October 2011

MOTIONS THIS MONTH

The board agreed to hold its annual meeting at The Chimney Rock Inn, and to cover the remaining cost after a $15 contribution from each attendee.

OPENING CEREMONIES

The meeting was called to order at 8:05 PM on October 4, at the home of Pam Robinson nd Bob Safranek. It was a fine, cool October evening; no frost on the pumpkins as yet.

Roll Call

Present were Lois DeRitter, Nancy Dugan, Gloria Friedman, Jim Gartner, Allan Kugel, Bob McNally, Ed Roffman and Bobbie Rosengarten (Trustees); Mike Agranoff, Pat Brangs, Carl Croce, Scooter Ferguson, Nancy Kelner, Elizabeth Lachowicz, Sandie Reilly, Chris Riemer, Pam Robinson, Bob Safranek, Robin Schaffer, Rachel Streich and Rick Thomas (Other Board Members); and Mark Schaffer, Lori Falco, Barb Moo, Joe Petraitis and Joe Petrozziello (Guests). Absent were Jean Scully, Ellen Schwartz and Leigh Walker. Quite a full house this month!

Secretary’s Report

There were two minor changes in the September minutes, correcting the name of the festival site from Fairview Lake to Star Lake, and expanding on the benefits of the technical training being offered in association with Horses Sing None of It. The minutes were accepted as amended.

Treasurer’s Report

Rachel reported a checking account balance of $7,700, with another $23,350 in the Money Market. Responding to a question from the floor, Rachel’s preliminary analysis says we probably broke even on the Fall Festival. But she can’t say for sure until all the deposits are made and all the expenses submitted. Remember that interested parties can look at the financials and run their own, customized reports, by logging in at QuickBooks Online. If you don't have a login (or don't remember your password), contact Rachel and she can set you up.

BUSINESS ITEMS

The Nominations Committee

For the benefit of the guests, Eddie recapped the nominations process, in which an ad-hoc committee is formed each October, to determine which Trustees, Officers and Committee Chairs need to be replaced, and recruit some suitable candidates.

The committee's work ultimately leads to a slate of Directors for next year, which will be voted on at the annual meeting in December. (VP Elizabeth Lachowicz and Secretary Chris Riemer are both term-limited, Pam Robinson has announced her intention to retire as Special Concerts chair and Membership Chair Rick Thomas will be relocating to Washington.) Pam volunteered to chair the Nominations Committee, and Jim Gartner, Scooter Ferguson and Rick Thomas volunteered to participate. Chris also hoped that since maintaining the Back Office is now part of the Secretary’s job description, the committee will consider that a pre-requisite for the job. Wikiphobes need not apply.

The Annual Meeting

Eddie felt it was time to decide on what we’ll do for the annual meeting, and barring any opposition, suggested we return to the Chimney Rock Inn in Gillette, on December 6.

As has become our custom, each attendee who joins us for dinner will be asked to pay $15, and The Folk Project will cover the rest. Elizabeth volunteered to make the arrangements, and will present a more formal cost/menu proposal next month. The board moved to make this happen, and Mike asserted his long-standing and now traditional opposition. He has never liked the idea of letting the organization pay for our dinner. He still doesn’t.

REPORTS OF THE STANDING COMMITTEES

Membership

Rick recapped the information in his email report, and noted that we’ve reached an “all time high” in membership. When questioned on that statement, Rick conceded that perhaps it was really a Rick-time high. In any case, we have more members now than at any time he can remember.

He can’t prove it, but he has a strong impression that we’re also getting more new members who are identifying themselves as musicians. This could just be because we’ve started to ask them, or it could be a result of our recent outreach to Open Stage communities. It might just be a result of better publicity. Whatever the reason, it’s a good thing.

Rick reminded the group that he and Cathy will be moving to the north-left coast sometime in January, and the Folk Project needs to find a new membership chair. Some knowledge of Microsoft Access is necessary, as well as a general familiarity with the Web. He promised to write up a job description and get it into the Back Office.

Minstrel Booking

Recapping from his email report, Mike reported a lackluster month in September, with average attendance of about 80 for the regular shows and 63 counting Open Stage. That’s way down from the blockbuster month we had in September 2010.

The Morristown Unitarian Fellowship cancelled our show for December 16. That’s never happened before, but it is something they’re allowed to do under our contract. Luckily, we’d booked a local band that can be rescheduled. Nancy Kelner asked to be notified of any cancellations immediately, so she can get the word out to our publicity outlets.

Scooter put in a special plug for Honor Finnegan, who is opening for David Massengill on January 27, and Mark confirmed the rumor that octogenarian Naomi Sunshine (mother of Amy Sunshine) will be making a surprise appearance at our next Open Stage, backed up by Grover Kemble!

We posted a photo of an actual open stage performer on the Web this month, instead of the usual picture of Scooter and his van.

Minstrel Staffing

Things are going reasonably well, according to Scooter. Now that Mark is no longer preoccupied by Festival responsibilities, he’s going to help organize some kind of volunteer appreciation event, details TBD.

Scooter pictures something open to all volunteers (Minstrel, Dance, Operations, Board Members, etc.), at which the food will be catered. Not fancy, but perhaps more than pizza, and he believes the Project should pay for the food. Allan was not opposed, but felt it was important that the Treasurer first determine if we can afford it, especially if it might become a recurring event. Mike was equally unopposed, as long as the cost of feeding Minstrel volunteers isn’t charged against his Minstrel budget.

Eddie is very much in favor of volunteer appreciation, believing that our success is really their success. Chris mentioned that in years past, the folks who were invited to such events were selected by the committee chairs. That is, we let the committee chairs sort out the “regular” volunteers, deserving of recognition, from the casual volunteers and one-timers.

Festival

Carl began this discussion by reading his email report to the board.

Answering a question from the floor, Barb Moo said our total attendance was 160, which included performers, staff and catering crew. We had 26 first timers, 10 of whom fell into the “friends and families” category. (“There were a lot of Grunwalds there!”) She recognized another block of first timers as regular Minstrel volunteers, and felt they were very nicely engaged with the event, too. Of this 160, 118 were there for the full weekend.

Given that the final figures aren’t in, Eddie didn’t want to spend too much time on discussion. But since so many of the Festival committee members were in the room, he did want to give them all a chance to talk. We started with Joe Petraitis.

Joe thinks the Open Stage outreach was more successful than it might appear. He got very solid expressions of interest from a number of people who ultimately didn’t show. Maybe some last minute reinforcement would have helped, but he thinks the idea is sound and that it’s something we should keep doing. He also thinks we should focus on interesting activities aimed at the one-day, commuting crowd. If we can hook them with a strong Saturday schedule, they might go for a full weekend next time. Joe had very high praise for The Big VocoLotto concept, and thought the kids’ activities coordinated by Laura Croce were great. He’s been coming to the Festival for a dozen or so years, and never have the kids been as well wrangled as they were in “Laura’s Gang.”

Mark observed that two large and hidden Festival expenses have been booking a professional dance band & caller and only booking feature performers for the whole weekend. By letting go of these ideas, we can devote more money to our concert and workshop programs. He appreciates that the Old Timers may resist change. But he feels we can remain true to our principles and appeal to the general music-loving public, accepting that change is unavoidable and necessary. (The Secretary sees a bit of Heraclitus here: “You can’t step in the same Folk Project twice.”)

Mark also reported on the survey results. The overall reaction was very positive, although there were some negative comments about the food. People loved the earrings! And there were lots of good, actionable ideas for improvement, which the committee will discuss at a post-mortem meeting next week. Mark has come to understand that what we really offer is a smorgasbord: “Everyone makes their own Festival,” he said.

Finally, Mark wanted to talk about his own “Festival journey.” At the May board meeting, he could sense there was a lot of trepidation in the room. A lot of people (with more experience than he) felt that trying to stage a Festival with less than five months’ lead time was a mistake. But in May, he believed strongly that if the Project were to decide to eliminate the Festival, it should do so based on a pragmatic assessment of the facts. The Festival shouldn’t die just because we were afraid we might lose money, or couldn’t find enough volunteers. We have money, and Mark feels the Festival is the one thing that bridges the Folk Project generations. It’s important.

And in fact, we did pull it off, despite the short fuse. It couldn’t have been done without the generosity and hard work of former committee members who were willing to come out of retirement and step up to the job. Many, many, many thanks, especially to Lori Falco and Barb Moo. With their help and support, the “new” Festival committee got by. And Mark believes that he, Joe and Carl have learned a lot. They’re smarter now; they can do it again, and do it better next time. He has in mind a general re-engineering of the Festival jobs, similar to what we did at Minstrel last year. That will help, too.

Lori began by saying many thanks for all the thanks. She had a great time, but her take on things is a little less positive than Mark’s. Although she is not on the board, and will no longer be on the Festival committee, she feels we should consider going to one Festival a year, for two reasons. The Festival will always be a tremendous risk, and it will always require an almost inhuman amount of work. In terms of both monetary and human capital, she feels we misunderstand and underestimate the effort.

Consider, for example this apparent break-even Festival. We broke even only with a double-dip from the Agranoff endowment, an anonymous donation of $800 toward Festival scholarships and an 11th hour renegotiation that got us out of an $1,800 commitment for a cabin that we booked but couldn’t fill. Without these special deals, we’d have lost $5,000. Lori herself put in way too much time, and she will ABSOLUTELY NOT do it again. Working on Festival was her full-time job for the whole month of September. She also pointed out that while a lot of us like it, and she has no alternative in mind, Star Lake is a very complicated venue. There are parking issues, and catering challenges and special fees for this and that and the other thing. Fairview Lake’s flat fee model was easy to manage. Star Lake is hard.

Barb Moo was up next, and she supported Lori’s recommendation for one Festival a year. And while she praised Lori for her heartfelt response, she moved quickly to guilt. She understands that Mark, Carl and Joe think they can pull off a Festival on their own come April 2012. She is certain they can’t. They need people in this room to take on some of the big chunks of work. They need someone to focus on venue relations. They need a new registrar, and by implication, a new registration database. Mark, Carl and Joe can handle the planning, design and booking, but they’re going to need a lot of help when it comes to execution. Step up, people.

Some discussion ensued.

Eddie cited the Folk Project’s long tradition of committee independence, and was uncomfortable with the idea of the Board micromanaging the Festival. Bob Safranek supported Lori’s call for a once-a-year event, for all the same reasons. Lois mentioned the positive “aura” she felt at the Fall Festival, and offered firsthand accounts of lots of newcomers having the time of their lives. She also agreed with Joe’s earlier support for a continuing Open Stage outreach. Pat Brangs seconded Lois’s testimony about happy first-timers, and wondered if we might consider a one-day Festival as a counterpart to a weekend Festival. That is, do two Festivals a year, but let one of them be a single day event. (Mark felt that if we went in that direction, the full weekend would need to be in the Spring. He believes that by the Fall, a lot of people have run through their vacation budgets.)

Bob McNally hoped the Festival Committee was doing something to identify and hang on to those folks who fell in love with us at the last weekend, so we can invite them again. He also felt the committee’s post-mortem meeting should use a “Lessons Learned” model, to help capture and document what worked and what didn’t. Allan observed that one thing which apparently didn’t work was our knowledge transfer process. If we were able to break even only by burning some of our best people to ashes, we need to think hard about that.

Carl had the last word, and thanked everyone who helped make the Festival a success.

Newsletter

Carl recapped from his email report. Robin mentioned that since Merchandising is now also using Staples as a preferred vendor, her outlays are contributing to our volume-based Staples discount.

Pam (as she has for several months) raised the issue of the chronic lateness of the newsletter mailing. We had a Swingin’ Tern event on September 3, and some people didn’t get their newsletter until September 5. This is a serious problem, in her eyes. Carl agreed, and promised to do everything possible to get the newsletter out on time next month.

Publicity

Nancy Kelner recapped from her email report. Pam suggested that the best way to handle the phone number change for Swingin’ Tern would be to put it in really big type, on a special sheet of colored paper in the monthly publicity distribution. Otherwise, people miss it.

Pam also noted that our Facebook page now has 481 Likes, and 497 active users. She’s improved her process for event publication, and is now including the performers themselves, suggesting they post our events on their own pages, to reach their own fan and friend base.

Mike has an issue with the Web site. At some point, he was able to post an emergency announcement to both the home page and the Minstrel page. It didn’t work when he tried to do it after Hurricane Irene, so Webmaster John Lamb should look into it.

Swingin’ Tern

Gloria recapped the dance situation, based on Leigh’s email. The Harvest Hoot is coming up, and in January we’ll have both the New Year’s Dance and the Swingin’ Tern Anniversary dance.

Special Concerts

Pam recapped from her email report. Robin reported that the Schaffer’s Raina Rose house concert was “awesome.”

Community Services

Pat recapped from her email report.

Horses Sing None of It

Sandie recapped from Ralph’s email report. They have six people signed up for video training, and she thinks that’s pretty successful. Training starts on October 17th.

Merchandising

Robin recapped from her email report, and is planning to rejuvenate the Minstrel Boutique, in addition to expanding the merchandise offerings. Chris reminded the group of the need to comply with Sales Tax reporting, if we begin selling on a weekly basis. If we do that, we will lose us our “occasional sale” exemption.

Internal Affairs

No report from the absent Jean Scully, although Eddie read what she’d submitted earlier via email.

Sound Reinforcement

“Hi,” said Bob.

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting was adjourned at 9:47. Next month’s meeting is November 1st, at the home of Ruth Wolfish, in Bedminster.

Respectfully submitted,

Chris Riemer

Recording Secretary