BFC Board of Directors Meeting
May 30, 2007
Members in attendance: Paul Prentiss, Bob Bush, Tom Finley, Mark Riley, Mike Malec, Dave Clark, Al Permut, Terry Escamilla, Bill Leuchten, Tony Fernandez.
Members absent: Graham Carlson, Adam Armold, Tyler Bowman.
Guests: Chad Pettrone.
Call To Order: 6:06 pm by President, Paul Prentiss located at ERA Tradewinds Realty office conference room, 4999 Pearl Circle, Boulder, CO.
I. Update on the Rogers Park DOW Presentation on 5/15/07.
The Powerpoint presentation is posted on the BFC web site for anyone to review. Reel News will also have a review of this presentation. Our presentation was one of 10-12 that took about 15-20 minutes each. Our presentation was well received by the selection committee. Final notification on approval or rejection is expected by the middle of June. Thanks to Paul Prentiss for producing and presenting the Powerpoint presentation given to the DOW and thanks to the members of the project committee for their hard work and effort.
II. John Dowd’s Fishing Hikes.
Solicitation for participation in these hikes has gone quite well and there has been a very positive response. It’s been advertised in both the BFC and the Front Range Angler’s newsletters. John has also received a good response. Spaces are filling up.
III. June Picnic
The BFC Picnic annual social event is scheduled for 6:00 pm on June 6th at the Elks Club Park in north Boulder. This will be announced in Reel News. An additional special announcement will be sent out on Monday prior to the event. There will be an open microphone to permit members and attendees to discuss their favorite local fishing spots as alternatives to the high water runoff currently in our local streams. Food will come from KT’s Barbeque. Soft drinks, water, and desert will be provided. All other drinks are BYO. Bill Leuchten has offered to provide a casting clinic.There will be a BFC merchandise clearance sale held at the picnic at 50% to 70% off regular prices.
IV. Newsletter Articles
All BFC Board members are reminded that they are expected to write and submit two Reel News articles per year. Articles are to be submitted to Bob Bush by the 15th of each month for which a newsletter is produced. The next deadline date is August 15th. Board members should know if they have/have not fulfilled this obligation for this 2006-07 year.
V. Membership Survey results and recommendations.
In the April meeting a lot of the committee observations and recommendations were discussed. Now we are going to move back to the first series of recommendations under Phase I and make a determination on what will be implemented and how. Here are the topics:
A. Conducting a "Follow up Survey" to remove ambiguity in some answers, secure demographics, funding raising opportunities, etc. Who, when, and how.Tom Finley suggested that a committee be established to develop and conduct the follow up membership survey and that it include gathering demographic data about the BFC membership in a similar fashion, for example, to the national TU demographic data gathered about the readership of TU’s “Trout” magazine publication. It is suggested that this kind of data might be helpful to BFC in making future determinations and plans about such topics as BFC’s fund raising efforts, BFC’s annual auction efforts, BFC’s chapter meeting efforts, etc.
Mark Riley suggested utilizing funds for this survey process available and provided by CTU.These funds could be used to hire a professional for development, implementation, and analysis of a survey. Mark suggested obtaining these CTU funds, for example, to hire the market survey company owned by the wife of CTU’s Sinjin Eberle. She has, apparently, done a similar survey for CTU. Mark will further explore this topic to determine its viability as an option.
Paul Prentiss suggested the importance of defining the parameters of a new survey by identifying the significant and useful factors of the original survey that could benefit from further clarification. For example, special chapter programs were highlighted as a significant topic of interest. Therefore, prior to spending money on a big name presenter, determine through a follow up survey exactly what special topics the membership would like to see presented.
Mark Riley suggested that if the follow up topics are of a very specific nature, then a follow up survey might not be necessary. Rather, a focus group of BFC members could provide the desired information to help make the necessary decisions for changes to be implemented.
Al Permut suggested that there are enough significant and important topics clearly identified in the original survey about which action for change can be initiated and implemented. Therefore, we already have enough topics to work on without the need for a follow up survey at this time. He notes that BFC talks about and does many things, but none of them are executed extremely well. Our focus from the original survey should be to select a couple of important topics that are clearly identified and implement these changes extremely well. Then use these changes as a focus of a future survey to determine if the membership thinks things have improved as a result of these changes. Let’s take some action on a couple of these topics now and then measure the future result.
There was unanimous approval for not doing a follow up survey at this time and, instead, implementing Al’s suggestion as listed above.
Bob Bush suggested that we might use the open microphone arrangement scheduled for the upcoming picnic on June 6th to ask the membership present for their opinions about such survey topics as what they want for future special chapter programs. This would achieve two functions. It would survey the opinion of approximately 40 members as a focus group on this topic and would involve the membership to a larger degree in decisions on this topic.
Additional Board discussion is needed to further define, specify, and develop Al’s suggested approach to implementation of changes as discussed above.
B. Participatory Chapter Meetings
1. A Social Event
It was suggested that a chapter ice cream social event or some other type of simple social gathering event based around food be considered for occurrence during the July-August period of chapter function inactivity in order to help maintain chapter contact and relations with the membership. Al Permut suggested that this could be an opportunity to specifically invite, for example, the most recent 150 new chapter members as determined by the previous new member roster lists and advertise the purpose of this function as to help meet and develop friendships with other new members as well as old existing members. The specifics and details necessary to create this function are to be determined at the June 27th board meeting in order to provide adequate satisfactory advance notification to the membership prior to the event.
2. Chapter Meeting Roster
It was decided that the Membership chairperson, Mike Malec, shall use the existing chapter membership roster as a check off list by asking each chapter meeting attendee to verify if their name appears and if their information is accurate. This process will easily permit the identification of existing members, new members and guest attendees at each chapter meeting. It will also easily permit gathering changes to existing data and new additions/information to the roster for the purpose of making future contacts with meeting attendees and/or to send thank you and/or welcome letters/phone calls. It was decided that this process will be implemented at the upcoming chapter picnic on June 6th and will be used as a pilot process in helping to determine if such action produces positive results.
3. Identification & Introduction of New Members
Bob Bush suggests that we should work toward the goal of ALL chapter meeting attendees wearing a name identification tag. Paul Prentiss will take responsibility for making sure all new members get formally identified and introduced (if they prefer it) at each chapter meeting. Paul Prentiss discussed the idea of creating a space or booth at each chapter meeting where new members can be identified and/or greeted and where information about the chapter and membership in the chapter can be easily obtained by or discussed with new members. It was decided that we should determine the general number of new member attendees prevalent at each chapter meeting and to determine if this idea is efficacious prior to implementation. Paul Prentiss suggested the idea of producing a brochure that describes the history of BFC for presentation to new members. This could be utilized as part of a process for greeting and welcoming new members into the chapter and viewed as a positive welcoming tool. Gordon Wickstrom will be contacted by Paul Prentiss to explore if he might be willing to create the narrative for this brochure. New members at the chapter meetings will be identified with a “blue” nametag, (“new is blue”). Terry Escamilla and Chad Pettrone will work with Mike Malec on “greeter” duties at chapter meetings.
4. Personal Contact
Paul Prentiss stated that there is a bit of a problem in obtaining the phone numbers for all new members in that the new member roster provided from TU does not generally include phone numbers or email addresses.Therefore, we can only obtain these pieces of critical information if the new member attends a chapter meeting and it is obtained there. Mike Malec is already sending each new member a personalized welcome letter based on the street address listed on this TU roster. Any "unfamiliar" chapter meeting attendee who may have attended three or fewer previous chapter meetings can be designated as similar to a new member regardless of their actual TU membership status and, therefore, be welcomed similar to a new member. Mike Malec will provide all new member contact info obtained to Paul Prentiss and Paul will follow up with a personal welcoming phone call. Paul indicates that the phone number and email address are the two critically essential pieces of info he needs.
C.Small Scale Conservation Event/Joint Venture Projects
Paul Prentiss will speak with Larry Quilling in relation to creating a joint small-scale conservation event/project involving participation with youngsters. Paul Prentiss will also speak to Paul Hemple with the Boulder Creek Watershed Initiative and Don DiAmico with the City of Boulder for determining if such a joint project opportunity might exist with their agencies. One suggestion is to develop a joint project involving the storm drain marking effort. Project parameters should include involving new participants such as youngsters and/or BFC members, have an obvious conservation relationship, make it simple and easy to participate, and schedule it to permit sufficient thorough advance notification. Any additional ideas/suggestions by Board members can be distributed to the others via email. One thought might include somehow identifying BFC in the storm drain marking decal/stencil. Soliciting the participation of other agencies or groups for joint projects with BFC may involve a reciprocal agreement for BFC to participate in their projects.
D. Fishing Local Waters
Recent chapter programs such as John Wolf’s program on fishing high mountain lakes and John Dowd’s hikes with fishing are a good start in the right direction in an attempt to address the membership survey question on this topic in a general fashion. Likewise, certain BFC members who might be more knowledgeable about local fishing get frequent requests for very specific and detailed information from others about recommendations for the exact locations, tackle choices, and tactics that will improve their fishing success. In many cases, these more knowledgeable BFC members have spent many years through lengthy trial and error learning the answers to these issues and might not be so willing to give up their hard-learned secrets easily and might not be so willing to share this information with others. In this age of easy access to all sorts of information, some fly fishers are no longer willing to invest the time and effort like others have invested to gain this extensive experience and detailed knowledge. Therefore, it is the position of some that there should be a price to be paid by those BFC members who desire these “pearls of experience” with relation to fishing our local waters. It is the opinion of some that such BFC members must give some of their sweat equity through their involvement in a BFC member participation project prior to obtaining those special pearls of experience about our local waters. For example, as an added bonus, a mini-seminar that presents the "pearls" of fishing Boulder Creek could follow a BFC sponsored conservation project or clean up event taking place on that local water.If the word gets out among our members that the "pearls" are given to those who participate and spend their efforts in support of chapter objectives, then this may be viewed as an added incentive for members to participate in chapter projects and functions.
E. An Alternative Mechanism to Promote Financial Participation
Tom Finley suggested the inclusion of a discussion to consider the development of an alternative mechanism for the promotion of financial participation by the membership in acknowledgment of those members who prefer to participate financially rather that physically. Thirty percent of the membership survey respondents indicated their preference for financial participation over physical participation in chapter events, projects, and functions. One mechanism suggested would be for members to make financial contributions to the chapter in general. Another mechanism might involve financial contributions directed toward helping to overcome the monetary shortfall anticipated in the DOW grant, if awarded, for the Roger’s Park project. There might be a mechanism included in the monthly Reel News in an ongoing fashion whereby a member can send in a monetary contribution. Tom suggested it might also be interesting and beneficial to track whether financial contributions are received from donors voluntarily or if they are obtained as a result of a solicitation for financial donations. It is decided that this process might be attempted first with a pilot effort related to the Roger’s Park project once it is determined if the DOW grant has been formally awarded.
VI. BFC Memorial Park Restoration Project
Bob Bush discussed the site survey he and Adam Armold recently obtained for the restoration and reclamation requirements of the park. Two options are discussed.
A final decision on how this will proceed is pending receipt of all bids solicited to the landscape contractors.
VII. August Board Meeting Location
Al Permut indicated he may be out of town for the August Board meeting resulting in the unavailability of our usual meeting room. In this possibility, Mike Malec indicated he could provide the conference room located at his workplace for the August Board meeting.
Meeting Adjournment: 8:12 pm.
Minutes submitted by: Tom Finley, BFC Board Secretary