November 2009

MOTIONS THIS MONTH

The board agreed to empower the Treasurer to purchase Worker's Comp insurance to cover the people we hire as performers. (16 for, 2 against, 1 abstention)

OPENING CEREMONIES

The meeting was called to order at 8:03 PM on November 10^th at the home of Bob and Pam, by President Mark Schaffer

Roll Call

Present were Lois De Ritter, Scooter Ferguson, Jim Gartner, Jim King, Allan Kugel, Jim West and Ruth Wolfish (Trustees), Mark Schaffer, Ed Roffman, Rick Thomas, Mike Agranoff, Carl Croce, Lori Falco, Andy Koenig, Elizabeth Lachowicz, Sandie Reilly, Pam Robinson, Pat Rolston, Bobbie Rosengarten, Bob Safranek, Jean Scully and Rivka Willick (Other Board Members) and Judy Bubar and Alison Mazie (Guests)

Absent were Brad Pryor, Evelyn Maurer and Connie Crawford.

We welcomed Alison Mazie, who attended the meeting at Mike’s invitation. She is interested in possibly joining the Board.

Secretary’s Report

The minutes of October were accepted with one emailed correction.

Treasurer’s Report

Eddie reported that all is well.

Mike asked that, while the main figures such as current account balances, etc are available in the e-reports, he would also like to see them highlighted in the main report, just to make them easier to locate.

Andy felt after a year of experience with the job, that there was not enough work for the Finance Committee to justify its continued existence as a separate Board Committee. He requested that the duties of the Finance Committee be folded into the Treasurer’s Office. There was general agreement, and applause for Andy for a job well done! This recommendation is reflected in the Nomination Committee’s report.

Key Dates

The annual meeting will be held at the Chimney Rock Inn, 342 Valley Rd, Gillette, upstairs room. Time is 6:30pm for dinner, 8pm for the Annual Meeting. Attendees will pay $15 each; the FP will pick up the rest (you don’t have to pay if you’re just coming to the meeting).

BUSINESS ITEMS

Nominations Committee

The Nominations Committee has developed a slate of Trustees and Officers for 2010.

Rivka is looking for someone to take over as Storytelling Committee Chair; she would like to step down. Carol Titus is helping her in the search. Andy explained his recommendation to fold the Finance Committee into the Treasurer’s Office. He had originally hoped to get a few folks together to look at the overall financial picture for the Project. When the Board decided to dedicate the Agranoff Fund to support of the Festival, this made a moot point of any such deliberations. Without that goal, there wasn’t much left for the Finance Committee to do.

Worker’s Comp

Following the recommendation of our pro-bono attorneys, it was moved and passed (16 for, 2 against, 1 abstention) after some discussion, to empower Ed, as Treasurer, to purchase Workers Compensation Insurance for the Folk Project.

Issues that were raised in the discussion included. Mike asked that when we purchase the WC insurance, we should get it in writing from the insurance company that it will cover our performers. Pam noted that the standard contract used by Special Concerts has a clause that covers Workers Comp. Ed noted that the insurance company has stated that our liability insurance will not cover Workers Comp issues. Jim King pointed out that no matter what “common sense” tells us, the law does not always agree with common sense; the law says we need this insurance, so we should just do it. Lori remembered that at the last meeting Rivka had pointed out that the question of Workers Comp insurance comes up in the negotiations for almost all of her story-telling gigs. Andy reminded us that the law is pretty draconian when it comes to penalties for not having WC insurance when required, and this could have important consequences for individual members and officers of the Board. Mark remarked that nobody had raised the issue of how to pay for it. Then he disposed of the issue by saying that it could be paid out of the General Fund, or be accounted as a part of the G&A expense paid by each venue, and the exact details were best left to the Treasurer.

Reprint Folk Project "Business Cards"

A motion was passed to authorize Pam to have new FP business cards printed up – with a limit on expenses of $500.

REPORTS OF THE STANDING COMMITTEES

Web & Publicity

Mark is learning to do some of the technical stuff. He’s got expert help from Cathy Thomas, Barb Moo and others. The target date for cutover to the new web site is still December 31, 2009, but it’s running late. Andy pointed out that in programming, the saying goes “Good, Fast, Cheap: pick two.” Joe is going for Good and Cheap. It’s unfair to expect Fast as well.

Pam reports that we have our first Corporate Member, Boyles Hotel Corp, who runs the Best Western of Morristown.

Finance

Andy says we’re still not back to where we were when we opened the account, but we’re getting close. He reminds us that markets are volatile and may change.

Minstrel

Mike reports that last month Sandie had decided to retire as Volunteer Chair – but she’s changed her mind and decided to stay on.

Our “core” audience of regulars (the people who come to the Minstrel because it’s the Minstrel) is shrinking. The answer is to continue booking first-rate acts who will bring their own audience – some of whom may decide they like the place and become regulars.

Staffing

Sandie says she still needs volunteers. They have a new plan to make it easier to volunteer and easier for the Head Staff people to run the shows. Mark explained the plan as: The Volunteer Chair doesn’t need, or necessarily want, to be present at Minstrel every Friday night. His/her responsibility should be simply to make sure that all the positions are filled. There would be a rotating group of 5 or 6 Head Staff people whose responsibility it will be to handle everything that happens at the venue on “their” Fridays. If you’re interested in becoming one of this select group, see Mark.

Pam said she missed the old “sign-up book” that used to be available at the Minstrel so that people could see what jobs were available and sign up on the spot. Sandie responded that the new web-based procedures make that difficult. There was a short discussion of looking for high-tech ways to have the best of both worlds, but no conclusions.

HSNOI

Ralph reports that the 6-piece bluegrass originals band from PA, Cabinet, scheduled for 6:45 on 10/5 called Sandie on her cell about 6:30 PM to say they were stuck in traffic in Scranton and would be late... "about 7:30 PM." Bill Griese, scheduled for the later taping, showed up about 7:00 so we taped his show first and finished up around 8:30. Then we tried calling the cell phone from which the band had called Sandie, but got no answer. By 9:15 we concluded that there wasn't enough time left to get a 5 or 6 piece band into the studio and set up before our 10:00 PM deadline to vacate the studio. Cabinet still has not contacted us to apologize or explain what happened to them, but according to their manager they are OK (not hurt in an accident or otherwise). Bill put on a great performance.

Internal Affairs

Jean reports that the November Evening of Music will be at Cecilia Rowedder’s house in Highland Park. The December Holiday party will be at Judy Hagan’s house in Rockaway.

Swingin’ Tern

Connie reports by email that the two dances in October netted a little over $200. S’n’T are well ahead for the year, and according to Eddie's calculations are running about $70 in the black per dance after covering Folk Project overhead. They have decided to increase the caller and band fees. (Note: the e-report included in the attachments has a typographical error. It says that S’n’T are about $70 per dance in the red. In actual fact, they are about $70 per dance in the black.)

The Harvest Hoot is November 21. Other upcoming events are the New Years Eve dance, the January 2 Anniversary dance and Tern Swings on January 30. The NYE dance caller is Nils Fredland who is AMAZING.

Connie reports that they need to drum up more volunteers for the regular dances. Joel wants to take a step back, so they need to recruit one or two others to do Head Staff. In order to recruit more dancers at Festival, they propose a “dance only” ticket for Festival at a reduced price. This is an interesting idea. It was referred for discussion between the respective Committees.

Special Concerts

Pam’s reports on the John McCutcheon concert on Nov 7 is that paid attendance was a disappointing 126. We sold lots of John’s CDs. We took in 5 new memberships and sold a good amount of Folk Project merchandise as well. Artistically we had a grand success. (Rick said, “I laughed; I cried; I fell in love all over again!”) A number of factors contributed to the low turnout. The committee will be considering what to do about those factors in the future.

Upcoming in 2010: Tern Swings! on January 30; Michael Manring on February 4.

Fellowships

Jim Gartner will take the place of Jim West who will be retiring from the Board, and hence from the Committee.

Festival

Lori notes that the final numbers for the Fall '09 festival are in and, minus the Agranoff endowment, we have a $501 loss for the festival. That includes over $600 in capital expenditures on sound equipment and first-aid kits. If you include the double Agranoff endowment, since we did not take one for spring, we cover the loss and end up about $1300 to the black. No matter how you wish to view it, we did well with the fall festival and are in the black for the year. My heartfelt thanks to all who helped us achieve this success.

We are starting to work on the Spring '10 festival. One of our main tasks we will be focusing on how to increase attendance at our dances.

GOOD OF THE ORDER

Good of the Order is reported in the newsletter. Talk to Eddie if you’ve had or know about someone who’s had a significant event in their lives recently.

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting adjourned at 10:20 PM. The December Membership meeting will be at the Chimney Rock Inn. The next meeting after that will be on January 5th at Ruth’s house in Bedminster.

– Rick