Festival Feasibility Meeting

3/15/23  Board Readout

Participants:

Robin Schaffer 

Bob McNally

Mark Schaffer

Peggy Karr

Olga Alvarez

Elizabeth Lachowicz

Todd Dennison

Tina Ross   

Steve Humphreys

Purpose of the meeting:

• Specifically explore the concept of a free public festival to improve attendance, volunteerism, leadership, and membership post-COVID

• Generally consider other turnaround goals and tactics

Turnaround objectives:

• Renewed attendance by former regulars

• New participants

• Younger membership base

• New volunteers and leaders

• Improved image 

• Increased energy 

• Higher community awareness

• Community good will

Conclusions:

The session was productive and resulted in a wide array of strategies and tactics.

• Postpone action on the festival concept, due to the amount of leadership, focus, time and resources needed, which would detract from more immediate and lower-hanging fruit.

• Explore other turnaround tactics first.

• Proceed from here under the already-established Future Planning Committee.

• Request board approval for Robin to co-chair with current chair, Bob McNally

• Robin and Peg will continue to explore grants that fit the Project’s mission

Future Planning:

• These nine people will re-constitute the Future Planning Committee

• We’ve already begun sorting through suggestions and exploring options

• We’ll report back to the board periodically for input and comment

--

Call me if you have any questions or suggestions.  Thank you. 

Regards,

Elizabeth Rose Lachowicz

Newsletter Committee Report 2023-02

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

Some recipients of the newsletter reported that the sealing stickers used to close our newsletters had gotten harder to open with the last two issues. Kathi contacted the printer about the problem and they told her they would be returning to the previous stickers with the next newsletter.

George Otto

Folk Project Newsletter Editor

newsletter@folkproject.org 

Publicity Report for the April 4, 2023 Board Meeting

Sam Edelston, April 3, 2023

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, MaryLynn Schiavi

Web Team Members                                 

John Lamb, Allan Kugel, Charles Lamb, Lori Falco

Reports

Chairperson’s Report – Sam Edelston

Last month, I told the Board that we have a new volunteer who will be “pitching stories about our events to newspapers and other media, and aiming to get feature articles.” MaryLynn Schiavi has now begun doing that, with a skill set that I don’t currently have. This has the potential to make a real difference for us. I’m excited and grateful for MaryLynn’s enthusiasm and contributions.

As an outgrowth of this, we’re also testing some “Featured Event” online paid advertising on the Patch website, basically an online newspaper, in Morristown and surrounding towns. An 11-day “Promoted Event” for Getaway Songwriters Day was seen by 60,000+ of their email recipients and 6,000+ website visitors. Google Analytics is reporting 4 visitors to our website referred from patch.com. (If one of those people registered for the workshops, the ad will have paid for itself 3-4 times over.) A Promoted Event for the April 7 Christine Lavin Troubadour concert is running April 1-7.

We’re running announcements on WNYC to promote this Friday’s Christine Lavin/Bill Hall Troubadour concert. This is the last round resulting from the generous 2022 anonymous gift. The WNYC people have been a pleasure to deal with. Thanks to Mark and Peggy (and possibly others who I’m not thinking of at the moment) for their help on this.

E-communications – Mark Schaffer

Here’s Mark’s e-Communications Report for April 2023 Board Meeting.

·         40,119 Total Sends for the Music Alert

·         14,125 Opens … 38.0% open rate, down from 38.2% last month and 38.9 the month before

Facebook – Kathi Caccavale

Folk Project Page:  4,799 people Like this (up from 4,759 last month). 5,948 Followers (up from 5,898).

Folk Project group: 1,891 members, up from 1,855 last month.

Swingin’ Tern group: 627 members; up from 624 last month.

NJ Uke Fest group: 261 members; Up from 259 last month.

We continue to post Streaming Tuesdays, Inside the Song, Open Stage, Troubadour and Special Events on the Folk Project Facebook page and group, as well as sharing the Swingin’ Tern event posts. People continue to ask to join The Folk Project group at the rate of several per week. Likes continue to increase for the Folk Project page as well. We also continue to share the email Music Alerts twice a week as social posts to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Providing live streams of the Troubadour show has been a rocky road, with issues relating to Facebook’s interface and connectivity issues. We ended the FB paid online events recently since they were no longer functioning and Facebook is doing away with that service. The last several Troubadour shows have been free online, with a request for donations to the Folk Project to equal the cost of the paid online ticket ($5) as well as donations to the performers; this has resulted in our video views being up – for now. Beginning April 7, we will be launching a new streaming platform with the Christine Lavin show, with a $7 ticket price. This new service does not require a Facebook account, which was a minor downside of the FB paid online events. I expect more information will be included in reports from Gary Pratt (Streaming Chair) and Mike Agranoff.

Our Facebook page reach is robust for the first quarter of 2023 compared to the last quarter of 2022: [chart attached]

Instagram – Ralph Pedicini

Sam says:

Content Overview (from Facebook/Instagram reports):

·         Instagram followers: 393, up from 374 last month.

·         Instagram – Down from December, but up compared to November.

o   Reach: 202 … down from 243 last month and 293 the month before

o   Profile visits: 55 … up from 42

o   New Likes & Followers: 15 … down from 18 last month and 20 the month before

·         Instagram posts (90-day results)

o   Reach: 348 … down 6.2%

o   Engagement (likes, comments, shares): 225 … up 41.5%

·         Instagram Stories (90-day results)

o   21 Story posts.

o   Reach: 106

o   Engagement: 1

Twitter – Jean Scully

No report from Jean.

Web – John Lamb

Here’s John’s writeup:

March was a pretty normal month for the web team.

- we added a new plugin for WooCommerce on our WordPress site that greatly improves communication with PayPal and has, so far, eliminated cases where ticket sales were marked as Pending rather than Completed when PayPal sometimes did not notify WooCommerce that payment had been received

- we adjusted entries to upcoming shows for Getaway Songwriters Day, the Golden Jubilee show, Inside the Song and Horses Sing None of It

- we assisted the Troubadour Chair with adjustments to entries for upcoming shows

- we corrected a typo on a Swingin' Tern event

- we updated the COVID status on the home page

- we assisted the Newsletter Chair in getting the most recent edition of the e-newsletter online

- we performed the usual maintenance on email forwarders

- we provided suggestions to the Streaming Chair concerning the upcoming switch from Facebook to Afton when streaming events

- not strictly website related, but we updated the Advanced Ticket Sale spreadsheet for Troubadour, and assisted the Troubadour Chair by testing some changes he made to the Tally Sheet spreadsheet.

March website statistics were pretty good, but still a bit of a letdown after the very good numbers in February.  A few stats were up, most were down 5% to 10% even though March had three more days than February.  We are still up 40% to 60% over our numbers from March 2022, so there is that.

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

John Lamb, webmaster

Merch – Paul Fisher (acting)

Nothing new.

Sound Reinforcement Committee Report April 2023

We provided sound for the five Friday night shows scheduled in March, and the first four proceeded without glitches. We continue to see participation of the recently trained new sound techs. The last show in March exhibited approximately 5 “freezes” where the stream ended and had to be restarted. Although, we quickly restarted the stream each time, and we were broadcasting “free”, it dumped the entire audience, and they had to find their way back to connecting to the stream. A quick analysis that night, and by Alex West the next Friday led to the general conclusion that the dropping was caused by the connection to Facebook, on the Facebook’s side. However, we were not able to develop any concrete evidence of this. The next week, the last broadcast over Facebook suffered no dropouts. This suggests that there is not a technical problem with the installed equipment at MUUF.

 All of this is moot given the fact that starting April we will discontinue using Facebook for the broadcast, and start using a new vendor.  

The stage equipment “refurb” process has gotten to a slow start. I am developing a list of our stage equipment, and will systematically evaluate all individual pieces, coming up with reuse, refurbish, replace recommendations. Once the entire collection is evaluated, I will put the refurbish, replace options into action.

John Mahon

Committee Chairperson

April 2023 Special Events Report to Board

MEMBER HOSTING

Jay’s doing a great job. The March Evening of Music in Rockaway was a success. Over 25 people made great music and had a wonderful time. The  April EoM is also in Rockaway, and a great time and great music is guaranteed.

EXPLORATORY SPECIAL EVENTS SUBCOMMITTEE

Robin met with her subcommittee and submitted a separate report. As reported, many of the post-COVID issues overlap with the ad hoc Future Planning Committee’s mission, which was chaired by Bob McNally. The intention is to renew Future Planning’s work and make Robin a co-chair.

SONGWRITERS DAY

55 Tickets have been sold - 37 Workshop and Concert, plus 18 concert-only tickets. Workshop tickets are near goal. Concert-only tickets are far behind expectations, and without a two-week surge in sales won’t break even. By emphasizing the songwriting workshops, the listening audience may not have understood the concert-only experience. 

Compliments to the concert publicity group, which refocused efforts on the concert. Team is: MaryLynn Schiavi, Tina Ross, Sam Edelston, & Robin Schaffer.

Diane Polledri and Tina Ross are running the event. Preparations have been impressive and it’s looking like a great event.

SPRING GETAWAY/50th Anniversary

Preparations are underway and early sales look good: 25 tickets, many of which are first-timers and long-timers. The lineup is strong already, and a few opening slots are unfilled.

NJ Uke Fest

A home version of Uke Fest is planned for September 8, 9 & 10, 2023. We’ve begun hiring. More on this next month.

FALL ACOUSTIC GETAWAY

As previously reported, the contract is signed with Stony Point. Prep will start soon.

Mark Schaffer, Special Events Chair

Board members,

The Streaming Committee is excited to announce that we have partnered with Afton Livestream as our streaming platform provider. Afton is a professional ticketing and streaming company that will provide a superior streaming experience for The Folk Project, our members and volunteers (Streaming Team, A/V Team, venue chairs, etc.), performers, and audience members. 

Afton Livestream offers a vast array of features and benefits. Here are just a few examples:

• Non-Facebook members can now purchase tickets for and watch our paid online events!

• Customized streaming ticket purchase page for each event (fully configurable)

• Tickets can be purchased in advance or day of the show

• Ticket purchasers have the option of creatIng an account on Afton to streamline ticket purchase process 

• Email reminders will be automatically sent to ticket purchasers with direct link to concert (each ticket holder will have their own personal link to the show)

• Personalized viewing options for audience members (computer, smart phone, tablet, Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, chat on/off, white/dark mode, etc.)

• Tip without leaving the stream (tip button always visible on the screen)

• View and purchase tickets to upcoming shows without leaving the stream

• Detailed reporting on ticket purchases, viewers, fees, donations, etc.

• Ticket purchasers can sign up for Music Alert Mailing list

• Ability to chat between venue staff and host before and during show

• Dedicated account manager and technical support

All of the above is provided at no cost to The Folk Project. Afton takes a commission on each ticket sold and credit processing fees are charged by Stripe. Venue chairs have the option of absorbing these fees or charging them to the ticket purchasers. Afton does not take a commission on tips to performers.

Troubadour will be the first Folk Project venue using Afton Livestream. Training for the Troubadour A/V Team was provided by Afton at MUUF on Wednesday, March 29. The April 7 Christine Lavin with Bill Hall concert will be the first show streamed by Afton. The streaming ticket purchase link for that show is https://aftontickets.com/Lavin-Hall-04-07-23.

Facebook, the Folk Project, and the Music Alert have all been updated with the new links. 

Streaming Tuesdays concerts will remain on Facebook Live until moving to Afton in late May/early June. 

Streaming for other events is available for all Folk Project venues. Contact me for more information. 

We have barely scratched the surface of the features provided by Afton and are already way ahead of where we were with Facebook Live. 

Thanks go to Kathi Caccavale, Peggy Karr, John Lamb, and Mark Schaffer for their efforts in the implementation of this project. Kudos to Mike Agranoff for working out all the details for streaming the Troubadour shows, and to the Troubadour A/V Team (John Mahon and Bill Henderson) and Alex West from MUUF for being the first venue trained to stream on Afton. 

Gratefully and respectfully submitted,

Gary Pratt

Folk Project Streaming Chair

Swingin' Tern report -- March

An excellent month. On March 4, Sue Gola called to Smash the Windows, and on March 18, Dylan Simpson called to Jaybird.  Both dances had us in the black, and overall we finished ahead $110 -- a real turnaround from February.

We are also attracting new dancers regularly. Thanks to Sam and company for all the publicity!

As at all FP venues, many volunteers work hard, steadily and effectively to make our dance function. For instance, Doug Heacock promotes us constantly on Facebook and in the  notification emails; Karen Justin promotes us on Meetup when she's not helping organize the dance or cleaning up.

Jon Justin, Andrew Warner and Zach Kaplan take care of our sound.

Xander Kastan books the performers and is a dance manager. Christy Cook is a dance manager and frequent volunteer.

Virginia Nordberg makes the whole dance work. She almost literally beats the bushes when dance time is approaching and a key volunteer needs filling.

Many other people volunteer frequently, and we appreciate all of them.

With folks like this, you can be sure we look forward to the future.

Leigh Walker

Swingin' Tern

Hello Everyone,

Attached is the current P&L statement to date by class at Michael's request.

There isn't much to report. All is going well with finance. Karen has been away and has just returned so books are not up to date. I worked with Gary to set up a new Strip account which lets us process Credit Cards for our new streaming service. We can use this new Stripe account to process credit cards for other activities in the future. Excellent Job Gary.

Update on Treasurer Position:

I will be terming out at the end of this year, now only 9 months away. I have been thinking about this a lot. We will need to find someone willing to learn all the in’s and out’s and keep tabs on everything. They will also need some financial understanding and the ability to navigate complicated accounting, insurance and banking programs online. I have gotten used to the job and don’t mind doing it. Karen has made it a lot easier along with my four years of experience.

If you would like me to stay as treasurer I am willing. However, we need to fix the bylaws. It is not uncommon in nonprofit organizations to not have term limits in their bylaws for any board member and term limits are not required by law. Since our executive board is voted in every year regardless of whether or not their term is up it is easy to replace someone with another candidate if the board member has become ineffective, or decides they are done, or someone comes forward who would like to give it a try. In the past we have had treasurers who acted in name only while Chris still did most of the work. I would not be comfortable with that arrangement. Most banks, insurance, vanguard, state and federal agency’s require a board title to manage accounts. Karen (the bookkeeper) has made the job a lot easier and manageable. However the treasurer still has a lot of responsibilities. I follow up on a lot of things. We are finally up to date and legal with all the government requirements we need to file. Eitan has been a great resource as well and feels this is the best choice for the Folk Project.

If anyone has any questions just ask. I think all we need to do is make a motion, post the proposed change and vote on it in the next meeting. If you do not want to change the bylaws, this gives us enough time to explore other possibilities.

By Laws:

§1. Titles and Interim Election. The Trustees (i.e., the Member-elected Directors) who will be holding office when the officer’s term commences shall elect, by a majority vote at a meeting at which at least a majority of Trustees is present, a President (who shall also serve as chairperson of the Board), a Vice President, a Treasurer, and a Secretary; provided that these officers will be chosen from the Member-elected Directors and Trustee-elected Directors who will be holding office when the officer’s term commences. The term of the President, the Vice President, the Treasurer, and the Secretary shall be one calendar year and until a successor is duly elected and qualified. As it deems necessary from time to time, the Board may, by a majority vote of all the Board members present at a meeting at which a quorum is present, elect any other officers as are deemed necessary, for a term to be decided by the Board. The persons serving as President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary need not be Trustees. The duties of the officers shall be-such as are imposed by these bylaws and from time to time prescribed by the Board. Officers may serve no more than three consecutive terms in a single office with the exception of the Treasurer, who may serve up to four consecutive terms. Subject to the procedures for filling of vacancies as provided in §8 below, officers will be elected at the December Directors’ meeting in accordance with the foregoing procedures, and their terms of office will begin on the first day of the following year and last for the calendar year until the 31st of the following December. In addition to these terms of office, the Treasurer will continue to serve in an advisory capacity until the taxes have been finalized for the year in which he or she has served.

Proposed Amendment to read:

Treasurer, who has no term limits.

You could expand this to include all the officers if you want. As we age out it has become harder and harder to find qualified volunteers to fill these positions. If the officers want to stay they should be able to as apposed to putting forth someone under duress to satisfy the By-laws who is not qualified.

Respectfully submitted

Peggy Karr Treasurer

As of this month we have been in continuous operation for 12 months since we reopened in April of 22, and the attached graphs show slow, but indisputable progress towards recovery from COVID.  Prior to the beginning of November of last year, every show lost money.  Since then, we have had a number of shows in the black  And those that did lose money, lost a whole lot less than before.  For the first time February showed a small ($36) monthly profit, and March was $405 in the black.  And in fact, we are $281 in the black year-to-date, even without considering personal contributions from myself and others.  We’re still not where we want to be, but we’re headed in the right direction.  Our average paid attendance in March was 62.8, and we have a number of high-draw acts in the schedule that will help boost that number.  And more significant, the attendance for our everyday acts has been creeping up as well, as we attract new attendees and more of our Pre-COVID attendees are peeking out from under the covers and rejoining the world.

I was pleased to see a decent attendance for Culomba on March 31.  They were an act almost no one had heard before in a genre (World Choral Traditions) outside of what has been our mainstay of singer-songwriters and acts featuring instrumental excellence.  I pushed it strongly, and was gratified that people came out to see something out-of-the-box that I had recommended.  They were well pleased with what they saw and heard, and reflected that in the creel with a healthy average of $807/head.  (As compared with an average of $757/head since the beginning of the year.  Which included very popular acts like the Kennedys and Dead to the Core.)  I hope we will see a similar response to Chromatic Harmonica virtuoso Enrico Granafei on May 5

As of this month, we will be switching to a new streaming platform called Afton, replacing Facebook Live, which we’ve been using up until now.  Gary Pratt will have more details on that, but it looks to have a number of benefits to us, and to our performers.  Some of those benefits are:

1. We will again be able to charge a ticket price to view, which we have not been able to do since the beginning of the year.

2. The Streaming Ticket price will be going up to $7.00 from the last year’s price of $4.99, which will help our bottom line.

3. The ticket purchase process is more straightforward that FaceBook’s, and viewers no longer need to have a FaceBook account in order to purchase tickets.

4. There will be a “Tip the artist” button continually on the screen, which will in all likelihood increase the amount of the viewers’ tips, and the artist’s income.

My thanks to Gary, Kathi Caccavale, John Lamb, and Treasurer Peggy Karr for the hard work they did to implement this move.

I had been considering eliminating the Masks Required / Mask Optional seating section arrangement, as there were some shows where the Masks Required section had been very sparsely filled.  But when we had high draw acts like Dead to the Core and The Kennedys, that section was well populated.  So I assume that there are still a goodly number of attendees who feel more comfortable when sitting among other masked patrons.  We will keep that setup for the time being.

The CDC Risk Assessment for Morris County finally dipped into the GREEN (Low Risk) category, and looks like it may be there to stay.  We’ll see what happens after Easter/Passover/Ramadan.

New bookings last month:

1. April 28:  Multi-instrumentalist Russ Rentler, opening for E.T.E

2. May 26:  High-energy songwriters Buskin & Batteau, resuming their touring after a long hiatus, with singer-songwriter Stacia Thiel opening (At the suggestion of Todd Dennison.)

3. June 16: Brilliant all-around musician/writer/singer Matt Nakoa with high-energy duo Empty Pockets opening

Highlight for April

1. While the Christine Lavin show coming up this Friday is bound to be well-attended and enjoyed, I would strongly urge you to catch the show on April 28 with E.T.E.  This French Canadian trio of musicians absolutely blew away the crowd at Old Songs last year, and myself along with it.  They play Quebecois and dance music and song with the fire of any Celtic band I’ve heard, and the precision of any world famous chamber music ensemble.  I have gone out on a limb, and given them the Agranoff Imperative rating, which I dole out very sparingly.

Respectfully submitted

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Troubadour Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA

www.Troubadour.FolkProject.org