be able to handle an e-newsletter being sent out.
- The e-newsletter would be sent out faster than the hardcopy news letter.
- Right now 606 hardcopy newsletters are being sent out.
- Can the newsletter be converted to a PDF and e-mailed to National for them to
bulk e-mail out?
- The Region would receive .75¢ for each newsletter sent out.
- Would the e-newsletter show up on as SPAM for most people? More research
needs to be done to find out from National if that would occur.
- Should we wait to see how this works for Region 5? If we wait it would be
about 1 year.
Membership Initiative – Murphy
- Important issue to deal with!
- Northern Michigan students will be conducting a survey by calling every Region 4 member to:
o Find out if members are satisfied with the services currently being offered.
o Are they getting all of their publications?
o Inform them about the services available to them.
o If their membership has expired, why haven’t they renewed?
§ There could be a possible incentive for joining if someone’s membership has lapsed.
- At the basic membership level, a Region or Section has to be chosen, not both.
o Could Region 4 pay the difference to them to the Professional Membership Level? This would be a 1 time only.
o The board can commit a certain amount of the budget to this incentive & let the membership committee figure out how to spend this on membership fees.
§ Suggest at the board meeting - $1,600 goes towards a membership incentive and a fee to go towards a 6-month membership for those non-members who attend a mini-workshop.
ACTION ITEM: Julie Champion will make sure the RIW registration chair separates out and copies non-member registration forms. Copies should be sent to Amy Roell (Treasurer) for financial processing and to Tanya Brock (Membership Chair) so they get contacted by Region 4 quickly. This process needs to be explained in the Regional Workshop Manual and in the Regional Procedures Manual for miniworkshops.
- Should we offer free Professional Membership for 1 person in IN, MI, OH and Ontario? How can we put this into effect so it’s fair for all long-time members or can we find a way to offer a couple of complimentary memberships to long-time members?
o 50/50 – First new 50 people pay $50 for a Basic Membership; the Region pays the additional $25 to bump them up to a Professional Membership.
o Region does 2 additional complimentary memberships.
o Pay ½ the cost for 6-month membership for non-members who attend a Mini workshop.
o This is just shy of $2,000 for budget purposes.
ACTION ITEM: Ensure that this gets discussed in strategic planning on 1/12/07.
Committees – Murphy
- Haley Samuelson-Couchman will be writing an interpretive description for the Pioneer Display.
- A request has been made for the Senior/Retired Interpreter Award to be named after Bert Szabo.
- An e-ballot will be done this year for elections in the fall of 2007. Hard copies will still be mailed to those who don’t have e-mail.
- Publications committee is looking for new Regional Reporters.
- Andrea Haslage will be taking over as the Scholarships and Grants Chair after the auction at the 2007 RIW.
ACTION ITEM: Do we want to look at a different way of overseeing the auction? Have Susan Williams, Susie Edwards, Andrea Haslage and Julie Champion work on a task force to see if and how the auction is currently being organized/run, if it needs to change. If it does need to change, bring a proposal to the summer conference call.
- Strategic Plan – Sarah to report updates
- Student Involvement –
o Can some of the membership fees discussed earlier go towards students?
o Perhaps part of the $1,000 they’ve requested could go towards membership.
- Frances Boyens is becoming the new webmaster.
o Paul Caputo has some webpage templates for the Region to look at and use if we wish to.
Strategic Plan – Murphy
- Be conscientious of not overloading with to many new things as those will cost more money to implement.
Budget Review – Murphy
- Frank Doughman and Frances Boyens have requested $150 for travel reimbursement as they would like to meet to pass along website responsibilities.
- The Strategic Plan meeting has been combined with Board Expenses on the budget report.
Meeting adjourned at 4:00pm
Respectfully submitted,
Leslie Witkowski, Secretary