June 2019

The meeting was called to order at 8:02 p.m on June 4, 2019 at the Chatham-Summit Friends Meetinghouse, 158 Southern Blvd, Chatham, NJ. The opening song was “Hava Nasheera” led by Mitch Radler. Jay will lead next month’s song.

MOTIONS MADE

  • April and May minutes were accepted with corrections by Lindsey and Mike respectively.

  • The Board agreed that Mitch Radler would take on some of the responsibilities of Community Services, given Pat Brangs move to the shore.

ACTION ITEMS

The Action Items are presented as an attachment, rather than within the body of the minutes themselves. See below.

ROLL CALL

Present: Trustees: Mike Agranoff, Todd Dennison, Lois DeRitter, Bob McNally, Dave Heistand, Christine DeLeon, Ken Brody, Allan Kugel, Evelyn McNally; Officers: Paul Fisher, Jay Wilensky, Jean Scully, Chris Riemer; Committees: Lindsey Meyer, Pat Brangs, Mark Schaffer, Jay Wilensky, Mike Agranoff, Jean Scully, Gary Pratt, George Otto, Lisa Hallman, John Mahon, Pam Robinson, Mitch Radler. Guests: Alex Adams, Vicky Mulligan (Life CenterStage), Wendy Keilin, Absent: Elizabeth Lachowicz, Leigh Walker, Sandie Reilly

ADMINISTRATIVE REPORTS

At the suggestion of President Paul Fischer, Chris Riemer arranged for a dramatic reading of The Folk Project's “Rules of Engagement."

TREASURER’S REPORT: Chris stood by his report, but asked for time at the July meeting to present his view of the Treasurer’s various tasks, and hopefully spark some interest in folks willing to eventually take them on (probably 2 to 3 people).

COMMITTEE REPORTS

GETAWAY: Our first Getaway at Stony Point was a great success. Profit was either $1,800 or $1,100, to be rolled into fall; numbers are still coming in. Complaints were generally minor and are mostly being addressed, but the ratings were the highest since Mark & Robin took over. The new site really helped enhance the sense of community. Mark and Bob will follow up with some ideas about how to drive attendance to workshops with lesser-known performers. Paul will bring a complaint letter he received about the move to Stony Point to next month’s meeting.

OPEN STAGE: July OS will be Randie O’Neill CD release party.

Mitch brought a PowerPoint presentation regarding a proposed collaboration with the nonprofit Life Center Stage, whose mission is to create programs to foster artistic development, leadership and drug prevention among young people, as well as support those undergoing treatment for substance abuse and their families. Vickey Mulligan, formerly of Rest/Stop/Rejuvenate and the founder of LCS gave an impassioned presentation of her vision for the collaboration and how the synergy between our organizations would enhance both our missions. Stay tuned for more information on this exciting project for Open Stage.

TROUBADOUR BOOKING: Mike thanked everyone involved in helping on the Minstrel/Troubadour name change, with a special shout-out to Beth Wilson for redoing the banner, which looks amazing, and John Lamb for making all the changes on the website.

Mike asked that the more-accomplished musicians in FP consider putting their names in the hat for the Birthday Show, so we have a good ratio of experienced to less-experienced folks. Names will be drawn as always at the July 4th picnic (at Lewis Morris Park this year) and the Birthday Show is July 26th. Some great acts upcoming after Troubadour reopens; keep your eye on the website.

SWINGIN’ TERN: No report from the absent Leigh Walker. Paul will follow up.

COMMUNITY SERVICES: Since Pat is moving out of the area, Mitch agreed to take over dealing with requests for performers and booking the Memory Café, and this was approved by the Board. Pat will contact Evelyn Maurer to see if she would like to take over the job of sending cards where appropriate. Mike asked that someone please work on the performer database, which is woefully out of date and cannot be maintained in its current form. Allan is aware of the task and it is on the to-do list. Pam informed the board about the death of FP member Dave Cornell, a marvelous opera singer and raconteur, with an unique repertoire and a kind and gentle (and incredibly funny) spirit.

NEWSLETTER: George has discovered that once added to the e-newsletter mailing list, names are never removed, even after someone’s membership lapses. This removes one incentive for folks to renew their membership, and is unfair to paper newsletter recipients, who are cut off as soon as their membership lapses. Several scenarios for enabling quick online renewal were discussed and will be explored.

TROUBADOUR STAFFING: Jean will make a notice of the location of the defibrillator at MUF and put it inside the lid of the cash box. There have been some issues with volunteers showing up late and not notifying the head staff, which puts undue pressure on other volunteers as well. Amy will put out a gentle reminder via email to the volunteer list to please call or text head staff if you’re going to be late. Gary has added a feature to the pre-sold tickets form that indicates if a ticket buyer is a first-timer, so when they pick up their tickets, they can be handed a first-timer’s packet with info and (soon) free passes to get into not just Troubadour, but Swingin’ Tern and OpenStage. Chris will send a reminder to the all venue chairs to get Jean their list of names for the Falcon Ridge Ticket away.

MEMBERSHIP: Bob M. suggested the possibility of an FP table or booth at Falcon Ridge to build membership, idea to be discussed offline. Gary will meet with Lisa H and Eddie Roffman to work on data cleanup, determine what info is needed by venue chairs and needed by FP as a whole. Constant Contact has quite a few duplicate entries, which costs us money.

HORSES SING NONE OF IT: Ken B. reported that several new shows will be taped in the next few weeks.

SPECIAL CONCERTS: Pam produced a copy of an old “NJ FolkPhone” business card and passed it on to Lindsey. The “Deeper Than Skin” concert has been postponed as it was deemed too close to the Livingston Taylor concert, and will be rescheduled to next spring. Some UkeFest volunteers are on board, but still need more volunteers. Meals are almost completely onboard. 5 main performers, 8 instructors, and about one-third of the tickets have been sold. Pam thanked Strumstick, Inc. (the McNallys) for donating a strumstick.

EVENT HOSTING: The July 4th picnic will be held at Lewis Morris Park, in the area called Sugarloaf A. Good parking, good access, charcoal grills (but no electricity). Jay will contract previous hosts of July 4th to get suggestions/info and help with logistics.

PUBLICITY: Lisa is working to remove duplicate and bad e-mail addresses from Constant Contact, as well as general data cleanup.

Jean started an Instagram account for @FolkProjectNJ and invited board members to send any good FP related pictures to her to post. Folk Project is also a location on Instagram, so it can be tagged as a location to get more visibility. Paul asked everyone to stay vigilant to looking for references to Minstrel rather than Troubadour.

Lisa is working to create more automation in our niche show mailings. Nancy Kelner is retiring from the Publicity Committee and got a round of applause for her many years of service. Mark is spearheading work on the sidebar feature on the e-mails, which will provide knowledge of ALL FP events to members of our six separate mailing lists, many of whom are unaware of venues other than the one they attend.

SOUND REINFORCEMENT: The committee supported sound at Getaway in all the major venues as well as the contra dance. John is pleased to see some new sound assistants and is hoping for more, especially from Open Stage. Concert Window still shuts down on occasion, and John is hoping that a new computer will help.

ARCHIVES: Lindsey has a new contact at Rutgers, and will be working through logistics with her, including how to donate material in tranches rather than all at once, as well as trying to secure some space to gather and sort materials. Major collection of materials cannot begin until Lindsey has the space to store and sort them. Some of our photo albums are deteriorating and Lindsey is exploring having them digitized. Bob offered Lindsey temporary storage space in a rental unit of his.

NEW BUSINESS

Mike gave info on Folk Alliance, of which we are a member organization. 5 of our members can get free memberships in FA which have various benefits. These will go to Mike, Paul, Bob M, Jay and Mitch. We have several other organizations that we have reciprocal membership with, such as Pinewoods, and George suggested doing an explanatory item in the newsletter explaining this.

ADJOURNMENT

Meeting was adjourned at 10:05 p.m. As noted above, future meetings are planned to be in the Chatham Summit Friends Meetinghouse, 158 Southern Boulevard, Chatham.