National Friends of Public Broadcasting members come from public media outlets across the country.  But, who is operating behind-the-scenes?  In this new section of our website, we invite you to Meet the Trustees of NFPB.

First up is National Friends Secretary and Webmaster, Laura Sampson.  Read on to learn what Laura does for NFPB and why she feels the need to keep public broadcasting in the forefront.

Submitted by Sasha Schechter, Community Engagement Coordinator, FRIENDS OF THIRTEEN, INC.
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You've been a volunteer for public media at your home station, Rocky Mountain PBS, for almost 40 years.  Why do you volunteer for public media?

That's a really good question.  PBS has brought so much to me, that I feel obligated to pay them back.  It started, believe it or not, when my now-grown adult son (with his own three children), was still in a backpack with me carting him around.  PBS was an outlet for entertainment for me and entertainment for him, with Mr. Rogers and Electric Company way back then, and Sesame Street and all of those wonderful kids' programs.  There are so many more now!  Now, I'm watching my grandchildren love PBS.  It just is a constant incentive for me to keep going and to keep public broadcasting in the forefront of my volunteer activities.

You are the designer of our fantastic National Friends website, but you're not a professional web designer -- in fact, you taught yourself web design!  Is that true?  What motivated you to do this for National Friends and how was the learning process?

I started off by talking to our previous webmaster.  I asked him, "How should I even approach this idea of doing the website?"  He explained to me that our site is hosted by a company called WEEBLY, which I had never heard of.  So, I went on their website and started reading about them.  Before I took this on, National Friends had an arrangement that made posting anything on our site a three-party process.  If National Friends wanted something new posted, we would tell a volunteer trustee, who would tell a gentleman at another station, who would then have to try to interpret what we were asking, which meant that it would sometimes be months before something new would be posted.  I know that, in today's world, months can seem like eons, so we needed to get moving on changing the way the system worked.

I always thought web design was interesting and I always wanted to learn how to do it.  So, I went to Weebly, and I thought "Maybe I can figure this out!"  I spent a week or so just playing around on the website and seeing what I could learn by watching videos on YouTube and such.  I told the executive committee that I'd like to take it on.  So, that's what I did!

Would you encourage other volunteers to get involved with something like this at their station?

Oh, absolutely!  As an adult retired person, I have a little bit more time for volunteering now.  You know, my mom always told me, "Make sure you learn something new every day!"  I am probably learning about 20 new things a day with this website project.

When you're not teaching yourself web design, what else do you do for National Friends?

I also serve as the secretary for both the Executive Committee and for the Board of Trustees.  I do many different projects for National Friends.  We didn't really have a way of training our new trustees about NFPB as they came aboard National Friends.  I had created a manual
for the volunteers of the Volunteer Board at Rocky Mountain PBS and realized that that could easily be transferred into the same concept for National Friends, especially since National Friends members rarely see each other face-to-face. We needed a way to teach new trustees about National Friends.

Our National Friends members are spread all across the country and we know each other by voice more than we do by face.  So, I said, "Let's make a manual that we can have online to give to our trustees and let them know more about what National Friends is all about."  And now, the Trustee Manual is posted on the website under our "Trustee" sections, so trustees can go in and find the names and addresses of fellow trustees, they can see a job description of every chairmanship that we have, they can find out about awards, they can read biographies about each other and learn more about who we are as people and find out what our by-laws are . . . all kinds of information.  The trustee manual was another big project, but I was really pleased with the outcome.

Then along with that, National Friends participates in PBS Annual Meetings, and now we are going to be participating in the 2013 PMDMC, which is basically a development conference that will incorporate all of public broadcasting with NPR and PBS jointly.  At those conferences, National Friends generally has some sort of a presence, whether it be a concurrent session or a breakout session.  I've been honored to be asked to be on panels at these conferences for several years now.  Those are a lot of fun to do.  There's nothing I enjoy doing more than talking about public television, primarily about Rocky Mountain PBS, but also about National Friends.

How has National Friends membership enhanced your volunteer experience?

I started with National Friends of Public Broadcasting in the 1990s because a good friend of mine from Rocky Mountain PBS was the chairman of National Friends at that time.  I think she saw my passion for public television and she said, "I really think you ought to come meet other people who share your passion."  She put me on her executive committee as the secretary and it was exciting to me to get to meet other leaders in public media.  Some of them were in development, some of them were volunteer managers, and some of them (as PBS is known to do) wore two or three different hats at their stations.  I was able to share ideas with all of these people and find out what they were doing.  I think sometimes we tend to focus only on our home station so it was really interesting to be able to meet other people and learn how different stations work: from a massive station like WNET in New York City to tiny ones in Bozeman, Montana that are driven by universities and Rocky Mountain PBS which is a community-licensed station.  They're all so different! 

Even though we don't often get to meet face-to-face during NFPB meetings (we conduct conference calls), just talking to people through NFPB and finding out what their stations are doing, whether it be legislatively or in fundraising, community events or leadership meetings, whatever they're doing there are things that we can all share and learn from. 

So, that's something I think National Friends has given to me . . . the ability to learn and participate on a national scale.