No written report

Hello, Everyone,

Community Service:

I thought there was nothing to report for this month, but just learned that Robin Schaffer lost her Dad,

the day after she sang her beautiful Tribute to her Parents. Our CONDOLENCES to Robin and Mark.

I would also like to send CONGRATULATIONS to ALL OUR GRADUATES!

Sincerely,

Evelyn Maurer

No written report

No written report

Newsletter Committee Report 2022-06

Things are proceeding as usual with the invaluable help of Kathi Caccavale, Pat Brangs, Bill Henderson, Gary Pratt, and Todd Dennison.

Thanks,

George Otto

Folk Project Newsletter Editor

newsletter@folkproject.org

Hi All,

The May Open Stage was fun and packed with musicians again.

It went 3 hours because of all the signups I received.

Thank you to the AMAZING wonderful people that help each month. I could not do it without you.

It was great to see some new faces and welcome back some people who have not been to the Open Stage in a while.

The next Open Stage is going to be great as we return to our annual Open Stage tradition of Free Banana Night. For those of you that have questions, please understand that either you come to the annual event and are part of the FP "in-the-know-crowd" or you are not in the cool club.

You decide.

THE OPEN STAGE FOLK PROJECT BIRTHDAY SHOW:

Mike Agranoff said he did not want to run the Folk Project Birthday Show this year.

So, I am picking up the mantle and carrying it forward this year. When you think of me please picture me wearing it (the mantle, not the show).

The Birthday Show goes on!

I am now recruiting people to come out and join in the festivities.

I am planning a wonderful evening. You want to be there. At least for the bouncy house I just rented for outside MUF.

I will report more on the BS as we get closer.

Still, Todd

Publicity Report for the June 7, 2022 Board Meeting

Sam Edelston, June 6, 2022

Publicity Committee Members

Alicia Weimer, George Otto, Howard Goldman, Jean Scully, Jim Gartner, Joanne Cronin, Joe Guzzo, Kathi Caccavale, Liz Pagan, Loretta Brooks, Mark Schaffer, Michael Mitsch, Mike Rauchwerk, Olga Alvarez, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher, Rebecca Rydell, Susan Lembo

Web Team Members

John Lamb, Allan Kugel, Charles Lamb, Lori Falco

Reports

Chairperson’s Report – Sam Edelston

My #1 publicity priority is to “get more butts in seats” at the Troubadour. (Thanks to Tom Paxton for that phrase.) Starting with July, I plan to increase the number of Troubadour shows that we send press releases for.

Uncle Sam still wants YOU! Last month, I asked the Board to Like and Share our Facebook Events, but our Events on the Folk Project Page or Facebook group are still getting almost no Likes from Board members other than Gary and me. (Thank you, Elizabeth, for Liking my Troubadour show. And thanks to Mark and Elizabeth for Liking a couple of other events recently, too.)

Fellow Board members, if you aren’t already “Following” the Folk Project’s Page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/FolkProject) and on Twitter (@TheFolkProject) please do so. When the Folk Project announces a new show, please Like or Share or Comment or Retweet it. These things raise our ranking in the algorithms. That will help us get more butts in seats and more eyeballs on our streams. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. PLEASE HELP.

My month of June is largely booked up with personal projects, so my time for Folk Project projects will be limited.

Joe Guzzo announced that he is discontinuing Folk Project Television. He mentions it in his report below, but I want to acknowledge him here, up front, for all of the time and love he put into that show for more than two years. My dealings with him on it have always been delightful.

E-communications – Mark Schaffer

Mark reports:

Each Music Alert gets 1,500 opens twice a week, for 12,000 views a month.

Reminder 1: The subject lines get read by 4,700 contacts twice a week.

Reminder 2: In addition to the Music Alert covering music events and venues, the Constant Contact system is used for a number of purposes, such as contacting volunteers, monthly membership newsletters, publicity distributions, and dance news.

Next up for e-communications:

Over the years a number of legacy files have accumulated that we no longer use. Todd is helping me declutter the system. Thanks, Mr. D

Facebook – Kathi Caccavale

Kathi is on vacation. Sam is filling in:

4,333 people Like our page (up 34 from 4,299 last month), and we have 5,429 Followers (up 67 from 5,362 last month).

We reached 12,654 people in the past 28 days (12% higher than last month’s report), and had 3,606 Post Engagements (down 6%), but we got 58 new Page Likes for the month, same as the previous month.

In the past 28 days, we created 9 new Events, and received 311 Purchases for our paid online Events, for revenue of about $1,023. In the past year, we’ve created a staggering 121, most of which has been the Tuesday and Friday concerts. [Sam adds: Huge hats off to Gary Pratt and Kathi Caccavale.]

On Twitter, we have 771 followers.

On Instagram, we have 296 followers, and we’ve done 32 posts. More to come.

From our Facebook video stats, our most-viewed videos (by Minutes Viewed) in the past 28 days (May 8-June 4). Notably, in terms of both views and minutes, Robin Schaffer’s Ukraine concert utilized the most, um, broadBland.

Streaming Tuesdays, total minutes watched

• 1780 … 5/3 … Jessica Smucker

• 2997 … 5/10 … Raymond Gonzalez

• 2093 … 5/24 … Bett Padgett

• 3093 … 5/31 … Robin Schaffer & the Bland (Ukraine Concert)

Troubadour

• • • 2473 … 5/6 … Claudia Schmidt

    • 1907 … 5/13 … Open Stage

    • 3003 … 5/20 … Getaway - No Fuss and Feathers

    • 2269 … 5/27 … Magpie

Folk Project group: 1,618 members, up 39 from 1, 579 last month.

NJ Uke Fest group: 243 members; up from 240 last month.

Swingin’ Tern group: 593 members; up 13 from last month.

See Chart below

Twitter, Instagram – Jean Scully

No report from Jean, but the Music Alert continues to get posted to both Twitter and Instagram.

YouTube – Joe Guzzo

Joe says:

YouTube Channel Report for the month ending May 31, 2022.

· We have 295 subscribers as of the end of May. That’s a gain of 1 subscriber in the last month.

· This month, the channel got 54 views.

· Watch time was 2.3 hours.

· I have discontinued Folk Project Television due to time constraints. If anyone wishes to run the show, I will gladly assist.

Web – John Lamb

John has a house guest for a few days – an honest-to-goodness Prince from India – and both kids plus assorted friends are in town for the goings on. So his report this month is short:

"All is well. Sorry for the slow service in the last few days, but I have had my hands full. I will catch up with all requests as soon as I am able. and a full report will follow next month. Traffic numbers have returned to March levels after a big bump in April.

“As always, many thanks to Charles, Liz, Lori and Allan. Please send questions, comments and suggestions to webmaster@folkproject.org.”

Sam adds:

Because I don’t know the nuts and bolts behind John’s usual spreadsheet, here’s just a little year-to-date set of basic numbers I pulled from our Google Analytics. After April was unusually strong (probably due to the Paxton concert), May was down in a more normal range.

Month (2022) Pageviews Users Sessions Avg Session Duration

Jan 4,343 2,096 2,824 1:17

Feb 3,515 1,637 2,231 1:25

Mar 4,758 1,938 2,805 1:34

Apr 5,890 2,516 3,610 1:19

May 4,783 1,929 2,985 1:19

Average 4,658 2,023 2,891

Merch – Paul Fisher (acting)

Nothing new.

No written report

Sound Reinforcement Committee – June 2022 Report

We supported four events in May. There were no live room sound reinforcement issues in May. The new audio-video system was completely operational and performed normally. We worked out a method to collect video recordings from this system for sharing with the performers.

We also developed a “portable” traveling system for house concerts that allows audio digital mixing of up to 16 channels into three mixes for house sound, stage monitors, and video feed. This also included one video camera with pan tilt zoom capability. This was first used for the Tuesday Night broadcast featuring Robin Shaffer.

On June 3, the regular Troubadour show, featuring RRB, suffered a failure of the video broadcast circuit. This prevented us from recording or broadcasting the video program. I anticipate that the system will be restored for June 10. This outage is still under investigation, and I will provide more details as they become available.

John Mahon

Committee Chair

Board,

The Spring Getaway - Home Edition was an enormous success.

Its ambitious goal was to bring that “Getaway” feeling to a commuter weekend,

and in many ways it succeeded with concerts, workshops and participation that echoed the original,

and kept weekend filled with smiling faces, happy friends, and great music.

The financial reporting will be finished for next month’s board meeting.

COVID has taken a huge hit on all our live-audience programming.

The Getaway Home Edition was an adaptation that met the challenge of

providing the Folk Project experience under the current conditions and restrictions.

Special thanks for Robin and Diane Polledri for steering the weekend,

but even special-er thanks to everyone who came and pitched in.

Lots of help from lots of people made the Getaway happen.

It was a pleasure to run. Thanks for the opportunity.

Mark Schaffer, Special Events Chair

No written report

Swingin' Tern report -- May 2022

A great month! We got back to dancing.

Our new hall is excellent. And it's air conditioned, something we didn't have before. We are expecting better-than-usual attendance this summer. We

often have some reasonably well attended summer dances anyway because some other dances close in the summer and people travel to ours.

On May 7 Bob Isaacs called to Young, Koretzky & Blouin. On May 21 Sue Gola called to Rhythmic Heart.

Our goals are to get more volunteers and do more/better promotion. Despite our 50% increase in the admission price compared to a few years ago and despite many contributions from our dancers, we still came up $200 short for the month.

Leigh Walker

Swingin' Tern

Hello All,

I have not included a Profit and Loss statement. I wanted to avoid confusion. When I looked at the numbers too many big things were missing. Karen has been away and I was not able to figure out what happened. I will send the report to anyone who asks for the information after I straighten out the problem.

Michael has donated some money to us to keep the Troubadour afloat. I am hopeful things will improve. I think it is too early to jump to any conclusions.

I have had to move some money from our Money Market account to cover expenses. This was expected given the pandemic and our limited income. The good news is a lot of our big expenses have also been limited. However things like insurance, the News Letter and professional fees have not gone away. I will have more accurate numbers for our next meeting.

The Finance committee is working hard to sort out the Vanguard Account. Eitan has been working on history and the correct way to account for it in quickbooks. My hope is to update how we can better use the asset in keeping with its initial intent while addressing current financial needs.

Respectfully submitted

Peggy Karr / Treasurer

The Troubadour’s numbers continue to be disappointingly low; roughly half those of April, averaging only 22 paid attendees per show in May. Operationally, we averaged a loss of $370 per show, for a total loss of almost $2,000 since reopening in April. This has been made up for by personal donations. The only bright spots were the operation of the new 3-camera video system, and the fact that the higher online ticket price of $4.99 (vs. $2.99 last year) does not seem to be deterring online viewers, and our streaming income has improved significantly.

The COVID precautions we are taking have been a source of confusion on everyone’s part, as they kept changing. When we reopened in April, we did so under rather restrictive conditions, with N95 (or equivalent) masks required, and no food or breaks per the guidelines we adopted at our February meeting. Then we had relaxed those requirements per new guidelines adopted at the April meeting, with masks being optional, and breaks and snacks reinstated, based on Morris County CDC risk assessment being “Green”(Low). That risk assessment then jumped to “Yellow” (Medium) and then “Orange” (High) in the space of two weeks, requiring us to go back to the more restrictive measures. The loss of the break and snacks was deemed so serious that the Reopening Committee revised its recommendations to permit an intermission with snacks served outdoors. Or, if the weather was inclement, we would permit snacks in the Terrace Room, with a warning sign to alert people that there would be unmasked people in the room. Those recommendations were adopted by the Board in a special meeting called specifically for that purpose. These ever-changing requirements resulted in some whiplash amongst our staff, and John Lamb, who had to keep changing the message at the top of web pages.

I had some reservations about the Birthday Show on July 29. Thinking about our recent low attendance, I was concerned that we would not be able to find enough member-musicians to take part in the show. In the past, we’ve had anywhere from 35 to 50 participants. I felt 40 were needed to make a good show, and 30 would be a bare minimum. And performers might be reluctant to travel to each other’s houses to rehearse. I had wanted to send out a poll to the Membership asking how many would be willing to be in the show, but I was unable to get that arranged in time to send it out, and evaluate the results before the Newsletter deadline of May 15. The June Newsletter would need to contain the invitation to perform, because the assembling of the randomly chosen performer groups would be done at the July 4 picnic. I came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t be able to get a critical mass of performers to make it work. So I decided to cancel the Birthday show, and book a feature act and an opening act for that date. I wrote an article for the Newsletter announcing the cancellation.

A number of Board members, Elizabeth in particular, were unhappy with that decision. (So was I, but I felt it the right decision.) Elizabeth asked if I would produce some other celebratory show on that date. I didn’t have any good ideas, but I said that if someone else could think of a suitable show, I would permit them to run it. Todd Dennison stepped up, and offered to run essentially the same format Birthday Show as we’d had in the past. So that’s what will happen. I sure hope I was wrong about the expected level of participation.

New Bookings Last Month

Nov. 4: Songwriter Rupert Wates opening for Don White

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Troubadour Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA

www.Troubadour.FolkProject.org

No written report