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I will not be at the July Board Meeting. Eddie, please summarize this at the meeting.
A so-so month. We had a disappointing attendance for Beppe Gambetta (Not small; just not as huge as I had expected.) On the other hand the crowd for Carla Ulbrich was considerably above what I had expected. Average of 79.8 paid for the month (65.3 last June) and 95.7 paid over the past 12 months (85.1 over the previous 12 months). Financial figures are not available at the time of this writing, but I'm expecting a loss of about $4-500, primarily due to the purchase of some software as described in the next paragraph. I will probably supply those figures by email as a supplement to this report on Tuesday during the day. [Secretary’s note: The software purchase was capitalized and therefore didn’t show up as a Minstrel expense.]
Being unemployed, I felt the need to do something constructive with my time, and undertook to create a database to help the Minstrel Staffing Committee keep track of the volunteers. I came up with an application that imports the Minstrel performer schedule, and then allows the Volunteer Committee to easily populate the various positions to be filled for each show by choosing from a list. It does numerous other tasks such as creating the text for the weekly email that Amy Livingston sends recruiting volunteers for the upcoming shows, allows the volunteers to be screened for the jobs they perform to help find someone for an unfilled slot, and other tasks. It worked well to the satisfaction of Jean and Amy, so we decided to implement it. That required buying two copies of Filemaker Pro to be installed on the computers of the Minstrel Staffing Chair (Jean) and Assistant (Amy). That was purchased at a cost of $363. (Roughly half retail price because of our non profit status.) These will be installed shortly and wrung out for bugs. I'm expecting that they will be in operation by next month, and the volunteer calls will be going out by Constant Contact instead of the Yahoo Group currently being used.
One of the things the new database does is to print out an upcoming calendar of the Minstrel shows, with all the volunteer positions, including blank spaces for the unfilled slots. This will be used to revive the old "Minstrel Volunteer Book" that used to be available at the admissions desk for people to sign up for future shows at the Minstrel itself. More details on the Volunteer Chair's report.
The process of getting the Minstrel-Gram mailings onto Constant Contact is getting very close to fruition.
As you may recall, the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship had asked me to help them find a headliner for their SCAN concert last year, and I managed to get them Frank Vignola. They were so please with the outcome of that they asked me to again find someone for the 2013 SCAN concert. I secured Christine Lavin for that affair (Saturday, January 26, 2013). In the process, I also booked Christine at the Minstrel for April 2013.
We are still hanging fire on the Richard Shindell Special Concert in February 2013. Waiting on schedule availability from Shindell.
New bookings since last month:
August 31: Grover Kemble, with fellow guitar whiz Jacob Johnson opening.
Oct. 19: Singer-Songwriter Amy Regan.
April 19, 2013: Annie & the Hedonists (Great hit at the recent Spring Festival)
April 26, 2013: Christine Lavin, comedic songwriter and great hit at the Fall 2011 Festival.
2012 is fully booked for headline acts.
The July schedule is very strong: Jack Williams on the 6th (with 87-year old Naomi Sunshine opening), Mike Agranoff / Gathering Time split bill on the 20th, and Broadside Electric on the 27th.
Mike Agranoff
Program Chairman
The Minstrel
Morristown, NJ USA
ADDENDUM via email on June 30:
Please note:
The following is not a correction to the minutes, but an update, which should be added to my previously sent Minstrel report for July: On the chart, I had reported that we had to make up $230 to meet Beppe Gambetta's guarantee. That was incorrect. The actual amount of the guarantee makeup was $23.
ADDENDUM via email on July 3:
Financial figures are in. As the attached chart shows, we are $2870 in the black for the past 12 months, but $330 in the red for the month of June. A good chunk of that is our annual ASCAP fee of $245. Also, the $363 we spent on the Filemaker software does not show up in these figures, which I suspect is an error. [Secretary’s note: The Filemaker Pro software cost was recorded as a fixed asset, to be depreciated over a multi-year period, and therefore is not reflected in the current month's operating expenses.]
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