FP Future Planning Committee

October Board Report

Oct 3, 2023

Latest updates on the FTPL (Future Planning) Committee

1. Morristown Festival on the Green
   The Folk Project sponsored a booth on October 1 and gave out chances to win Troubadour, Open Stage, and Swingin’ Term passes and free membership, in exchange for email addresses.  The festival had an amazing turnout on a beautiful day. We had great conversations, collected about 115 quality email addresses, gave away lots of tickets, and created great goodwill in the community.
   
   In addition we learned a lot about the musical tastes of the community. For Troubadour tickets, we created a book with flyers for 9 upcoming acts, and let people choose what they wanted to see.  Expectedly, Tom Chapin was the most popular ticket and we gave all of them away.  Surprisingly, Jay Unger and Molly Mason were among the lowest requests.  The younger acts were quite popular:  Sam Robbins, Abbie Gartner, Deni Bonet.  Tannahill Weavers were also up there.
   
   
   

   Thanks to Eitan Grunwald and Bob McNally who helped Mark and I staff the booth.

contact@masschallenge.org

2. NERFA Private Showcase, Nov 9-11, Asbury Park

We are considering sponsoring a private showcase at NERFA.  This will enhance the FPs image among the folk music community of artists, promoters, DJs, etc. We will hold the showcase for three nights, featuring aspiring artists. 

3. Presentation sub-committee
   We are going to trial an “advertising reel” at Open Stage. The reel will be shown while people are waiting before the concert starts.  It will feature various aspects of the FP, and highlight upcoming Troubadour shows.  The reel takes about 2-½  minutes and will be on a loop.  See draft here
   
   

4. “Welcoming” Initiative

The Folk Project community is strong and as such, sometimes doesn’t feel welcoming to new people. To combat this it’s up to each of us to be particularly welcoming and engaging of people we don’t know at Folk Project events. As board members, we need to be ambassadors.   

5. Social Media Brainstorming meeting
   October 17, 8:15 pm
   We are brainstorming how to turbocharge our SM efforts.
   Looking for SM savvy people to join… not necessarily members, anyone willing to spend one hour on brainstorming.  Contact Robin.
   
   

6. Grant and Sponsorship Status.  Unfortunately, got several declines this month :-(

○     Martin Foundation: $8000 for Getaway (waiting)

○     Morris Arts:  $10,000 for general operational support (waiting)

○     M&T Bank:  $9000 for special concerts.(declined)

○     The Standard:  $9000 for special concerts (declined)

○     Sony Corporation:  $9000 for special concerts (Declined. Seems they are not funding projects at this point. Invited us to apply again in April)

○     Have an offer from an anonymous donor for $5000

○     Pursuing a sponsorship from Sanofi.

Robin Schaffer

Bob McNally

Dear Board,

I'm writing to propose the implementation of a Privacy Policy for The Folk Project.  I have written one and attached it to this email for your review.

Here are the key reasons why we need this policy:

Member Privacy: We must protect our members' personal data and show them we take their privacy seriously.
Legal Compliance: Privacy laws require organizations to have such policies. Compliance reduces legal risks.
Trust and Reputation: A clear policy enhances our reputation, as members trust us with their data.
Accountability and Transparency: It sets clear guidelines and empowers members to exercise their data rights.
Risk Mitigation: It helps prevent data breaches and unauthorized access.  There has been a substantial increase in scammers misusing an organization's data.

I recommend implementing this policy to address these critical aspects. Your feedback is welcomed.

Regards, Todd Dennison

Membership

Newsletter Committee Report 2023-10

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

There have been some problems sending out individual newsletters revealed this past month. My own September newsletter did not arrive before the beginning of the month, and I assumed it had somehow been lost in the mail. The newsletter finally arrived around September 15 with no indication of why it had been delayed. I also received a copy of the June newsletter addressed to Outpost in the Burbs labeled "return to sender" at the end of September, four months after it had been sent, again with no indication of why it had taken so long to be returned. The address for the recipient was correct, by the way.

Lois DeRitter reported not getting her newsletter last month, but that appears to be a database error on our part.

I would like to ask anyone who has not been getting their paper newsletters on time (i.e., before the beginning of the designated month) to send me a note about the problem so I can become aware of the extent of this problem and try to figure out how to fix it.

Thanks for your help,

George Otto

Folk Project Newsletter Editor

newsletter@folkproject.org

Publicity Report for the October 3, 2023 Board Meeting

Sam Edelston, October 2, 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

Robin and Bob's Future Planning Committee deserve some kind of MVP honor for the outreach they did at the Morristown Festival on the Green (see Mark’s report, below) and for the social media ideation they’re initiating, which will help us.

The changes in the Music Alert seem to be bringing more traffic to the website. The web numbers are up this month.

 [Added 10/3: Under Instagram, I’ve added a note about a conversation I had with Ralph Pedicini. Under Web, I’ve added some additional information about the number of Web Page Views. I’m submitting a revised Web Numbers report, as well.]

E-communications – Mark Schaffer

Mark says:

Here are the Music Alert numbers for the month of August:

Sends: 33,405

Opens: 12,749

Average Opens per Alert: 1593.25

Opens: 38.3%

Number of Clicks: 2,513 – way up from 676 last month

Numbers always tell part of the story. Here’s more:

Ø  Percentage of opens are up this month over last (38.3% vs 37.6%) because last month a few hundred dead email accounts were purged.

Ø  Sends and opens are up by thousands since COVID because contacts who received two or six emails a year now get 104 emails a year.

Ø  The total number of contacts is down since COVID because, again, contacts who received two or six emails a yes now get 104 emails a year.

Ø  The number of sends and opens will go up in October because Robin and Bob's Future Planning Committee added 125 new emails on October 1st at Morristown’s Festival on the Green. Fairgoers were offered free tickets to FP events if they joined our email list.

Facebook – Kathi Caccavale

Folk Project Page:  6,064 Followers (up from 6,043 last month). 4,904 people Like this.

Folk Project group: 2,029 members, up from 1,981 last month – Nice growth of 2.4% in one month!

Swingin’ Tern group: 643 members; up slightly from 642 last month.

NJ Uke Fest group: 281 members; up from 275 last month.

Slow and steady growth in Followers and group members, even though Page & Profile Visits are down.

Instagram – Ralph Pedicini

Sam says:

Content Overview (from Facebook/Instagram reports):

·         Instagram followers: 437, up from 433 last month.

·         Reach: 252 … Up from 240 last month

 [Added 10/3] Ralph and I had a conversation. He’s been frustrated by the lack of results he’s been seeing. We discussed some kinds of experiments he might try.

Twitter – Jean Scully

No report from Jean.

Web – John Lamb

Here’s John’s writeup.

September Folk Project Webmaster Report

It was a reasonably busy month for the web team.  We did the following in September:

- updated the entry for Acoustic Getaway several times
- advised treasurer on PayPal user ID changes
- updated ticket purchase form to better explain that tickets will be available at the door at Troubadour even after we stop selling them online
- updated Tally Sheets for Troubadour and Open Stage
- selected and prepared a new computer for Troubadour
- set up donation link for Mike DelVecchio
- assisted newsletter editor with getting this month's edition online
- renewed registration for swingintern.org
- added Robin Schaffer to the boardplus@folkproject.org email forwarder

Google Analytics numbers for September.  Holy $#!+ they were through the roof.  Much higher numbers than we've seen since the time we advertised on NPR.  Probably even higher, but I don't have time at the moment to look.

[Sam adds: As of this moment, John and I are “peeling the onion” about this. September Website Total Page Views were abnormally high: 20,290 … compared to 7,925 in August and under 6,400 in any other month this year. But 13,253 of those Views were the Home page on September 8, with a “Page Referrer” of emailsignup.folkproject.org. I’m sure we’ll find a logical explanation.]

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

[Added 10/3: John has created a revised Web Numbers report that backs out those unusual Page Views from September 8, as well as a smaller batch on August 13. He doesn’t know yet why those views happened.]

John Lamb, webmaster

John also adds:

We were consciously trying to direct more people to the Troubadour calendar by linking to it on the home page blurb section for Troubadour events. It looks like that worked.

Tom Chapin brought a lot of traffic to Streaming Tuesdays and the seasonal traffic for UkeFest and Getaway are expected.

Merch – Paul Fisher (acting)

Nothing new to report.

Sound Reinforcement Committee Report October 2023

We provided sound for the four Friday night shows scheduled in September. All proceeded normally, without technical incidents. The new streaming service continues to provide incident free service.

The stage equipment restoration is nearing completion. I finished the list consisting of

4 tall mic stands

3 low mic stands

8 mic clips

4 instrument cables

4 replacement windscreens for the SM58 mics

2 mic stand carry bags

I placed orders for these with Sweetwater and Amazon. The total cost was $509

Most of this will arrive by Oct 6. As the item arrive I will rotate them into the active equipment.

John Mahon

Committee Chairperson

Swingin' Tern report for September

September 2: Dylan Simpson called to Melody Allegra Band

September 16: Donna Hunt called to Petrichord

Financially, there was a loss of $210 for the month.

Leigh Walker

Swingin' Tern report for September

September 2: Dylan Simpson called to Melody Allegra Band

September 16: Donna Hunt called to Petrichord

Financially, there was a loss of $210 for the month.

Leigh Walker

Hello Everyone,

Sorry for being so late with my report. Part of the problem was I forgot to hit send.

Attached is the current Profit and Loss Statement.

We have $32K in our checking but will be spending most of it to cover all the expenses for the Getway this weekend.

Lots of things going on. We filed an extension back when our 990 was due for a couple of reasons. Karen and I have just completed and filed the 990ez over the weekend. We used to be able to send a printed form but now the only way to file is electronically and setting that up wasn't easy. We also completed our CRI Nonprofit dontation forms.

I have been working on updating our PayPal account so that all the people who need to use it have their own login credentials and everyone isn't using the same one.

I have also been sorting out some ASCAP problems. Seems they got our checks from first quarter but never entered the reports so things got a little wonky. One more edit should fix everything.

I have to apologise over the mix up with Christine Lavin's tip check. We originally had the wrong address. I thought Karen had taken care of it however, she had sent me an email asking me to hand write a check and I missed it. So she thought I sent it and I thought she sent it. I am writing it as I write this.

Respectfully submitted

Peggy Karr / Treasurer

From: The Troubadour <mike.agranoff@folkproject.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 1, 2023 1:55 PM
To: Boardplus@FolkProject.org
Subject: Troubadour Booking Report: October 2023

September Troubadour numbers were pretty close to last month’s.  Average paid attendance was 62.0 for the month, a little below par, and a little below what I had expected.  One interesting statistic was that for Máire Ní Chathasaigh & Chris Newman last Friday, of the 82 total attendees, fully 32 were unpaid. (14 volunteers, 11 ticks redeemed, 6 second-timer passes redeemed, and 1 performer guest.)  Cost of doing business, I suppose, but a lot more than usual.  September did run a small $155 in the black.  Year-to-date, we made $729 profit in our actual operations, not including an additional $1,229 in personal donations.

Another interesting point to note is that for the September 15 show with Silk City, we had an unexpectedly high paid attendance of 82, despite the fact that it took place during Rosh Hashanah. (And at least 3 of the band members are Jewish.)  Among the paid attendees were such luminaries as Beppe Gambetta and John Weingart (Producer and host of the long-running folk radio show, “Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio.) 

Over the past few months, the two rows we’ve been reserving for masked attendees have been nearly or completely empty.  So starting in October we will no longer be reserving those rows, and the entire room will be mask-optional.  We will keep our eye on the COVID situation, and resume reserving a masked-only section if it feels warranted.  I would welcome any input from the Board on that subject.

New bookings since last month:

1. Dec. 29:  Jerry Krantman booked to open for me.  FP member, and clever songwriter.  2023 is now fully booked up.

2. Jan. 5:  Zuko, Phillips, Cohn, & Starr booked to open for Deni Bonet & Chris Flynn.  Harmony-driven folk/pop duet, including 2 key members of Harmonytryx.

3. March 1:  Tom Chapin.  ‘Nuff said.

4. March 15:  Andrew Dunn as feature act, with Hannah Dunn opening.  Father-daughter FP songwriters.

5. March 22: Beppe Gambetta, guitar virtuoso headlining, with Carol Walker, dulcimer virtuoso opening.

6. March 29: Carol Wise, who opened for Vance Gilbert this year.  Inciteful songwriter.

7. May 3: The Loose Canons.  11-member choral group, including a number of FP members, with lots of humor, and some pop covers.

8. October 18 (2024): Muriel Anderson returns.  Guitar and harp-guitar wizard playing music of many genres with multi-media backdrop projections.

Highlight show for October:

1. Well, there’s only one regular Troubadour show in October, what with Getaway, Open Stage, and the Halloween Show occupying three Fridays.  And that’s songwriter, Dobro master, and Red Molly alumna, Abbie Gardner.

Respectfully submitted,

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Troubadour Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA

www.Troubadour.FolkProject.org