May 19th, 2020

Owned by Hannah Frost
Last updated: May 20, 2020 by Richard Green
2 min read


8-9 AM Pacific | 10-11 AM Central | 11 AM - 12 PM Eastern | 4-5 PM BST

Standing Zoom link: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/393158590


Attendees:

  • Carolyn Caizzi (Northwestern University) - regrets
  • Jon Dunn (Indiana University)
  • Hannah Frost (Stanford University) (facilitator)
  • Richard Green (Samvera Operations Adviser, co-facilitator)
  • Kevin Kochanski (Notch8)
  • Simeon Warner (Cornell University)



Agenda:

  • Review activities since April meeting
    • Letter provided to Lyrasis and sent out to partners 
      Currently invoices out for approximately $200k
      Need a formal version of the Contribution Model (rather than the recommendations) available on line.  RG to draft.
    • RG to monitoring and will report on invoicing and payments when the information is available from Lyrasis (likely mid-June)
      • Follow-up to any partners or other actions
        None needed at present.  LSE will likely withdraw from Partnership - though not as a direct result of the Contribution Model.
    • RG archived last year's WG pages 
    • Announce our existence to the community
      • I believe this was not done at the Virtual Partner Meeting on 27/28 April.
        JD will make an announcement as Chair of Steering
    • Consider talking to a professional fundraising consultant at a non-profit to get advice/ideas. – CC will ask a contact?
      No feedback yet.

  • Discussion of other funding sources and funding targets
    • Value of the upcoming Roadmap Survey and Discussion
      This is important as, together with our need to appoint staff, this is at the core of what money we would ask for and who we'd ask it from.  Samvera really needs money 'to sustain and grow the community' rather than for something bright, shiny and new (which is often the focus of grants).  HF expained about the presentation planned for the next Partner call.  She has looked around the Sloan website and thinks that their 'Scholarly Communications' fund is the likely one.  https://sloan.org/programs/digital-technology/scholarly-communication/platforms  The idea that money would help us invest in recovery from COVID (for ourselves and others) my be difficult to 'sell' when funders own income will have gone way down as interest rates have fallen.  Might be worth contacting Patricia Hwse at Mellon (as an ex-member of this community, she understands us).
      There are institutions rushing to get their technical solutions into a 'sustainable place', concerned that COVID fallout may result in cuts to staffing.  They may have some ideas to help us?
    • Revisit the approach to Sloan?  Talk to Ubiquity?  (Brian Hole is well plugged into the open scholarly publishing community and may have ideas). HF to do so.
    • Consider talking to a Development Office.
      Need some internal work first.  We need some specificity around our ask.  IU's Dev Officer would probably be happy to brainstorm with us.  Cornell and Stanford's Dev Officers are more oriented toward donor management.
    • Consider setting the Team a target of raising $150k this year (enough to cover a full time salary, associated costs and expenses)
      Need to clarify with CC exactly what she meant when she suggested this.  Was this additional to the Contribution Model money (in which case it is very ambitious), or not?

    • Need to monitor the Roadmap Council presentation to Partners on 6/12 and make our own synthesis of the issues (in addition to any synthesis the RC might offer).

  • Next meeting
    • Tuesday 16th June, 0800PT, 1100ET, 1600UK