Engineers Without Borders

Board Meeting 4/29/09

April 30, 2009 at 3:31 pm | In Meeting Minutes | Comments Off

KEC 1001, 6 pm

A. Talk about goals for EWB throughout the new board

1. The coming year

Want club to exist – get new members and get them to stay (projects will help with this)

Develop more of a community within the chapter.  Group is a bit fractured currently.

Meetings can help here – give people a reason to keep coming back.

Find rolls for new people to take, they need involvement.  People joining as a resume builder – leadership experience.

Pres meet with all named positions and make sure they are performing/delegating as they should.

Need to give people something to do – don’t leave it up to them to take initiative.

People may have been coming for pizza – wrong reason (don’t cut out refreshments completely).

Mention rolls that need filling at every meeting.

Should we integrate project meetings into general meetings?  Maybe have project meetings directly after general.  Shorten general.

Should we vote at meetings instead of online?  Could allow more discussion, engage people.

Pursuing Indian reservation project idea could give members more opportunities.

Need more events; generate more awareness and activity.  Club awards to wrap up the year.

Must remember what this club was formed for and what our goals are (vision) – relevance.

Could keep people involved with local stuff – schools, volunteering… (but don’t lose sight of vision)

Host engineering ‘competition’ at local schools (like JETS).  This could even help seed future membership.

Have leaders from project teams give updates at general meetings.

Summary: visibility and community

2. 2-3 year range

Continue emphasis on projects.

Increase in communication within the group.  Become more unified, let everyone know what’s going on.

How?  Change in meeting structure?  Events, socialization.

B. Discuss current needs/crises within chapter that we perceive

1. Fundraising concerns

Focus on more local fundraising to get people more involved.  Grants aren’t doing it right now.

a. Get onto OSU Foundation’s designated recipient list

We have to convince them that the amount of money we get is insignificant to them but significant to us.

Will make alumni more aware of EWB.  They don’t have to change the way they donate – easy.

In the past have tried to get mailing lists from the foundation – not easy.

Need to get back into contact with them.

b. Form a partnership with some sort of Rotary

Evan has been to several meetings but is having trouble getting/maintaining contact.

Support tends to be project specific.

Is it too late for the Kenya project to get Rotary funding?  Need to develop this relationship.

Find a Rotary chapter who wants to support your cause.  Send someone to meetings.

c. STABILITY – find a better motivation to keep people involved in fundraising – be strategic.

d. Utilize football parking – get people to come!

Demand is always there.  Must get people to participate – guaranteed source of money.

2. Division between project team(s) and rest of chapter

a. Need communal space for EWB: prevent divisions by spending time together

b. Consider reverting to a single wkly meeting – break out into projects for 1-2 hrs after brief, get updates from everyone

Discussed above as well.  Give people sense of being involved in EWB and a project – not just one or the other.

Designate specific (and constant) rooms to hold the general meeting and later breakouts.

3. Website and listserve

Current site made 2.5 years ago.  Not kept very up to date.  Usability is suffering.

Listserve needs to be managed more frequently.

People will check a more active website more often.

a. Simple and easy to manage, get them updated consistently!

b. Train whole board how to update the site

Have a webmaster, but have content publishing more distributed.

C. What has worked/not worked over the past few years?

D. Break out into roles and talk