Board Meeting Minutes  MCPP Board of Directors Meeting March 19, 2023

MCPP Board Meeting notes

March 19, 2023

9:00 - 10:30 AM

Virtual Meeting via Zoom Conferencing

Present: David Freiband, Eve Avrin, Karen Weber, Linda Young, Lisa Larson, Tamra Frei, Michele Rivette, Shil Sengupta, Miriam Goldstein

President

D. Freiband

•  Minutes approved for January meeting with minor revisions suggested. Freiband motioned that the Board approved the minutes. The Board unanimously seconded this motion.
• Motions incorporated from email exchanges between prior and current board meetings:
• On  on 1/24/23 Freiband, motioned to charge $25 for non-MCPP members to attend meetings (without receiving CEs), and $50 for non-members receiving CEs, starting at the upcoming March meeting to encourage people to join the organization as well as to defray the costs of compensating speakers and reserve meeting rooms. Waiess seconded this motion. The motion passed with  11 members of the Board voting “yay” none “nay”,  and none actively abstaining.
• 2/07/23, Freiband motioned that we offer our upcoming September speaker a $1500 honorarium and reduce the compensation for travel, lodging, and food from $1000 to $500, so that the total maximum outlay for this speaker remains at $2000. Waiess seconded the motion. Motion passed with 9 “yays” and no ”nays”.

Treasury:

E. Avrin

• Increase in net worth since January due to (1) membership payments, (2) advance payments from registrants for dinner hosting MPI Presenter, Dr. Howard Levine
• Total inflows: 6630, outflows: 2357.19
• Schwab account market value went down approximately $1000.
• Total net worth is $90,235.21.
•  PayPal account remains at $500. Checking and saving account remains at 2000  Freiband addressed ongoing Schwab account transition from Avrin to himself and Weber
• Freiband acknowledged a number of logistical hurdles in the process, which included, among a number of factors, consistency in the naming of the organization across the many documents (from its prior iteration as Michigan Council for Psychoanalysis) to its current title
• Freiband and Wood have been coordinating to review, sign, and date documents: this process has been progressing

Programs

M. Goldstein 

•  Goldstein provided feedback that she had decided, based on prior invited speaker presentation and subsequent audience feedback), to encourage future invited speakers to complete their presentation prior to taking questions in lieu of allowing audience comments and questions to be taken along the way.
• Rivette recommended that the facilitator encourage audience members to  keep their questions succinct in order to not disrupt the flow of the presentation
• Another approach was suggested for presenters who lean more heavily toward audience participation: that there be a mid-paper break to allow for additional audience participation without disrupting the flow and cohesion of the presentation itself.
•  Freiband announced that there are five speakers who have committed  to September, October, November of 2023 and March, and April of 2023. January, February, and May slots for 2024 remain open.
•  Freiband asked the Board to explore with him the grounds on which to discern suitable future speakers.
• He also discussed the possibility of inviting speakers based on more contemporary intersectional issues such as gender, race, class, and ethnicity.
•  Members suggested a variety of names for consideration, in the context of these intersectional topics and concerns.
• Freiband suggested that, given the context of this promising new roster of speakers, that it behooved the Board to consider the future and direction of the organization itself, given that the current roster would take the organization through to the Summer of 2024 and bring the subsequent academic year of 2025 into the horizon
• Freiband clarified that if the Board were to invite speakers, it would be important to have an organization operating at the time that the speakers were due to come. This, in turn, would require the Board and the organization as a whole to have greater clarity about its future, as the need to find the next iteration of speakers would be nine months away (as of this current meeting).
• Freiband elaborated his concern that he will want to hand off speaker recruitment to others. As an example, he suggested a committee that will handle this process, in order for this to be a sustainable process for himself as well as the organization moving forward
• Freiband concretized his idea for a committee by suggesting that each person in the committee individually seek out one or two speakers. Freiband would have a prospective list in place and would offer input regarding prospective candidates.
• Goldstein provided feedback that she had decided, based on prior invited speaker presentation and subsequent audience feedback), to encourage future invited speakers to complete their presentation prior to taking questions in lieu of allowing audience comments and questions to be taken along the way.

Website:

K. Weber

• Weber created a prompt for people to renew their membership in order to attend one of the MCPP presentations: this would be one method of preempting renewals from lapsing.
•  She added that she has learned now to provide refunds if members paid online (but also in case an event was ultimately cancelled). However, this 
• would  only be possible for online payments (such as credit cards

Membership:

L. Young and L. Larson

• Young and Larson reported that repeated letters have been sent out to former members to renew their membership.
• They also reported that letters had been sent out to non-members who had attended meetings, inviting them to join the organization.
• Young added that the organization currently has 71 active members.
• Young added that the new approach to charging non-members to attend talks (irrespective of CE credits) would provide new data as to whether this is a fruitful strategy for adding new members to the organization.

Social Work CEs: T. Frei

Nothing to report

Old Business

• Freiband revisited the idea  of whether the organization needs an official policy for other organizations’ advertising using MCPP  Listservs.
• Young reiterates her suggestion that any individual be allowed to post on the MCPP member listserv while devoting only organizational announcements strictly for the organizational website and listserv.
• Freiband clarifies that individuals posting on the member listserv alleviated the issue of reciprocity since it will not be MCPP that is promoting another organization, just an individual.
•  Sengupta suggested that the MCPP list serv be allowed to be utilized for promotion only by paying members, so that it provided an additional incentive for individuals to become paying members.
• Weber clarified that there are currently 71 people on the member list serv and approximately 300 people on the community list-serv, the latter is used most prominently by member and non-members alike
• Weber suggests sending out a brief note on the community listserv regarding best practices for its use: clarifying that only  members be privileged to post on the community list-serv
•  Frei assumed the responsibility of writing this note: Additional inputs for the message to be sent out included: (1) ascertaining scheduling conflicts between the potentially advertised event and MCCP events and (2) mindfulness by would-be promoters to volume of posting so as not to deluge members’ inboxes.
• There would essentially need to be an honor system to ensure that individualshonor the best practices terms.
• Freiband suggests “an exception to the rule”:  that if an organization were to approach MCPP to promote an event, we would consider promoting the event strictly if there is mutual reciprocity: if that organization, in kind, were to be willing to promote our event. However, the standing rule would be to only publicize our own presentations.
• Young suggests two separate documents: one to the Board  explaining our agreed upon stance, and one to the community at large.

New Business

How to Recruit Newer Generation of Therapists to MCPP:

• Avrin suggested that terms and concepts like  “trauma work” and “attachment theory” have become quite mainstream in popular culture. Given their significant overlap with psychodynamically oriented work, it may behoove our organization to translate our work in these more accessible terms.
• Another corollary concern articulated was how to have presenters write in a manner that is accessible in the aforementioned way, without obscuring or oversimplifying their work to newer generations of therapists.
• Young brought up a supplementary concern: how exactly to reach this generation of therapists (beyond more accessible messaging).
• Other suggestions from Board Members were to (1) offer online consultation groups, (2) gather data on the efficacy of long time offerings such as low fee supervision (insofar as this translates to membership, (3) learn more from the relative success of other analytic education and training programs, (4) as well as consider culturally specific inroads to recruiting younger clinicians and members.
• noung redirected concerns to the larger purpose of what our organization’s mission is, especially given that our training program is currently on hiatus.
• Deferred topic given the urgency of topic of recruitment: Member’s concern about paying additional fee of $140 for being an MPC certified psychoanalyst although this designation no longer had functional value it once had, given that there is currently no training program.

Freiband motioned that the next Board meeting be set for  April 16^th, 2023. Rivette seconded this. The Board voted unanimously in favor.