AAJA-DC Board Minutes
Noon, Sat., 4/22/06

Officers Attending: Vice-President (Print) HyunJu Chappell Hine, Vice-President (Broadcast) Sherri Ly, Community Liaison Wanita Niehaus, Membership Chairman Lister Lim, National Board Representative Angeline Hartmann, Secretary Susan Yoo

Also Attending: Webmaster Peggy Hu, Student member Iris Kuo

1. AAJA conference in June:

• Stipends: 3 members have expressed interest in receiving a stipend. (We've allotted funds for 8 stipends.) VP (Broadcast) Sherri Ly will email President Tan Ly an application template we can use. Applicants must express why they want to attend the convention and specify the number of hours they expect to volunteer. We're thinking that Webmaster Peggy Hu and National Reps. Doris Truong and Angeline Hartmann will sit on the panel to decide stipend recipients. Applications will be due May 26, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.
  
  
• DC is 1/2 in charge of coordinating/managing volunteers. VP (Print) Hyunju Chappell Hine is leading up this effort. She needs to help make sure each chapter provides 5 volunteers. Each volunteer must work a minimum of 4 hours during the convention. Volunteers receive a badge granting them access to convention events on the day(s) they volunteer.
  
  
• We're still looking for silent auction items. Peggy has sent 4. Doris also has collected items. Hyunju will try the Spy Museum. Each board member will try to find at least one item. Secretary Susan Yoo will forward e-mails with information from previous corporate "asks" for silent-auction items.

2. Chapter assignment for 2007 AAJA conference: Programming. We need Doris to set up a meeting with the AAJA chapter/members in charge of programming for the 2006 convention, so we can get a heads up on this assignment. Hopefully we can meet with these folks while we're all in Honolulu.

3. Scholarships: Winners have been chosen. Susan will send an e-mail with award news and conditions of receiving the award to the 2 winners. Scholarship checks will be awarded once the students have registered for their fall classes. The winner of the $2,000 award must become an AAJA member. The winner of the $1,000 award, in addition to becoming an AAJA member, must also show proof 1) that she's signed up to work at her college newspaper, and 2) that she's enrolled in a mass-communications course. Because the winner of the $1,000 award will not be a journalism major, we will use these conditions to justify awarding her a journalism scholarship. The winner of the $2,000 award will attend the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in the fall. We will invite both winners (should they accept the awards) to the May mixer to be held in conjunction with SAJA, and we will make a formal announcement at that time. Lister will get details out on the mixer by Friday, April 28th.

4. The Scrabble fundraiser in Baltimore was a success. 26 people participated, with at least 5 coming from DC/Virginia and 3 coming from Delaware. We raised about $825. Most of the food/drinks were underwritten by the Sun or by Baltimore-based businesses. Doris wasn't at the meeting, but she provided this information before the meeting via e-mail. Board members present all agreed that the tournament was a good way to raise scholarship money, and that we should try to hold more of these.

5. President Tan Ly has suggested that the DC chapter host next year's East Coast mini-conference. Tan expressed interest in heading up this event. We'll discuss it more at our next meeting, when Tan is present.

6. Treasurer: The board voted to appoint Cecilia Kang Interim Treasurer. Community Liaison Wanita Niehaus made the motion and VP Sherri Ly seconded. Cecilia can't attend the AAJA convention in Hawaii, so the board voted that Wanita will attend the treasurers' meeting in her place. Sherri made the motion that Wanita attend the treasurers' meeting in Honolulu, and Susan seconded.

7. Fall Fundraiser: Trivia Bowl. Wanita, Sherri and Susan will head up the planning committee for the Trivia Bowl. Susan will put out a call for volunteers in the next newsletter. Sherri will start scouting out potential locations. We're looking for a space that will seat 50 at tables of 5 or 10. The Trivia Bowl will be in early October. A university space was suggested. As opposed to the Press Club, we could bring in our own food instead of having to use their catering services. We want to schedule the event from 1 to 5 p.m., with dinner afterwards, at a metro-accessible location. We plan to charge $250 per team, with the goal of raising $2500.

8. AAJA Endowment Campaign: chapter contribution. The deadline for this contribution is in August 2007. We need to put out a call to members to make contributions and remind them to see if their employers will make donations, also. The chapter will provide a matching gift, of up to $5,000 perhaps. We will ask Cecilia to talk to Treasurer Wai Ping about this matter and come back with a recommendation. How much should we match per individual gift? How much should we match in total?

9. The Internship boot camp has been cancelled, because we've reached a point where the board has too much on our plates, and it's getting too late to plan. It's a good idea to remember for next year, though.

10. AASFE writing contest (judges needed). Susan will check with Tom Huang at the Dallas News, and see if he still needs judges for this event. If he does, she'll put an item in the newsletter.

11. Asian-American Leadership Speaker Series

• Congressman Mike Honda
• Speaker nominees

We hope to plan the first speaking event for September. Hyunju will get in touch with Congressman Honda's office. We're still looking for more speaker nominees. Sherri will talk to a contact of hers who co-organized Operation Baby Lift in Vietnam. She is a potential speaker, and it was also suggested that it might be a good idea to ask NAVASA (National Alliance of Vietnamese-American Service Associations) to co-sponsor this speaking event.

12. Program Idea: Coverage of Asian-Americans in the media. We plan to hold this event in January 2007.

13. Listservs/membership: In the next newsletter, we'll remind people to renew their AAJA membership. Lister has 10 new members. Susan to touch base with Lister and make sure these members are on our listserv.

14. Planning notes/binders: Event organizers will keep information in binders that we can pass on to the next group of board members. The binders will include templates for letters and applications, and relevant dates/timing guidelines, so that future board members will have some idea how much time they should allow themselves for events and tasks. Susan will start a binder on the Trivia Bowl.

15. The next board meeting will be June 3rd or 4th. We still need a host -- Tan and Lister are possible hosts. Hopefully, Wai-Ping or Cecilia can attend.