Board Meeting Minutes – 6/19/14

MRVTV Board meeting minutes 6.19.2014

  1. Present: Lisa Loomis, Lisa Italiano, Tony Italiano, Alex Maclay, Liz Levey, Deborah Feldman, John Daniell, and Dan Eckstein

  2. Welcome/Acknowledgements/Additions to Agenda
    Lisa L. called the meeting to order at 5:14. Proxies are in order for missing members. We are delighted to welcome Deborah to our board.

  3. Approval of minutes of 4.8.14

  4. Appointment of new board member, Deborah Feldman to fill the remainder of Adele Nichols’ position. Lisa I. made a motion that we approve Deborah’s termon the board. John seconded.

  5. Financial brainstorm session: brief 2014 YTD and then 2015 budget thoughts, ideas.

  6. Station/programming/grants update: Alex
    Last year we were over contract. We moved funds to cover those amounts. This year we are on target for our contract; we are about 2K short. If we want to pay for the maintenance of the     ‘cloud server’, it will cost us ~ 3K per year. This is notfor the equipment, which is covered in capital costs. (capital is anything that has a useful life of more than one year.) MRVTV has ~100K assets: approximately20% is working capital, 80% is other funds. Dan asks Roger, what’s theprediction for the funding from the cable co.? The revenue has been stable, a little bit ahead each year when we complete the annual revenue cycle. Roger sees that we will come in at just about $108, as indicated by the budget. The 7K is funding that we receive from our three towns: Waitsfield, Warren and Fayston. Do we have the capacity to increase our coverage of towns to include Moretown, particularly if we work with ORCA, we might be able to work together to share the costs.

    1. Expanding municipal sponsorships- Alex and Lisa along with board members from the specific towns
      Have we presented to the individual municipal sponsors to help them to understand the costs of producing their meetings? Would the real costs help to make a case for increasing the amount that each town contributes? Can we attempt to make $1000 in new money this year?

    2. Sales of DVDs/Donations – Tony, John and Lisa I.

a. How can we promote this? Can we have signs in each camera bag that indicate that MRVTV is filming this event, it may be available for purchase from MRVTV. Add a tag onto produced shows that says, “This video is available for purchase

MRVTV Board meeting minutes 6.19.2014

from MRVTV. Please contact us at mrvtv.com or call 802-

583-4488.

  1. How well are we using school communications to help

    promote the sale of DVDs?

  2. The producer gets a copy for free

  3. We try to be judicious about when we put programs online,

    especially ones that we hope will be big sellers.

  4. Can we work with the people shooting the shows, can we say,

    “This event is being recorded by MRVTV” as the event begins

  5. PSAs on the station for increasing the opportunities people to

    donate money and to increase exposure to the station. Ex. “Hi, I’m John Jamieson and I support...”

  6. Our goal for FY 2015 is to increase income by $500

3. Membership subscription: Lisa, Deborah and Alex
Online access to programming, vs. making it all available online.

What are we going to do about this? I could be managed by an excel spreadsheet that has ending deadlines and you are timing out a year ofaccess, and the accounts are ‘cleaned out’ monthly. There is a technical element to this project that would be an increase in work burden for the station. The website has available content and thenthere is a for ‘pay only’ section of content. This sub category ofmembership needs more research. We are going forward with the CloudCast, we will need to work together to find the path forward into a subscription plan. Currently about 3000 people subscribe to cable. We could also ask the towns for additional funds to support our cloud presence. Our goal for FY 2015 is to enroll 40 subscribers at $25 per year, $1000.

  1. Benefit Pizza Bakes/Kentucky Derby Auction Party/Traditional fundraisers. Liz and Rob

    1. We support the idea of a benefit bake between now and ski season and will develop a program based on bringing more of our content online. Our goal is to make $500 in new money for the station.

    2. Your local rock and roll bands, especially those that our board members participate in, might be available for fundaraising events, drawing a crowd to a local venue in support of MRVTV. (Wedding season, Ski season)

    3. On CloudCast there is a banner on the bottom of could be used for underwriting.

  2. Create an underwriting program- Lisa L. , Brian and Michael

a. Dan wonders about the viability, at this point in time, of an underwriting program, based on our past resistance to this idea.

MRVTV Board meeting minutes 6.19.2014

Liz’s experience is that with timing and approach and the levelof your relationship with the potential donor, we can do this.

  1. Do we have unanimity about this decision to create underwriters?

  2. How do we figure the costs per donor?

  3. How will the board divvy up the work?

  4. Our goal is to make $1500

6. Grant Writing- Alex wrote a successful grant, along with the Friends of the Mad River and the Mad River Path Association. Grant Writing will not be considered along with the abovementioned ideas for creating funds, it is an event or program specific purpose.

a. Lisa mentioned that they had talked at the executive meeting about working to develop a smaller team to work out the details of how this is going to work out.

  1. Technology/studio update: Tony

  2. Waitsfield Cable Update: Roger

9. Other Business: Next Quarterly meeting:

  1. Thursday, October 9th : Libations and snacks at 5:00 meeting begins at

    5:30

  2. Sub-committee reports will be ‘due’ Thursday, August 28th, 2014

10. Adjournment