Newsletter Committee Report 2023-01

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

George Otto

Folk Project Newsletter Editor

newsletter@folkproject.org

Publicity Report for the January 3, 2023 Board Meeting

Sam Edelston, January 1, 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

Web Team Members

John Lamb, Allan Kugel, Charles Lamb, Lori Falco

Reports

Chairperson’s Report – Sam Edelston

Happy New Year, everyone, and may 2023 be as good as we hoped 2022 would be.

Ø At last month’s Board meeting, I said I want to do some “market research” about why more people aren’t coming to concerts and what might help bring them back. Right before the Holidays, I had a Zoom with Todd Dennison, Mark Schaffer, and Mike Agranoff to begin creating it. I anticipate that survey going out sometime in January.

Ø Thanks to the recent generous, anonymous donation, spots promoting the Troubadour will run on WNYC on selected weekdays between approximately January 16 and February 17, mostly during morning drive time.

Ø Now that I’ve been in this position for a little over a year, I did a 1-year review with Paul Fisher (who trained me) to see what Publicity might be able to do better. We came up with a number of good ideas.

Ø I put an announcement into the newsletter and Music Alert to recruit some additional Publicity volunteers. We still need more helpers.

E-communications – Mark Schaffer

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

· 40,258 Sends

· 14,154 Opens … 37.5% open rate, up from 34.9% last month

· 534 Clicks … 3.4% click rate, down from 4.2% last month

Facebook – Kathi Caccavale

From Sam, filling in for Kathi (who is down with the post-holiday crud):

Folk Project Page: 4,645 people Like this (up from 4,622 last month). 5,823 Followers (up from 5,801).

Folk Project group: 1,786 members, up from 1,776 last month.

Swingin’ Tern group: 611 members; up from 607 last month.

NJ Uke Fest group: 251 members; Up from 250 last month.

Content Overview:

Facebook Page reach was low in September-November, but rose in the December to 11,777 views, up from 9,145 in November. This is a great improvement, but in May-August we were in the 13,000-15,000 range.

Facebook Page Visits in December were 1,030, down 34% from November’s 1,546. However, in December the Troubadour had an only one “regular” concert, while November had three regular concerts, including Susan Werner.

Our 12/22 post about the upcoming 1/27 Tracy Grammar Troubadour concert got 55 Post Engagements (i.e., reactions, comments, shares, and clicks) and 19 Reactions. No other December post got more than 35 Engagements.

The 1/20 show featuring Amy Englehardt, with Dave Kleiner & Liz Pagan opening, has only 11 Engagements. Both acts deserve much bigger numbers than that, even if Amy isn’t a “household name” in the folk world.

The Erin Ash Sullivan 12/6 stream (34), Holiday Benefit Show (33), and Open Stage (30) got the most Reactions/Likes.

I’m looking forward to our January-February-March numbers. We have a bunch of “name” artists coming up.

Instagram – Ralph Pedicini

Sam says:

Content Overview (from Facebook/Instagram reports):

· Instagram followers: 358, up from 346 last month.

· Instagram

o Reach: 293 … up from 175 last month

o Profile visits: 51 … up from 36

o New Likes & Followers: 20 … up from 18

· Instagram posts

o Reach: 362 … up 108%

o Engagement (likes, comments, shares): 166 … up 21%

· Instagram Stories

o 11 Story posts in December.

o Reach: 102 … up from very small numbers, since we were just starting out at this four months ago

o Engagement: 5 … up from 0

Twitter – Jean Scully

No report from Jean.

Web – John Lamb

Here’s John’s writeup on both October and November, since he didn’t have a chance to compile his usual full report last month:

As always, December was a busy month:

· We tweaked the design of the home page header in two ways. The result leaves room to promote only one other item, and I am starting to think about ways to get around that.

· At the request of the Membership Chair, we added a banner promoting membership signups that links to the appropriate page

· To make the webmaster's job easier, the COVID risk level banner was converted from static images to text boxes. This makes it much easier to edit as policies change and requests to tweak the wording are made.

· We added a Video Archive page to link to videos of previous Inside The Song shows. We added corresponding links to the main menu system and the main Inside The Song page. We included the new Archive page in the Archive/On Demand section of the home page.

· We entered information for the modified board structure and a few changes in personnel. This will appear automatically on our Administration page on 1/1/2023

· We updated ticket sale boilerplate that had only included information about accessibility and ADA accommodation requests for Troubadour. It now covers all venues.

· We added new events and modified existing ones for venue chairs not yet sufficiently trained to do it on their own:

· Bill Hall Home Concert (added)

· Valentines Day Extravaganza (enabled webcast link)

· Inside The Song - cancellation notice for December, added Vance Gilbert notice for January

· HSNOI - edited a few improperly entered broadcast dates

· We assisted various board members

· edited dropdown selector for Newsletter page

· explained email list administration for the Publicity Chair

· explained how to enter video links into our database for Troubadour Chair

· provided a page view report for Streaming Tuesdays Chair

· We changed the COVID banner on the home page as state-defined conditions fluctuated between High and Medium

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

Numbers to follow on Sunday when they become available.

John Lamb, webmaster

John adds the following note regarding the Google Analytics report:

Spreadsheet [attached] both for the version of Google Analytics we have been using and, for comparison, GA4 for November (first full month we used it) and December. There is a new work page for the GA4 numbers.

As you will see the numbers that GA4 reports are somewhat lower than those reported by Universal Analytics (UA, what we had been using). Google's explanation is that they stopped counting non-human interactions like bots and spiders in the GA4 numbers. The resulting numbers are probably of more use to us in the long run, but it will take some time to build up enough history in GA4 to know how we're doing.

I will continue to record both sets of numbers until they turn off UA (now scheduled for July 1, 2023, but they have postponed the date once or twice before).

Merch – Paul Fisher (acting)

Nothing new.

Sound Reinforcement Committee Report January 2023

We provided sound for the three of the four Friday night shows scheduled in December, and all proceeded without glitches. The first show, Chorus Song Night did not require sound reinforcement, and was not broadcast so it did not require sound reinforcement. The next two shows The Open Stage, and The Holiday Benefit Show, were given similar sound support as both were a series of performers, with each group performing two or three songs. Both were broadcast. The last show featured Carla Ulbrich in a regular Troubadour show, with John Hone opening. The show, being two individual performers was easily accommodated by the sound staff.

John Mahon

Committee Chairperson

SPECIAL EVENTS COMMITTEE

Mark Schaffer

• A house concert at Mark & Robin’s home featuring Bill Hall and Rachel Marie will be held on Saturday, January 21st, 2023. Bill will be recording his live performance for future release. The costs are minimal and the event is designed to break even financially for the Folk Project.

• A one-day Getaway Songwriters Day - similar to previous Getaway Guitar Days - featuring Dan Navarro and Abbie Gardner will be held at MUUF on Saturday, April 15th, 2023. A full ticket will include a day of workshops, lunch, dinner, and an evening concert featuring Dan and Abbie. A separate tickets will be sold separately attend only the evening concert with Dan and Abbie. Two songwriters among the workshop participants will be chosen on the day of conference to open the evening concert. I’m co-planning the event with Tina Ross.

• Planning for a Getaway weekend May 19-21 is underway. We intend to expand the program from a “home version” to a “MUFF version.

EVENT HOSTING SUBCOMMITTEE

Jay Wilensky

Evenings of Music:

As you know, 2022 was a difficult year for Evenings of Music, marked by disappointingly low attendance.

It was always going to be a dicey proposition to re-start large gatherings in peoples’ homes after (actually during) the pandemic. Attendance has also been held down by the scheduling of Eves O’ on a different day of the month, during an afternoon, and at locations out of the Project’s immediate area. I take responsibility for a number of those decisions.

Big thanks are due to Mark and Robin Schaffer for hosting the Project’s annual Holiday party and Eve o’ when the household of the scheduled hosts, Steve Humphreys and Christine Golis, had complications.

Of course, we don’t have control over the course of the pandemic. But people’s skittishness about gathering should ease as Covid becomes more manageable. Mark and Robin have graciously agreed to address the location issue by holding the majority of upcoming Eves O’ at their home. And, I hope that we will all do some personal salesmanship (salespersonship?) to encourage people to give this great Project tradition another try.

MUUF Benefit Concert

Also Jay:

Dear Board:

I’m happy to report that the annual concert to benefit the Fellowship was a success, both artistically and financially.

The performers – Todd Dennison and Laura Wooten; Mary and Darrell Courtley; Bob McParland; Aloft (Diane Polledri and John Hone), The Del Sole Trio (Christine DeLeon, Frank Sole, Henry Nerenberg); and Rob Horowitz and Amy Kleiman – were uniformly excellent and well-received. Additionally, Marie Trontell leading the caroling, Henry lighting the Shabbat candles, and Susan Lembo reading poems selected by Joanne Cronin all did wonderfully and, again, were well-received.

The program was not without problems, which were solved via the Project’s deep bench of talented and dedicated people. Our scheduled feature performer, Genevieve, was ill; Bob McParland stepped up on one days’ notice and replaced her ably. Susan Lembo capably replaced Joanne Cronin, who was also ill,

as the poetry reader. And, Marie Trontell, replacing Andrew Dunn, who had a weather-related conflict, shone as the carol-leader.

The show also did quite well financially. The live audience numbered 74 (64 paid)- not bad at all given the tri-demic and the weather. The peak on-line audience numbered 42. The admissions and contributions collected by the Project at the event, minus expenses, totaled $708.50. Additionally, $241was donated on line, and the Fellowship directly collected $390. Thus, a net total of $1339.50 was raised

by the event, all of which was or will be received by the Fellowship.

I’m deeply grateful to all of the performers and staff, to Mike Agranoff and Kathi Caccavale, and to Katy Julich of MUUF.

Submitted in the spirit of the Project,

Jay Wilensky, Producer and FP Events sub-chair

MUUF BENEFIT CONCERT, DECEMBER 16, 2022

Dear Board:

I’m happy to report that the annual concert to benefit the Fellowship was a success, both artistically and financially.

The performers – Todd Dennison and Laura Wooten; Mary and Darrell Courtley; Bob McParland; Aloft (Diane Polledri and John Hone), The Del Sole Trio (Christine DeLeon, Frank Sole, Henry Nerenberg); and Rob Horowitz and Amy Kleiman – were uniformly excellent and well-received. Additionally, Marie Trontell leading the caroling, Henry lighting the Shabbat candles, and Susan Lembo reading poems selected by Joanne Cronin all did wonderfully and, again, were well-received.

The program was not without problems, which were solved via the Project’s deep bench of talented and dedicated people. Our scheduled feature performer, Genevieve, was ill; Bob McParland stepped up on one days’ notice and replaced her ably. Susan Lembo capably replaced Joanne Cronin, who was also ill, as the poetry reader. And, Marie Trontell, replacing Andrew Dunn, who had a weather-related conflict, shone as the carol-leader.

The show also did quite well financially. The live audience numbered 74 (64 paid)- not bad at all given the tri-demic and the weather. The peak on-line audience numbered 42. The admissions and contributions collected by the Project at the event, minus expenses, totaled $708.50. Additionally, $241 was donated on line, and the Fellowship directly collected $390. Thus, a net total of $1339.50 was raised by the event, all of which was or will be received by the Fellowship.

I’m deeply grateful to all of the performers and staff, to Mike Agranoff and Kathi Caccavale, and to Katy Julich of MUUF.

Submitted in the spirit of the Project,

Jay Wilensky, Producer and FP Events sub-chair

Board members,

Highlight of the month was providing the ability to display donation links on the screen during Troubadour show intermissions. Thanks to Kathi Caccavale for training the Sound Reinforcement folks on this.

Gary

Folk Project Streaming Chair

Swingin' Tern December Tern report

Two good dances and another good month.

On December 3, Bob Isaacs called to Blue Jersey, and on December 17, Donna Hunt called to Koretzky & Young.

We finished $63 in the black for the month.

Leigh Walker

Swingin' Tern

Hello Everyone,

If anyone has any outstanding invoices or in need of reimbursement for anything from 2022 now is the time to get that information to me.

This is an unusual time of year in terms of Quickbooks. I would post the Profit & Loss but it is not even close to complete. I am missing a lot of numbers from some people. I have been in contact with them. The other anomaly is the 10K pass through donation we received in September we still haven't spent it yet. The donation will show towards income for the year without any expenses to balance it out. In 2023 when we spend it it will throw those numbers off too. It doesn't make any difference since we are a non-profit and pay no taxes. However when reading 2022 and 2023 P&L statements it will throw all the numbers off by ten thousand dollars 2022 as plus and 2023 as minus. Currently the books say we made $108 so if you take away the 10K donation we lost approximately 10K this year.

Our insurance is due the first of the year along with renewal for Quickbooks. I have joined The National Folk Organization with Elizabeth's okay. The $50 membership entitles us to access to their liability insurance. I tried to get information but without being a member no one would talk to me. The few professionals I talked to said it seemed like a sound possibility so I took the plunge.

The stock market has improved a little towards the end of the year. We started the year at $202,518.65 and ended the year at $173,636.55 lowering the loss to $28,882.07. The loss had been $34,329.88 earlier in the year.

Respectfully Submitted

Peggy Karr / Treasurer

Well, after our big month in November, it looks like we’re back to our run-of-the-mill performance at the Troubadour in December. The two shows drew 26 and 37 paid for an average of 31.5 (42.5 if you include staff and freebies). Although, to be fair the 26 paid was for Chorus Song Night, which has historically been a low attendance show. We lost $414 for the month.

As an experiment, we held the Chorus Song Night in the Terrace Room to enhance the feeling of community singing by abandoning the raised stage. It was generally held as a success, except for the fact that the room was rather chilly. I had touted the evening as a sort of “indoor campfire”. Perhaps we could have used a real campfire.

The Troubadour had been operating under GREEN (Low COVID risk) or YELLOW (Medium COVID risk) conditions since reopening. However, the region, and indeed the nation had been experiencing a surge in COVID, presumably due to travel and social interaction activities associated with Thanksgiving. And on Thursday, December 22, the risk factor crossed the threshold into ORANGE (High risk). The Troubadour was closed the following day, but we all prepared for mandatory masking and vaccine checks, and moving the food service to the more spacious Terrace Room for the show on the 30^th. However, the CDC rating announced on the 29^th was back to YELLOW, and we did a lot of hasty backpedaling, changing back to our accustomed routine. My prediction, is that in January we will experience a similar spike in COVID due to Christmas gatherings, and we will be in ORANGE conditions for at least part of January. Keep your knees loose for last minute changes, because CDC issues its weekly reports on Thursday nights. I will keep monitoring them and sending them out to the Board.

New Bookings since last month:

1. January 27: Michael Arthur, regular participant in the Monday Night Song Circle, opening for Tracy Grammer

2. March 17: No Fuss and Feathers, singer-songwriter quartet

3. April 21: Andy Cohen, virtuoso fingerstyle blues and ragtime guitarist and raconteur, with Jean Farnworth, harp and 12-string guitar opening

4. April 28: E.T.E, Brilliant Quebecois trio. Fiddle tunes, step-dancing, and song. An “Agranoff Imperative”.

Highlight for January:

1. January 20: Amy Engelhart Very funny, satiric, and somewhat salty songwriter: Ex member of “The Bobs”

Respectfully Submitted:

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Troubadour Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA

www.Troubadour.FolkProject.org