Bill Crosier opens the door

I support Bill Crosier, but strongly feel that any donation to WBAI should be held back until the station has been deloused. People like Berthold Reimers and Tony Bates must be fired, honesty and principles restored. —Chris A

________________________________

Subject: iED Report, 2017-03-02 

Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2017 19:26:52 -0600 

From: Pacifica Executive Director <ed@pacifica.org> 

To: Pacifica National Board <pnb@pacifica.org>

Please distribute this at your stations to LSB members, staff, and volunteers - this is all public so it's OK to share.

For those of you who missed the previous announcements, the Pacifica National Board named me as the new interim Executive Director for Pacifica, as of Feb. 10. I told them I would not accept a salary - just expenses for travel and other essentials. I did not ask for this job, but several Board members asked me to take it on, and I said OK, but I do not plan to do this indefinitely - I am interim.

A few people have asked me about my expenses. I will do my best to minimize those by staying in the homes of local station supporters while visiting the National Office and various stations, and by asking volunteers to drive me around. That's what I did in the trip I just took. Of course, this also gives me more time to visit with local Pacifica members, which I really want to do. Regarding my expenses so far, the only ones are for air fare to visit Berkeley and Los Angeles, and I have not yet received reimbursement for that. Pacifica's IT staff also convinced me to let them buy me a used cell phone along with a case with an extra battery (as I'm on the phone many hours each day on Pacifica business) so I can keep my personal cell phone for personal business and the Pacifica one for Pacifica matters. Those are my only expenses so far. In my visits to Berkeley and LA, I stayed in the homes of local station members and they drove me around everywhere, so I have had no hotel or taxi expenses. I also no meal expenses (at least not yet) for which I need reimbursement.

I also plan to visit WBAI and WPFW this month, plus make another trip to Berkeley. I hope to stay with local station supporters on those trips, too.

It's been very helpful to me, to get to speak directly with people at the stations, and to hear their concerns and suggestions, even if I don't have time to talk with everyone individually. I am grateful for the many suggestions I've been receiving from so many people. I'm encouraged that so many, many people really do care about Pacifica and our mission and want us to grow and prosper, not just barely survive.

I hope people at all of our stations will also do their best to minimize expenses. But we really need to focus on getting new listeners and members, on getting additional revenue such as from major donors, and more. There are thousands of people out in the streets who need our independent voices but who don't know about us. *I want a strong, vibrant Pacifica that people all over our country will know is there for them - to speak truth to power, and which is not afraid to stand up to the craziness coming out of the White House and Congress. We need that, and our country needs that.

But keeping Pacifica strong and preserving our mission means we have to be able to pay our bills and get current with audits and meet other regulatory requirements. We have some very urgent and important matters to attend to. So although I truly welcome suggestions from everyone, for anything that can improve Pacifica, my major focus now is on getting the audits done, getting the revenue up, and starting to get our finances under control. If we can't do that, our mission and our very survival is in peril.

What you can do: Donate today to the special one-day Celebration of Pacifica fund drive, and *ask your friends to do so*. Ask them via e-mail and social media. They can donate after today, too, by going to pacifica.org <http://pacifica.org>. This fund raiser is going very well so far, and it's to raise money for the audits and related tasks such as other regulatory matters, to help us get in compliance with state and federal reporting requirements.

Regarding the change in management at KPFK, I have named Christine Blosdale as a temporary interim GM, for a few weeks. She has replaced Leslie Radford. See pacifica.org <http://pacifica.org> for the press release. Christine is going full speed on ways to help KPFK become financially sustainable, while staying true to the Pacifica mission, and I support the changes she is making. There have been false statements made on social media about some of the changes, by a former volunteer. Some of the changes this week are very temporary - preemptions of some shows during the KPFK fund drive, which ends tomorrow. Some other changes will be made later, but most programs will remain, especially those with listenership and support. Christine joins me in wanting to get caught up on the premium backlog and other matters.

This week, we got an extension (until August 27) of the deadline for the FY2015 audit from the California Registry of Charitable Trusts, part of the AG's office.

On Tuesday, we also got the letter from the AG via Alan Yee, that the AG's office told last year's officers to expect. Although we received it on Feb. 28, it was dated Mar. 1. I forwarded it to the PNB. It says:

The Attorney General Office requires the following from Pacifica Foundation within 30 days from today.

1. Documents showing replenishment of Restricted Assets, including the source of funds; 
2. Written plan for either establishing Pacifica's financial stability or dissolving the organization; and 
3. Complete copy of Pacifica's independent audit for 2015.

That letter was clearly written before the Aug. 27 extension mentioned in the above paragraph, and I plan to talk with the AG's office in the next few days about that discrepancy and the other items in the letter. Clearly we have some very important work to do in the next few weeks, regarding the items in their letter. We do not have a plan yet for establishing Pacifica's financial stability nor for replenishing restricted funds, but it's very important that we do that before the end of March. I ask for your cooperation in helping us to get that done.

Alan Yee also said, in the same note, "Our office will no longer be representing Pacifica so your new attorneys should respond to the AG's office directly".

Per the motion approved by the PNB on Feb. 10, I hired Sam Agarwal on a consulting basis to provide assistance with our financial problems and in getting ready for the audits. He has already given me a lot of good advice. But we need a real full-time CFO, and he can't do that on a part-time consulting agreement. I hope you will authorize me tonight to hire him as CFO.

Regarding today's on-air fundraiser, thanks to negotiations by an anonymous Pacifica member, we got an $86K donation to provide challenge match funds for this audit fundraiser. Those funds are being split up into amounts for each hour, per recommendations by other managers who have more experience than me with this. The donation is from a bequest from Jim Krivo, who was a WBAI supporter before he died a few years ago, and the person administering his estate wanted to do something to help Pacifica and decided that providing a challenge fund specifically for the audit fundraiser was the best way to do it. I've asked Berthold to think about doing something to honor the memory of Jim Krivo and this very generous gift, and if any of you have suggestions please let me and Berthold know.

We also have a new agreement with Mobile Cause to provide text-to-donate services so we'll have another easy way for people to contribute. We have implemented it for today's fundraiser, and the donations made through this have already exceeded our expectations. It can also be used by any station for their own on-air fundraisers, and also for live in-person events where I'm told it can be even more effective. We'll provide more details on that later, but you can go to https://www.mobilecause.com/ for more information.

I'd like to involve PNB and/or other LSB members and other volunteers - whoever has time and interest in helping and not just in meeting - in strategic planning for increasing listenership and membership and fund-raising, with the ultimate goals of making Pacifica stronger and much better known as THE alternative independent broadcast media. We have a regular stream of craziness coming out of the White House, with perhaps even more to come from Congress, and our country needs Pacifica. We need to be there for them. I hope we can put aside some of our differences and think about how we can work together on that.

Bill