Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting

The Secretary of State approved the filings of Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting for charitable solicitations. Essentially, it’s a “license” to solicit for charitable donations in Colorado. Our registration number is 20083000774.

If you have any questions about our charity status, please contact us.

Signed the lease today.  I’m hoping to start moving stuff in on Monday, and we also get the keys on Monday.  I also have to remember to talk about the phone line and how that’s all going to work out.  Things are starting to happen people!

I’m thinking Simone will be promoted to president, Justina to vice-president, and we’ll accept new applicants for secretary / treasurer.

by Jake Wood 🙂

I just read an About.com article, under their non-profit section, about how non-profit organizations can use “social media” to help their cause.  It’s called “The Young Are Wired for Social Media: Is Your Nonprofit?”  I was drawn to read the article simply because of its title, containing many of the aspects of our organization.  First off, “young” is an obvious keyword.  Secondly, “social media” was something that caught my attention.

When I think of “social media,” I think of networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, and the many other sites available for the cause.  After giving it a lot of thought, I’m wondering how FCYB and its mission to start a media outlet for high school students fit in with social media.  In the About.com article, the author, Joanne Fritz, mentions a book called Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, written by Allison H. Fine.  One specific aspect of Fine’s book that Fritz mentions is that generations born since 1980 “dislike and tune out traditional news media….They wish to be engaged, not talked at.”

I thought this was a very interesting statement, especially since we fall into this “net-gen” category.  If the “old” way of traditional one-way communication (broadcast) is a dying cause for the “net-gen” generation, what are we doing?  One may say we’re embracing the old method of communication and will get nowhere with our own generation.

However, what if we were to also accept and embrace the phrase “They wish to be engaged, not talked at.”  Our organization is currently debating between pursuing podcasts, Internet radio, AM radio, FM radio, or some combination of the above.  Personally, I think it’d be an incredible experience if we were to integrate the demands of the younger generation (direct engagement) with the reach and accessibility of a local broadcast medium (AM/FM), combined also with the flexibility, further reach, and tools available for use with Internet radio.

The real question is, how would we go about doing such integration?  For years, radio stations are broadcasting phone numbers and saying “Call us now!”  When I did my 2-hour job shadow in the morning hours at a radio station, they got one phone call.  Even then, it was a simple phone call, at the most it was 45 seconds long, and was a single-question, simple-answer call.   This is not the kind of engagement I want to see happen with our station.

Today, there are so many mediums of communication (e-mail, phone, IM, even those social networking sites each have their own communication tools) that it’d be difficult to organize the information shared between them and use this information in a productive manner.  However, this challenge doesn’t exist if you can’t empower your audience to participate in your attempts at creating an interactive broadcast medium.

So, my challenge for FCYB, and for myself in a sense, is to try to turn the traditional radio experience into something interactive and captivating.  While this was one of our goals from the very beginning, the article gives some specific insight into how people of our generation are perceiving the media.  I believe that our organization retains the insight, mind power, and spirit to do such a thing, and I can’t wait to see it happen.

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On a sidenote, here are some other interesting quotes from the article:

• “This group of young people does not like or understand hierarchy or bureaucracy.  It is, indeed, spirit crushing for them.  They expect transparency and honesty.”
• “Net-genners expect communication…Those who get it answer their e-mails within an hour.”
• “They do not understand ‘proprietary’ or secrecy of any kind.”
• “They make their own media.”
• “They are accustomed to being around people of all colors and persuasions.”
• “They desire not only openness but also authenticity.”
• “They will judge organizations and pass those judgments onto their massive networks.”
• “…they will be reluctant to fill out a membership application or give too much personal information to organizations”

Overall, I thought it was an interesting article.  You can find it here (will open in a new window).

In cleaning out my archaic FCYB folder on my computer, I found the CSV file that had all our really, really old posts in it. So now, there is actually content prior to November 2007! 🙂

But, there’s no content between July and November.  I think, during this time, all the data would be on our blog that we hosted on WordPress.com, which has since been deleted.  I’m hoping that it’ll show up in a few months on Archive.org and we can get all of our history back.

As of today, Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting, Inc. is officially recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization! All contributions made to us since April 18, 2007, are now tax-deductible. Please consult your tax adviser if you need any information on how to take advantage of a donation.

See a scan of the letter

We’re pretty good.  I thought we had a fairly decent turn-out considering what little we did to promote them.  Got stuff talked about, I hope everyone is up to speed now.  Didn’t see anyone from PaCE or ACE there, but that’s ok.

Attendees:

• Myself – continues to fill Executive Director position
• Elizabeth – continues to fill President of the Board position
• Simone – continues to fill Vice-president of the Board position
• Justina – continues to fill both Secretary and Treasurer positions
• Durrie, Mia, Antonia – public relations
• Philip – volunteer coordinator
• Don – IT (to be granted authority approximately at the same time we move in to the studio)
• Laura – programming & music director
• Iliya (spelling?)

Casual attendees:

• Pat
• Christina
• Unknown
• Unknown
• Katie (Fred)
• Katie

Topics of Conversation:

• Terrestrial broadcast update
• Studio space update
• Money and general finance update
• Goals
• CAS/Capstone/PaCE hour logging
• PaCE Office Box
• Available positions (as assigned)

-Jake

Public notice was released today by the FCC, confirming the dismissal of the Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting proposal in favor of the Wren Communications, Inc. proposal.

As per our contract with Wren, they have five days to pay us with a certified check or cashier check. 🙂 And then we can get going!

605 1/2 S College Avenue
Fort Collins, CO 80524

in only a couple of days!  I’m looking over the lease agreement tonight/tomorrow, going to have parents look at it, set a date w/ AJ at Stoner Construction to sign it, and we’ll be moving IN! 🙂

-Jake

Simone (vice-president) is calling a meeting for Wednesday at some time/place. I’m not sure where or when yet, but here are things that I’d like to see on the agenda (in no particular order):

• Roles of the directors – is our board doing its job?  (not trying to imply that it isn’t, but is it?)
• Division of Work – how are we going to distribute the workload through the organization?
• Logging hours for CAS, Capstone, and PaCE – how should we go about this, and who should be authorized to sign for these hours?
• Increasing communication – why won’t (or will) the forum (https://fcyb.org/forum) work, and what can we do to increase the amount of accessible and continuous communication between all members of the organization?
• Weekly meetings – should we schedule a weekly meeting, and if so where should it be and at what time and place?
• Lease agreement – Should we finalize the lease agreement on the corner of College and Myrtle? If so, should we prepay for a certain amount of time? Or, should we consider going elsewhere?
• Sponsor findings – Because Elizabeth doesn’t seem to have any interest in or time to actually leaving her house to finding sponsors, who should find them? What kind of information packet needs to be put together to approach these sponsors with, and who should approve them before they can be put to use?
• Re-writing bylaws – we need to re-write our bylaws so that they fit our organizational needs. In addition and specifically, we need to re-write them so that adults can replace students with regards to the board of directors.
• Volunteer coordinator – we need to put in place solid methods for coordinating our volunteers, adding volunteers, and keeping track of volunteers. On paper or electronically we need to keep track of people, what they’re doing, their position/status, hours, etc.
• PaCE Inbox – there IS a box in the PaCE office for people to drop off papers and whatnot that need to go to someone. Should we keep it? Is there a point? Etc, etc, etc
• Grants – Who should be responsible for typing up grants or help type up grants? (Other than me, I think I should have a big part in the grantwriting since I started it all)
• Techy Stuff – I’m going to hand over all the techy stuff to Don. Talk to him for any computer or engineering needs (that don’t involve terrestrial broadcasting, those still go to me)
• LPFM Issue – should we pursue either a) the purchase of 101.5 in 3 years or b) the lease of 101.5 in the near future?
• Full-power Issue – do we see any potential in pursuing the purchase of KLHV or KRKY?

Hm that’s it for now. I’ll edit the post if I think of more.

-Jake