Newsletter Committee Report 2022-11

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

Our printing company had difficulty with some of their equipment, causing a delay in getting the newsletters printed out and some confusion about when they could be delivered to the post office. Kathi reported that the printer's staff pitched in to apply the stamps to the newsletters once they were printed and delivered them to the post office before it closed on Saturday. Without their help, the newsletters would have been delayed two extra days. Many thanks for their extra effort!

George Otto

Folk Project Newsletter Editor

newsletter@folkproject.org

Folk Project Board members,

The Nominations Committee is proposing the attached 2023 Nominations Slate for approval by the Board.

SUMMARY OF SLATE CHANGES: (see attached slate)

• Amend By-Laws: Officers may serve no more than THREE consecutive terms with the exception of the Treasurer who can serve up to four consecutive terms.

• Officers: President, Vice President, and Secretary nominated for an additional one year term

• Trustees whose terms end in 2022 are renominated for another three year term expiring in 2025.

• Non-Board Positions (at the request of the candidates):

  • Please note there is no requirement for committee chairs to be board members.

  • Lindsey Meyer as Archivist reporting to President

  • Pat Brangs as Community Services and Performer Resource ”chair” reporting to President

  • Susan Lembo as Membership “chair” reporting to Treasurer

BOARD AGENDA ITEMS:

11/1 Board Meeting

• Propose the change to the Bylaws (with notice to members). This proposed change will be voted on at a special meeting no sooner than 3 weeks (11/23 or later). A straw poll will be taken at the 11/2 meeting - if the Board is not in favor of the change, the Nominations Committee will need to continue its work.

• Present the Nominations Slate for discussion only - vote will be taken at special meeting since the slate is contingent on the change to the Bylaws.

11/23 Special Meeting

• Motion to approve the change to the Bylaws

• Motion to approve the Nominations Slate

BACKGROUND :

The Nominations Committee held 5 meetings to create the proposed slate. The process included confirming with all current board members their willingness to continue to serve on the Board, identifying vacancies to be filled, proposing and discussing potential candidates, calling potential candidates, and developing a slate based on the availability of qualified candidates.

During this process, the Nominations Committee concluded that the best plan of action at this time is to recommend that the Board extend the term limits for the officers whose terms were expiring (President, Vice President, and Secretary) by one year. Those officers - Elizabeth Lachowicz, Paul Fisher, and Jeff Canter - agreed to continue if the term limits are extended.

The reasons for the above decision were manifold:

• Unlike chairmen, where experience and success can keep them in their positions for many years, the two-year limit means losing experienced and successful officers.

• COVID, aging, and competent chairmen retaining their positions have limited the choices available with the experience, skillset and desire to take on these positions.

• The current officers are not only the best slate we can propose. We’d also like to maintain the era of peaceful productivity that they’ve initiated.

To change the bylaws, a proposal has to be made at a board meeting and then voted upon at a board meeting occurring at least three weeks later at a second board meeting.

The NominatIons Committee invited Board members to discuss this proposal at a meeting on October 20. We did receive some positive comments via email and no one attended the meeting.

Respectfully submitted,

The Nominations Committee

Gary (chair), Todd, Evelyn, Peg, Elizabeth and Mark

Publicity Report for the November 1, 2022 Board Meeting

Sam Edelston, October 31, 2022

Publicity Committee Members

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

Web Team Members

John Lamb, Allan Kugel, Charles Lamb, Lori Falco

Reports

Chairperson’s Report – Sam Edelston

Sorry for the lateness of my report this month. I was waiting for a couple of reports to come in, and also, after the Halloween Show, I spent much of the weekend getting my hair extensions removed. So, here’s a quick synopsis:

Facebook numbers were significantly up in October, even though I expected them to be down.

Ralph Pedicini has been very active posting Instagram Stories for our shows, which has had an immediate impact on that platform.

This month, the hottest ticket in MUUF will be the Susan Werner concert on November 18, and I want to publicize that as much as we can. She’s a bigger name than most that we’ve had in recent months (and a heck of an entertainer). Last Wednesday, Mike’s Booking Report noted that we already had 45 tickets presold. In the words of Tom Lehrer, “More, more. I’m still not satisfied!”

NERFA will be in Asbury Park on November 10-13. I’ll be attending, and will pass along any useful ideas to the appropriate people.

E-communications – Mark Schaffer

Here’s Mark’s e-Communications Report for November 2022 Board Meeting,. Based on 30 days of email results:

· 40,551 Sends

· 13,917 Opens

· 582 Clicks

· Open Rate: 36% (Mark mentions that, according to Constant Contact, we’re 16% above some sort of industry average.)

· The Music Alert open rate hovers around 34% and gets about 1600 opens twice a week.

Facebook – Kathi Caccavale

From Kathi and Sam:

Folk Project Page: 4,579 people Like this (up from 4,536 last month). 5,738 Followers (up from 5,699).

Folk Project group: 1,744 members, up from 1,712 last month.

Swingin’ Tern group: 607 members; down from 609 from last month.

NJ Uke Fest group: 248 members; Up from 245 last month.

Content Overview:

Facebook posts

· Reach: 2800 … up 10.1%

· Engagement (reactions, comments, shares): 783 … up 46.1%

Sam says: “I expected this month’s Facebook numbers to be down, assuming that Beppe’s Getaway concert and the Halloween show wouldn’t have the same appeal as ‘regular’ Troubadour concerts. However, in the Facebook/Instagram results report below, every measure turns out to be far better than the corresponding numbers in last months report. Page & Profile Visits were up by 49.8% over previous, thanks to from three big Streaming Tuesdays: Alan LeBoeuf (10/4, 199 visits), Bill Wynne (10/18, 189 visits), and John Hone (10/25, 166 visits). ‘It’s the Cloud’s illusions I recall. I really don’t know the Cloud at all.’”

Instagram – Ralph Pedicini

Content Overview:

· Instagram followers: 327, up from 313 last month.

· Instagram posts

o Reach: 198 … up 40%

o Engagement (likes, comments, shares): 125 … up 49%

· Instagram Stories

o Reach: 61 … up from 0

o Engagement: 31 … up from 0

Ralph says:

Keeping up with my earlier plan. I’ve been focusing on Instagram Stories to promote Troubadour concerts, Getaway, Streaming Tuesdays, etc. Unlike regular posts that quickly slip way down people’s feeds, Stories always appear at the top, so people see them, but they disappear after 24 hours. I’ve been doing short videos as “Ralph from the Folk Project,“ telling about an upcoming event, and telling viewers to go to folkproject.org.

Next step will be implementing more ways to engage other FP IG users.

Twitter – Jean Scully

No report from Jean.

Web – John Lamb

Abbreviated report from John this month:

All is well in web land. We put in a bit less than usual work, due to grandpa visits by the webmaster and the resumption of a busy concert schedule. The big news is that we are GA-4 compliant in Google Analytics, an update we needed to make by June 2023. This gives us several months to make sure version 4 of Google Analytics tracks with our results in version 3 as we are running both in parallel. More to come tomorrow with the stats.

Stats seem down 5% to 10% compared to last year, but we have over 20 hours in which to make up some of that ground.

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

Merch – Paul Fisher (acting)

Nothing new.

Sound Reinforcement Committee Report November 2022

We provided sound for the fall Getaway, the Open Stage, Gadan, and the FP Halloween Show. All the shows proceeded normally with no issues.

We completed the planned sound board training program with 4 new sound volunteers participating. We are looking for them to start to volunteer for the sound positions which will round out their experience.

The following completed the training session:

Chris Bukata, Paul Fisher, Greg More and Bernard Drury

John Mahon

Committee Chairperson

November 2022 Special Events Report to Board

VOLUNTEER DINNER:

We Schaffers hosted the Volunteer Dinner this month that was planned, organized, shopped for and prepared by President Elizabeth Lachowicz. It was a wonderful event, enjoyed by over 42 attendees. Thanks to the volunteers who volunteered to volunteer for the volunteer dinner, including Peg, Margie, Frank, Dave, Chris B, and Jean, but thanks also to the volunteers who pitched in spontaneously and were a big part of making the evening work. Elizabeth did a great job. Although she unfortunately was unable to attend last minute, she addressed us by phone and thanks the volunteers for all they’ve done. A fantastic time was had by all.

GETAWAY:

The 2022 Fall Getaway financials are in and we broke even thanks to a special donation by Scott Rovner. Scott was looking for a Folk Project project to donate to and fortunately chose Getaway breaking even for his very generous gift.

Robin and I have been discussing with Treasurer Peg how to adjust the Getaway program to the new COVID realities. The realities of inflation and the smaller attendance are long range, and we can’t count on generous angels like Scott when we budget and plan for 2023.

• One option we are exploring is not renting an entire location, so we can have a weekend away with a smaller number of guests.

• Another option is eliminating touring artists from the Sunday program.

• Another option is eliminating the Fall Getaway and adding that endowment to Spring.

• Or none of the above.

If you have comments, please send them to getaway@folkproject.org

Yours truly,

Mark Schaffer

Swingin' Tern report for October 2022

Two more good dances last month, on October 1 and 15. The band for the first was Night Moves, and for the second it was Dead Sea Squirrels. Both dances were called by the outstanding Bob Isaacs and a few caller trainees he is teaching. All of the apprentice callers performed well, particularly our own Karen Justin. We look forward to the enrichment additional good callers will bring to our area.

We lost $75 for the month, which is two or three attendees per dance short of breaking even. We are aware of the importance of improving our financial results.

We thank Sacha Forgoston, who is serving as co-chair this year and is a delight to work with. Next year Andrew Warner will serve. You should also know that Andrew and Sacha have also been two of our most important sound people for the last several years.

We've all benefited from the tutelage and hard work of Jon Justin.

Leigh Walker

Swingin' Tern

Hello Everyone,

Attached is our Profit & Loss to date. Again a reminder that this is just a snap shot of our accounting. Some things haven't been posted yet and checks have not been cashed. We got a nice donation that hasn't been posted yet, and Michael continues to subsidize the Troubadour. Some numbers for Troubadour got lost in email. The big loss you see on the bottom is our Vanguard account. The stock market has been down and those are our paper losses.

I have still been investigating the NFO (National Folk Organization) insurance. it seems like a good and viable option. I have not been able to get a copy of the insurance policy but I do have numbers to compare. Our insurance is ANI (Alliance of Nonprofits Insurance)

General Aggregate: ANI - 3,000,000 NFO - 2,000,000

Products Complete ANI - 3,000,000 NFO - 1,000,000

Personal Injury ANI - 1,000,000 NFO - 1,000,000

Medical Expense ANI - 20,000 NFO - 10,000

Each Occurrence ANI - 1,000,000 NFO - 1,000,000

Damage ? NFO - 100,000

Fire Damage ANI - 500,000 ?

Liquor Liability ANI 1,000,000 ?

Part of why the numbers for ANI are more is we have a volunteer Rider with our policy which gives us more coverage and we pay and extra $100 per year for it.

ANI cost us $1,100 per year including the rider

NFO would cost us $50 per year.

We also have Directors & Officers which costs us $647 per year.

I still have not been able to give my presentation to the Fellowship Board asking for a rent reduction. I talked to Katie last week. If I don't hear back I will write the proposal and email it to the president of the Fellowship.

Also attached is a photo of the Basket I put together for the Fellowship Service Auction. It included one McNally Strumstick with instructions. Two Folk Project Mugs. Two song writers posters which were fun to read. Six CD's of Folk Project members. Thank you Dave Kleiner, Mike Agranoff, Tina Ross, and Jay & Marie for your generous donation. I delivered it the Fellowship on Friday.

Respectfully Submitted

Peggy Karr / Treasurer