August 2007

MOTIONS THIS MONTH

Bobbie Rosengarten moved that we authorize the purchase of a digital picture frame to help promote the Festival, at a cost of approximately $200. This motion carried.

OPENING CEREMONIES

The meeting was called to order at 8 pm on August 7, 2007 at the home of Mark Schaffer.

Roll Call

Present were Lois DeRitter, Bob Isaacs, Jim King, Andy Koenig, Evelyn Maurer, Barbara Moo, Bobbie Rosengarten and Mark Schaffer (Trustees), Mike Agranoff, Lori Falco, Larry Flanigan, Ken Galipeau, Elizabeth Lachowicz, George Otto, Brad Pryor, Sandie Reilly, Chris Riemer, Pam Robinson, Pat Rolston, Bob Safranek and Jean Scully (Other Board Members), and Allan Kugel and Rick Thomas (Guests).

Absent were Jim West, Paul Axel-Lute, Tom Pylant, Rivka Willick

Secretary’s Report

The minutes for July were accepted with the following correction: At the end of the Festival discussion, the following should be added "At the end of the meeting, Barbara thanked all present for managing to have a “pretty productive meeting for a pretty tough topic.” She said that she appreciated everyone making it work."

Treasurer’s Report

The Departmental P&L reports were distributed automatically this month. Chris has also decided that he won’t distribute end-of-year audit reports on paper, as he has in the past, since all the committee chairs can log in to QuickBooks to see the details. He will send a reminder when the time comes. We are all set up with Guidestar.

Key Dates

None due in August or September.

BUSINESS ITEMS

Retaining an Accountant

Chris feels that it would be a good thing for the FP to have an ongoing relationship with an accountant. They could take the accountant role in QuickBooks and do our taxes. He plans to run an ad in the newsletter for someone to do this on a commercial basis, i.e. for a fee. He is considering a member or a referral from a member for someone who has experience with QuickBooks and non-profits and won’t charge us that much. He sees the Treasurer as more of a bookkeeper.

We discussed whether this person should be a member or non-member. Barbara said that businesses traditionally have a non-member as an accountant. There was no final decision on this issue. Barbara said that she sensed that we approve of Chris looking into this and that there was no need for a motion.

Follow-up on Festival Action plans

Barb began this discussion by referring to an email report circulated earlier.

Jim K. compiled a report on Festival promotion. A lot of flyers have been distributed, but there is no way to track if they have been effective. Mike: Everyone in this room should take a flyer and make a pitch to someone. George volunteered to take flyers to the Philly Folk Fest.

Barbara said Mike did a great job at the Birthday Party promoting the festival. It generated some excitement in the lobby. She thanked Rick for printing a large poster of the flyer for the Minstrel.

Jim K. said that one problem has been that everything has been new. One big issue is photo permissions. Bill Cox is working on adding a default permission notice to the registration form. It is too late for him to do this for the fall fest, but a notice will be on the confirmation letters for fall saying that your picture may be taken at festival and you should let us know if you don’t want yours published.

George said that we don’t have permission for the photos of members of the public on our website, but no one has complained. If anyone objects, he will remove the pictures. Andy thinks our exposure is limited to the harm publishing the photo might do. Jim K. would like to have a photographer at the festival to generate photos we can use for promotion and we would like to have a photo file readily available. Mike and Ken will bring their cameras to the fall fest. Mike will take responsibility for making the file.

To promote the festival we have been displaying festival photos at our venues on borrowed laptops. Mark Schaffer recommended that the we purchase a digital picture frame for this purpose. We could use it to promote other events as well, such as the Valentine show.

Bobbie moved that we authorize Mark to get a digital picture frame and spend up to $200 for what he deems best. George seconded. Andy felt this might not be enough money. Mark said his research indicated he could get a decent one for that price; some were being sold for less. He checked B&H and elsewhere. Barbara suggested we might want to purchase two, one for the Minstrel, one for Swingin’ Tern. Lori suggested amending the motion to authorize Mark to spend up to $400 for two picture frames and come back to us if more funds were needed. Bobbie did not accept the amendment because she felt we shouldn’t impose the purchase on Swingin’ Tern. Mark indicated he wanted to start with one.

Chris wondered which committee would own this asset. He decided that the purchase would come from general Folk Project expenses and the Minstrel would be the physical steward.

Jim K. noted that five new festival registrations would cover the purchase. We briefly discussed buying a laptop instead, but rejected that idea. Sandie suggested purchasing a portable DVD player instead. Mark said he would look into it. Andy said that a DVD player is not as good as a laptop for this purpose.

The motion passed with no objections, one abstention.

George had suggested Saturday only tickets to the festival committee and they accepted. He said that these could go to reporters and he would like to pursue that. If anyone has ideas about people to invite please let George know.

Chris noted that the ads and promotions bucket on QuickBooks has what Jim K. has been doing for the festival.

Barbara closed the discussion by asking for a round of applause for Jim K. “He has shown up and taken this bull by the horns.”

REPORTS OF THE STANDING COMMITTEES

Minstrel Booking

July was a so-so month in terms of attendance, but we made a ton of money. Birthday show largely responsible for that. Speaking of which, the Birthday Show, while deprived of a number of our better performers because of the Falcon Ridge conflict, was a remarkably entertaining and high-class show. Kudos to everyone. We'll do another poll next year to see if people would prefer to move the show up a week to avoid FRFF. August started our new early show time with no major disasters.

The September schedule got filled in rather late, but includes an Agranoff Imperative in the form of the Jeremey Kittel Band on Sept. 21. Young fiddler with a REALLY exciting young backup group. Mike saw the group at Old Songs and was blown away. Followed them around like a puppy all weekend.

August features the Kennedys on the 17th (with Sonas opening: Irish trio who recently joined the Project, and played at the Birthday Show.) and Dugan's Hooligans on the 24th.

Minstrel Staffing

For the last show, Sandie didn’t have enough volunteers and roped in her niece and her daughter. She asked us to please volunteer. People did pull together for the Birthday party, but she reminded us that, “We don’t have a show if we don’t have volunteers.” Rick suggested we each get two friends to volunteer.

Swingin’ Tern

Paul was absent, but submitted a report via email.

HSNOI

The new mini-DV tape deck set-up is working smoothly. Ralph has 4 shows ready for MNN, scheduled starting mid-December when the format switch-over is required, and will continue to simultaneously duplicate shows onto min-DV tape as new shows are taped and whenever duplicating an old show for whatever purpose (to be used as reruns on MNN).

We taped two very fine shows in July and have some good tapings on the schedule.

Special Concerts

The only new info at this time is that the previously mentioned house concert scheduled for the end of August has been cancelled.

Festival

The committee has instituted Saturday only tickets. They cost $85, $75 with the early bird discount. Children are $60, $50 with the discount. The camp is charging us $47.50 for adults and kids. The ticket allows people to come at 9:30 am, have lunch and dinner and stay through the evening activities. Ken said the Saturday tickets don’t count toward the camp minimum of 200. Barbara asked if we could just tell the camp that the Saturday people are there for the whole weekend since the camp will be charging $106 for them in any case. Then she suggested that the arithmetic discussion be taken off-line.

Lois asked why Saturday tickets were now possible. Ken said that in the past the committee was concerned that implementing Saturday only tickets would cause the festival to lose money, but because people have asked for it they decided to give it a try.

The scholarship is in place. We are also offering a first-timers discount that applies to the full weekend. George came to the last meeting and volunteered to do extra promotion. Ken thanked George for all the extra work he’s done. Helene has updated the flyer.

Regarding carpooling, Heather Lev will coordinate people who are looking for or willing to give rides. Sandie said we have permission from MUF to leave cars in their lower lot for the weekend. This might help with carpooling.

Andy asked if the committee has proposed any event changes, aside from increasing attendance. Ken said they have not for fall. We may have Saturday only performers for spring. The committee could use help and ideas.

We discussed attendance at the Round Robins, which has been very low. There were only 6 -8 people there at the last festival. Ken said they have some ideas. Andy suggested taking the discussion off-line. Barbara said the Round Robin can make the festival more engaging, so it’s something we should look into. She noted that you can’t get the excitement back if you don’t change anything.

Jim K. suggested that people on the Board who go to festival should take notes there and then we should have an evaluation meeting after the festival.

Barbara said that the sooner we can get the schedule nailed down, the better. Ken said the performer schedule is almost nailed down and Mike said the workshop schedule is almost done. Jim K. said a good goal would be to get the schedule set earlier for the spring fest.

Barbara thanked Ken for being here and taking the abuse he’ll continue to get till festival is up to 200. “But we’re here to help.”

Storytelling

The festival is going smoothly, nothing special to report.

Membership

Under control.

Newsletter

Thanks to Elizabeth and others who have agreed to meet in late August and fold, staple, and not mutilate the newsletter for distribution while Tom is out of town. Tom will be putting a request for help with mailing into the next newsletter so look for you chance to volunteer.

Publicity/Webmaster

Traffic on the webpage has been normal, although hits are up on the performer’s resource page. That’s a sign that it’s something that’s valuable. George added the capacity to select a keyword such as “storytellers” so Agranoff is not always first. “Agranoff is not a keyword yet.” Jim K: “It will be.”

George added pictures to the Swingin’ Tern page and a warning, although not the full legalistic one. He updated the membership forms to ask broader questions about people’s interests. This was also in the newsletter. No one consulted Pat, but she’s okay with it, so we’ll leave it.

George added festival pictures to the web site. Ken asked if he could put more flash in the box about new stuff. George said he could but he thought it would look cheap. Pam asked how the MySpace page is doing. George said it’s been up for a year and we have 160 friends. It has Minstrel info updated, but doesn’t have festival. Barbara said it would be good to have the highlights.

Evelyn asked if we’ve done promotions for singles and families. George said he has looked into it, but is not sure how to do it.

Merchandising

Mike asked if we would have new T-shirts for the fall festival. Brad said that we will have the black ones.

Community Affairs

We lost Lew Hollander and Bob Wolfe this past month. Elizabeth wasn’t sure where to send a card for Lew. Jim K. suggested she ask Bill Cox.

Dave Kleiner did a gig at a camp for kids with cancer and had a wonderful time. More people seem to be using the performer’s resource list on the web.

Lois suggested a round of applause for Bill Cox for organizing Lew Hollander’s funeral service. Barbara said that Bill is planning a memorial gathering and attempting to complete the CD that Lew had been working on before he passed away. She suggested that we might want to send a card to Bill to thank him. She also asked if anyone knew of someone to adopt Lew’s cat. [According to the webpage Bill set up, the cat was adopted sometime after the meeting.]

Sound Reinforcement

Everything’s good.

Internal Affairs

The 4th of July picnic was successful and well attended. We spent $175 on food. We had a lovely Evening of Music at the home of Leslie Brown. The Birthday Party came off nicely. We spent $88 on sheet cakes. The fruit didn’t go well but there was only one slice of cake left. The August Evening of Music will be at Margaret’s. Mike noted that the Perseid meteor shower will occur that night. Larry: “Bring a helmet.”

THE IN BOX

Chris reported the receipt of an inquiry from the insurance company, regarding the automatic renewal of insurance certificates for our performance venues. After discussion, we agreed that several sites could be removed from the list, since we’ve either relocated the event or had only used a site for a one-time concert

GOOD OF THE ORDER

Tom Pylant said that Ken Galipeau has written some beautiful songs for his upcoming CD and Tom had a wonderful time recording acoustic bass lines for some of them. Ken has a gig at The Golden Raven, a storytelling circle in Maine, on 8/11. Elizabeth Lachowicz had a wonderful time at her family reunion in Chicago this past month, visiting with siblings and cousins, some of whom she had not seen since 1988. Jean Scully’s daughter, Siobhan, attended Ranch Camp at Fairview Lake and also recently attended band camp, where the campers put on a performance that blew everyone away. Brad Pryor’s son, stayed with him for 25 days and came to the Minstrel and the July 4th picnic. Brad is glad that his son got to meet all of his friends. Pat Rolston attended a 90th birthday party for Peter Fischman’s mother, who is “still dancing”. Pat also got an e-mail from Debbie Watson-Irwin, who found our site online and just wanted to say, “Hi”. Mark Schaffer spent the week with his in-laws at the Outer Banks and now loves them even more than when the week started. Evelyn Maurer thanked Lori Falco for the great job she did on the minutes for July, which included a lengthy discussion about festival. Evelyn also said that Joanne and Bruce Herb are in the process of moving and can use some help. Jean said that Joanne’s father is ill and Joanne is currently with her parents in up-state New York. Sandie Reilly has signed up for the Multiple Sclerosis Bike Tour in September. She is going to Memphis for the Folk Alliance convention. Anyone who would like to go should contact her -- she can get an organizational discount. Mike Agranoff just started a new job at Polytype America in Mahwah. George Otto was invited to be on the backstage entertainment crew at the Philly Folk Fest. Rick and Cathy Thomas’ niece, Martha Pidcock, has been visiting them for the last few months. Last month, Bob Isaacs did his first tour on the West Coast at the Mendocino Camp. He did well and they plan to ask him back. Andy Koenig and Barbara Moo were at Martha’s Vineyard last month to celebrate the 80th birthday of Andy’s parents, who were born one month apart. Andy brought his electronic wind instrument and backed it up with his laptop and everyone loved it. Allan Kugel reported that Wendy Keilin and Cecilia Rowedder are throwing themselves a birthday party in August, to celebrate their turning 100 in that month [reported after the meeting adjourned].

ADJOURNMENT

Meeting adjourned at 9:50 pm.

The next meeting will be held on September 4 at the home of Chris Riemer.

Respectfully submitted,

Lori Falco

Secretary