AAJA-DC Board Meeting Minutes
Sunday, June 1, 2008

Officers Attending: Vice-President (Print) Hanah Cho, Vice-President (Broadcast) Sherri Ly, Secretary Susan Yoo

Also attending: Webmaster Peggy Hu

1. Trivia Bowl: Sherri explained that the Newseum used to provide space for one event to all minority journalist groups annually but no longer do. In addition to paying their fee, we'd have to use their caterer – Wolfgang Puck. This would prove costly for us. The HRC (our location last year) is an option, as is the Nat'l Press Club. We need someone to chair this event. Sherri is looking for sponsors and a possible food donor. We're planning for the Friday after elections.

Sherri will contact Wanita for the trivia questions (these came from L.A.). Susan has a book of White House trivia we can use to make up more questions, esp. since it's a Pres. election year. Susan will e-mail the board to let everyone know we're looking for someone to chair this event. Any good candidates? We'll contact them directly. Susan will also e-mail the listserv that we're looking for volunteers. Finally, Susan will work on contacting organizations and recruiting teams. The deadline to find a chairperson will be June 30. We need raffle items. Tan knows how to set up the registration webpage.

2. UNITY convention (July 23-27): Financially, UNITY is having problems finding sponsors. Each organization has its own gala dinner, and AAJA hasn't found any sponsors yet. GM, People magazine and Crain Communications have each bought a table for the dinner ($5,000 per table). Anheuser-Busch and Coca-Cola are sponsoring karaoke night. So far, only 50% of AAJA's projected number of attendees have registered. We need to ask our companies to sponsor UNITY. We should try to find corporate sponsors and/or table sponsors for the gala dinner. Sponsorship information goes to Sherri. In order to cut expenses, AAJA's silent auction reception will proved a cash-bar only (no comp. food or drinks). AAJA also selected the most inexpensive menu options for the gala dinner.

Peggy will donate jewelry for the silent auction. Sherri will get information on where to send the items. Sherri will find out details about requirements for photo donations. They generally like these to be framed.

AAJA-DC breakfast event: Sherri will ask Lister to contact the Hyatt Regency Chicago on Riverwalk and ask what's a good spot. AAJA-DC will provide pastries and coffee in a meeting area at the hotel.

3. Scholarships: This year we are giving a $2,000 and $1,000 scholarship. Sherri and Tan had discussed the possibility of changing the amounts, given our current budgetary concerns, but we'd specified the amounts on the application form, so they will stand for this year. Next year we may change the amount. We were all very impressed by the quality of this year's applicant pool, even though we only had 4 applicants all together. We'll each send Sherri our picks, and she will come up with the top 2 winners. The judging criteria we set includes financial need, commitment to Asian-American issues and the candidate's overall strength and soundness.

4. Summer picnic: We'll skip organizing an outing this summer (a baseball game had been mentioned at the last meeting), but we will have a weekend picnic (Aug. 9; rain date Aug. 16) at Bluemont Park from noon to 4 p.m. Sherri will prepare information on organizing the picnic. We decided that at the end of each year, the board should set spending amounts for the following year. The picnic budget will include funds for burgers and hot dogs. Side dishes and desserts will be potluck.

5. Next meeting: an hour before the picnic.