September 2010

OPENING CEREMONIES

The meeting was called to order at 8:02, at the home of Cecilia Zeimetz-Rowedder and Allan Kugel. Happy Birthdays to Carl and Lois!

Roll Call

Present were Lois DeRitter, Scooter Ferguson, Jim King, Nancy Kelner, Allan Kugel, Jim Gartner, Evelyn Maurer, Brad Pryor and Ruth Wolfish (Trustees), Mike Agranoff, Pat Brangs, Carl Croce, Lori Falco, Chris Riemer, Pam Robinson, Ed Roffman, Bobbie Rosengarten, Bob Safranek and Rick Thomas (Other Board Members) and Joanne Cronin and Cecilia Zeimetz-Rowedder (Guests). Absent were Connie Crawford, Elizabeth Lachowicz, Sandie Reilly, Mark Schaffer and Jean Scully.

Secretary’s Report

Chris had two minor corrections to the August minutes. Nancy noted that the band coming to the Minstrel is Red Hen, not Red Hand, and Mike wanted to clarify that his disappointment in the 2010 Birthday Party show was driven by the decline in the size of the audience, as well as in the number of performers. The minutes were approved as amended.

Jim King wondered if we could do anything more to encourage general members to come to our monthly board meetings. Chris will add something along those lines to the meeting report that’s published in the newsletter.

Treasurer’s Report

The checking account balance stands at $10,421 and the Money Market at $23,343. We’re in the black for the year, and while we’re not making a killing, Eddie thinks we’re doing fine.

Key Dates

The key date this month belongs to Mike Agranoff, who as Eisteddfod Festival liaison is responsible for securing an article that can be published in the October newsletter.

BUSINESS ITEMS

Dissolution of the Folk Project Storytelling Committee

It’s come to the attention of several board members that the New Jersey Storytelling Network, which sought the protection of the Folk Project’s non-profit umbrella in 2004, has apparently decided to go it alone.

In early June, they launched their own Web site, which makes a passing reference to an “affiliation with the Folk Project” and indicates that they’ve been a 501(c)3 since October 2007. They're selling tickets, soliciting memberships and asking for contributions, so they’re presumably depositing funds and keeping their own books. Those are explicit violations of both our policy and their agreement. And since chair Rivka Willick has missed every meeting this year, we can only conclude they’ve decided to dissolve themselves as a Folk Project Committee (as allowed by our Constitution). They just forgot to tell us.

There was an extended discussion here. Chris recalled that as long ago as 2005, the Storytellers wanted to manage their own accounting. As Treasurer, he had an extended correspondence with Rivka, repeatedly explaining that wasn’t how we did things. Others have heard they felt we were anti-storytelling in some way.

Mike asked if we should look into QuickBooks to see if there’s surplus revenue that’s attributable to Storeytelling, and perhaps send them a check. Chris and Ed were both strongly opposed to that idea. We may be on the verge of dissolving the Festival committee, at least for the short term. Does that mean we should cut a check to Lori?

In Jim King’s view, this was an outcome of their success with the Storytelling Festival – once they started actually making money, they wanted to hang onto it. He added that we should “cauterize” the loose ends as quickly as possible. Their departure will have an impact on our QuickBooks accounts, grant-writing boilerplate, insurance policies, Guidestar listings, printed material, T-shirts, Web links, etc. Ed and Chris felt we should also formalize the separation via Certified Letter, to be sure they understand we're dropping them from our insurance policy. Scooter will handle the details on that, with an “as of” date of June 1. At Ruth’s suggestion, Scooter urged all committee chairs to comb through their assets and look for other Storeytelling references that might need to be purged. And that was that.

Nominating Committee

Scooter wasn’t sure, but felt it might be time to recruit a nominating committee. From a Key Date perspective, that belongs in the October meeting. But since the original timing was intended to facilitate discussion of possible candidates at Festival, and since Festival is coming earlier this year, doing it tonight makes sense.

Evelyn is the traditional chair of this body, but she'd like to decline this time around. So Scooter stepped up to the job, and Mike and Rick will also participate. More are welcome, of course.

REPORTS OF THE STANDING COMMITTEES

Membership

We’ve still got members, and Rick can see that a lot of them tend to renew in the month before the Festival.

Rick and Cathy have now gone over the Folklore Society of Greater Washington site (supported by a system that was designed by a friend of Rick’s), and he thinks it looks pretty good. It’s powerful enough to give us a leg up in many areas, and modular enough that we wouldn’t have to buy more than we need. He will probably move toward acquiring the membership module to replace our current PC-based approach, and he thinks Pam might like the event-management module, which includes things like budgeting and volunteer coordination. On the membership side, it would let members update their own records, which would be nice. Scooter was concerned about security, but Chris felt that in the end, any system can be hacked, including what we have now.

Rick is also looking into the problem of memberships lapsing because people are getting the electronic newsletter and thereby have no individualized reminder. He may go for a paper newsletter supplement in that particular month, or an individualized email with a Time-to-Renew message. Scooter would also like to see a batch email to everyone whose membership has lapsed in the last couple of years. There was some extended discussion here, covering ISPs, the definition of spam, the proper identification for the “FROM” line and the potential leveraging of a Constant Contact account opened by the Festival Committee. In the end, Chris urged that we try to find an organization-wide solution. If Rick is moving membership records to that FSGW platform, we should probably look at their email module first.

Publicity

Nancy was happy to represent The Folk Project at a meeting of the Jersey Arts organization. She thinks we were probably the only all volunteer group in attendance. Among other things, Jersey Arts places full-page ads in major papers like The Times and The Ledger, and uses them to feature four or five of their member groups. It’s something we might want to consider, and she’s looking into the details. She’s also going to a Morris County Freeholders Meeting on September 22, if anyone would like to join her. Finally, Lynn Miles has joined the ever-expanding publicity team. She'll be posting Folk Project event information to one of the Internet calendars each month. as a calendar admin.

Mike suggested that Nancy place an article in the newsletter looking for postering volunteers to post Folk Project flyers in their local area. He had quite a few people printing and posting Minstrel flyers at one time. Pam Robinson added that Swingin' Tern got some nice coverage in a local paper about the August dance, and that our Facebook page now has over 300 fans. Since Jim is writing calendar blurbs for Nancy, he wondered if they might be used on Facebook, too. The interested parties will discuss off line. In closing, Evelyn congratulated Nancy on doing such a fine job. (Much applause ensued.)

On the Web front, Mark had earlier submitted an email report, to which Lori offered a few additional comments. The new site (on its new server) is ready for testing and Cathy Thomas has asked for our participation and feedback. She’s also upgrading our email system with a different, more secure application, and would love to get some more recent photographs to freshen the site up a bit.

Merchandising

Bobbie has not heard from Margaret, so has no report to make. She’s also sorry to say that Margaret hasn’t replied to her emails regarding a merchandising question asked last month. Chris wondered if this liaison relationship (in which Margaret is allowed to opt out of meetings by reporting through Bobbie) is really working out for us. Scooter will look into the matter.

Internal Affairs

No report from the absent Jean Scully, beyond that submitted via email.

Newsletter

Carl summarized the comments made in his recent email, and agreed to forward a half dozen or so newsletters to Rick each month, so he can deal with membership emergencies.

Community Affairs

Pat summarized the information from her recent email. Audubon is still cooking, and she has a new potential venue in a Rockaway Event this coming weekend. She’s connected with a woman who runs a new-agey place called Rest Stop Rejuvenate in Rockaway, who's very interested in working with The Folk Project (she features live concerts and poetry readings in her shop). A street fair in New Providence is another opportunity that emerged at the very last minute.

Sound Reinforcement

Bob has nothing to report this month, since August was “way too weird.” Mike has decided that the wireless headphones purchased for the Minstrel are more trouble than they’re worth, so he’s swapping them out with some higher-quality wired phones of his own. He’ll work out an appropriate financial transaction with Eddie.

Minstrel Booking

Summarizing the comments in his recent email, Mike thinks August was OK in terms of attendance, although we lost a little money. We averaged 85.3 for regular shows and 72.8 counting the Open Stage. The $25 shortfall was partly because we had a lot of bands as openers and partly because of some sound system repairs. And we’re looking at a small rent increase to pay for janitorial time that MUF has decided is necessary on the Saturdays after our shows. In addition to the folks mentioned in his email, he’s booked the Short Sisters, as well as Dave & David Kleiner.

Minstrel Staffing

No report from the absent Sandie Reilly, but she snuck a report in after post time.

Horses Sing

Ralph had distributed an email report earlier, and while Scooter didn’t have a printed copy he asked us all to read it when we got home. He also reported that Ralph is very enthusiastic about the possibility of producing some kind of Horses Sing None of It podcast that could be distributed through iTunes. “That would be cool,” said Rick.

Swinging Tern

Connie had circulated an email report earlier. Nancy wondered how her daughter’s college outreach was coming along, but no one had any updates on that point.

Special Concerts

Just a “Hi” from Pam.

Festival

Lori summarized the comments in her recent email, and urged everyone to register. The Commons is filling up, and we have 99 total registrants at this point, including staff and performers.

We've still not found a chair to take over after this fall, when Lori intends to retire, so the Festival may be going “on hiatus” for a while. But in a startling development, Carl Croce said he’d take the job, an announcement that led to wild enthusiasm, complete with pounding feet, clapping hands, general back-slapping and a fair number of war whoops.

Carl felt he could do the job in addition to Newsletter, an idea that Jim King viewed with profound skepticism. However, we agreed the next step would be to sit Carl down with the Festival committee and see how they felt about each other. Mike suggested a motion that would “pre-approve” Carl (assuming he passed muster with the committee) but withdrew that motion after realizing it wasn’t really necessary from a timing perspective.

Fellowship

No report from the present Scooter Ferguson.

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting adjourned at 9:33. Next month's meeting is at the home of Bobbie Rosengarten, in Maplewood.

Respectfully submitted,

Chris Riemer

Secretary