Minstrel Booking

All in all a pretty awful performance for Minstrel in February. We only had two shows, one whose attendance was slightly low, and the other with the poorest paid attendance since I started keeping records. (24 paid for Mustard's Retreat.) However, we can take some comfort from the fact that the two Fridays that Minstrel ceded to other department's shows (Events hosting for VDX and Special Concerts for Comas) were highly profitable events. We ended up with a net loss of $644 for the month including insurance and G&A. Our past 12 months showed a $3,423 profit, not including the Paxton concert. That number includes G&A and insurance costs since the beginning of the year. (Those 12 month figures are going to drop as the year goes on, because an ever increasing number of months will reflect the G&A and insurance assessment. It won't be until the end of 2017 before valid comparisons can be made between the past 12 month figures and the previous 12 month figures.)

A short word on how I calculated the G&A and insurance costs: According to the Finance Committee's report of November 2015, the Minstrel will be assessed 3% of its expenses (not including insurance) for G&A. That is to cover the operating costs of the Project that cannot be attributable to any one event. (Paypal, Constant Contact, website, etc.) Going to Quickbooks, it's easy to inspect the Minstrel's costs for any particular time period and take 3% of that to calculate the G&A. According to that same report, the Minstrel is assessed $2150 to cover our portion of liability and Workers' Comp insurance costs for the year. To calculate the insurance cost for February, I took $2150 and multiplied it by the number of shows in February (2) divided by the number of shows in the past 12 months (39). To calculate the insurance cost for the past 12 months, I took $2150 and multiplied it by the number of shows since the beginning of the year when we started covering G&A (6) divided by the 39 shows in the past 12 months.

The schedule of when the new MUF sound equipment will be installed, and when we will be displaced during the time they re-do the parking lot is all still up in the air. We were expecting the sound equipment to be in this past month. And I've heard noises about the parking lot work happening sometime this summer. I'll try to elicit some updated information from them by the meeting.

I had some spare time this past week, so I did a little playing with numbers to check the profitability of the Minstrel on a show-by-show basis. So I went back to the year 2015, and did an analysis of all income and all costs for each show, plus some costs not attributable to any specific show, applying the G&A and insurance costs as well, even though the Minstrel was not assessed those costs in 2015. Also, to make those figures more relevant to the Minstrel's future operation, I also applied the lower rent figure we will be using for Open Stages in the Terrace Room from now on. Applying those conditions to 2015, an extremely successful year in the overall scheme of things, the Minstrel's profit would have been as follows:

All shows --------------------------------------------- $2,009, or an average of $49 / show.

All shows except Open Stages--------------------- $2,157, or $72 / show

Open Stages only ----------------------------------- was an annual loss of $148, or $13 / show.

These figures do not include the Paxton concert. For comparison, the profit we officially recorded last year without those assessments, but with the higher rent for 4 Open Stages was $3,967. This demonstrates the higher bar we are faced with, now that we are actually paying our fair share of the Project's expenses.

An interesting bit of information that came of this analysis revealed itself when I tried to determine what our break-even attendance would be. It turns out that we really can't pin down that figure. There are variable expenses not associated with the number of attendees that affect the profit. These include the Opening Act's fee, which depends upon the size of the group, and whether or not we had to kick in extra money to meet the performer's guarantee. Looking at all the shows that came within about $30 of breaking even, the attendance ranged between 73 and 96 paid.

New Bookings since January:

· Sept 2: Tracy Grammer

· Nov. 4: John Forster

· Nov. 18: Mollie O'Brien & Rich Moore (Tim O'Brien's sister and her husband. Absolutely killer voice and stage presence, plus very tasty guitar work from Rich.)

Highlight for March:

· Mar. 25: Phil Ochs Song Night. You all saw the email from the person who was flying in from Chicago to see that show.

Mike Agranoff, chair