The meeting was called to order at 8:17 PM on February 4, by President Elizabeth Lachowicz.  This meeting was held via Zoom.

ROLL CALL

Present: Mike Agranoff, Loretta Brooks, Jeff Canter, Christine DeLeon, Todd Dennison, Sam Edelston, Paul Fisher, Doug Heacock, Jeff Jonas, Allan Kugel, Elizabeth Lachowicz, John Mahon, Bob McNally, George Otto, Tina Ross, Mark Schaffer and Robin Schaffer, Jean Scully and Pamela Zave. 

Absent: Sandie Reilly.

Guests: None

MOTIONS MADE

• The minutes of the January 2025 monthly  meeting were approved with 2 abstentions and 0 oppposed.

• A motion to adjourn was made at 9:48 PM and approved unanimously.

TREASURER'S OVERVIEW 

Treasurer Jeff Jonas stands on the written report.  Sam Edelston commented on the large positive cash flow shown by Troubadour in the Treasurer’s Report.  Mark Schaffer and Mike Agranoff said that the results were very good but only about half as much as indicated in the P&L report.  Mark and Mike said more would be covered in the Troubadour and Concerts reports.

President Elizabeth Lachowicz pointed out that there have been no discussions on creating a Finance Committee position for Peggy Karr as suggested in January.

Elizabeth also pointed out that there were no new business or old business agenda items received by her prior to the meeting.

OLD BUSINESS

There were no Old Business items on the agenda.

NEW BUSINESS

There were no New Business items on the agenda.

COMMITTEE REPORT HIGHLIGHTS 

Newsletter

George Otto stood on his report.  Elizabeth thanked him and his many elves that help run the workshop.  George said they make it work and he appreciates them all.

Publicity

Sam Edelston said the bad news was that he was not going to stand on his written report because there were a couple of things that he wanted to point out.

For the first item, Sam ceded the floor to Mark Schaffer (eCommunications) who reported that, for the third time in 500 issues of the Music Alert, he didn’t get the Monday Alert out until Tuesday, which caused problems for Streaming chair Gary Pratt since the Monday Alert focuses on the Streaming Tuesday concert.  Mark told Gary that he had been working on other Folk Project matters all day on Monday and was unable to get it done.  He also told Gary that he would offer to the Board to train anyone else to take over the task as he has many responsibilities right now.  Mark explained that it took three or four hours to put out each Alert.  President Elizabeth remarked that nobody was raising their hands to take it over and asked Board members to see if they can think of anyone who might take the job.  Mike Agranoff suggested we consider going to one issue per week.  Mark reported that Gary had also mentioned the option but he felt that we would lose coverage compared to what we have now.  Mark finished by thanking Loretta and Jean for the help they give him every week.

The second item involved an issue of privacy.  A viewer who gave a tip to an artist had their email added to the artist’s mailing list without permission and was very upset.  This was handled amicably by Gary (Streaming), John (Web), the artist and the viewer.  The artists are sent the email addresses of tippers so that they can send thank you messages but must not use them to build their mailing list without the express permission of the viewer.  In this case, it was discovered that a setting in the artist’s system was adding names to the regular mailing list automatically.  With John’s help this was corrected but John had also pointed out that we did not have a Privacy Policy on our website.  Sam suggested that he should have added that as a new business item and asked that we add that for the March meeting.  After a long period of comments by a number of Board members, it was agreed that Jeff Canter would collect information on how other groups handle privacy policies and that the issue would be on the agenda for March.

Sam also re-iterated his request for more Board members to participate in the Click Clique.

Special Events/Troubadour

Mark reported that we have learned a lot from last year and we are getting better at booking.  Our attendance so far this year has been between 80 and 180, a big improvement, and all made at least some money.  For the year, we are over $2000 in the black.  Mark says the bigger names have been turning things around and that the ability to make a little extra on a big name allows him to book some really good but lesser-known talents and still come out ahead in the end.  The real mission for our concerts is to boost “asses in seats” and go back to having a dependable, regular audience that comes to our show every week.

Mark also promoted focusing on community colleges because those students (as opposed to students at schools with a wider draw) are more likely to remain in the area.  He made contact with a professor at Morris County College who teaches traditional and American music as well as sound recording.  From those students, we are going to try to bring in some to work with us on our shows.

Mark is also looking to negotiate with some artists to do a cohort of shows for us and two other Northeast venues at a fixed price.  He has been working closely with Sara at Caffe Lena and getting a lot of good advice.

Swingin’ Tern

Doug stands on his written report.

Horses Sing None of It

Future Planning

Robin had 3 things to add to her written report.

Jeff Canter has been working on identifying grants that we can apply to.  Since the best way to reach these family foundations is through personal contacts, Robin is going to send the board the list of foundations and trustees so people can identify possible contacts.

Future Planning also wants to experiment with having music in the lobby at MUUF before shows and during the intermission.  Because of royalty issues, the music must be royalty-free and Robin is looking for a volunteer to curate a list of possible recordings.   Bob pointed out that this can be public domain or music we have permission to use in a non-broadcast way from the owners.  A suggestion was made to put something into the Newsletter.

Since joining the Morris County Chamber of Commerce, Mark and Robin have attended meetings and we have been given the right to have an informational table at the February 21st meeting.

Mark added that Robin had a former colleague who is a professional web designer who has been working to redesign our event pages and adding features that Todd and John find very useful  She is now a member and her name is Lauren Mesmer.

Open Stage / Membership

Chair Todd Dennison said that he stood on his report.  Mike Agranoff requested that, in the future, the report should also include the Open Stage financials.  After some back and forth, it was stated that that information is already available and generated by Mike.  The possibility of lumping all concert info into one financial report with separate lines for venues was also discussed.

On the membership side, Todd has set a goal for himself of cleaning up the procedures and moving the Membership processing to the cloud by next month.

Sound Reinforcement

John said that, beyond the written report, he had a chance to see the setup in the new, larger performance space at MUUF.  He discovered that the system is not currently set up to handle dual mixes (room and streaming) but that he and our technical contact at MUUF (Alex) will find a workaround.

Newsletter

George stands on his written report but added that he had a problem downloading the report and could not figure it out until he contacted John Lamb, who had changed something without notifying George.  He had even tried going to a local bar to use their wi-fi without any luck.  All is now resolved.

Elizabeth sent her thanks to all those that make the Newsletter happen.

Troubadour Staffing

Jean reports that things are going well except for some issues related to the building changes at MUUF. At the sold out Cheryl Wheeler show, they arrived to find all of our coffee pots missing.  Some scrambling saved the day and since then MUUF has offered us lockable storage space to avoid these issues in the future.  Jean is also collecting kitchen items from members who have things to donate (platters, thermal carafes, etc.).    There was also discussion on the sale of bottled water at the entrance to the sanctuary.

LAST MINUTE DISCUSSIONS

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting  proper was adjourned at  9:48  PM. Next month’s meeting is March 4, at 8:15 PM, via Zoom. 

Submitted by Paul Fisher

NEWSLETTER

Newsletter Committee Report 2025-02

1 message

'George Otto' via BoardPlus - Current board, select alumni, key volunteers

<boardplus@folkproject.org>

Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at

11:09 PM

Reply-To: George Otto <g_otto@comcast.net>

To: "boardplus@folkproject.org" <boardplus@folkproject.org>

Cc: George Otto <GeorgeOtto@mac.com>

Newsletter Committee Report 2025-02

Things are proceeding as usual with the invaluable help of Kathi Caccavale, Pat Brangs, Bill

Henderson, Gary Pratt, Paul Fisher, and Todd Dennison.

Todd has been updating the newsletter email list in Constant Contact. In the past, new members were

added to the mailing list when they joined, but they were not removed when their membership expired.

As a result, there were over 800 email addresses in the newsletter list, which far exceeded our

membership. Todd has recently gone through the list and removed the expired members, resulting in a

new trimmed-down list with only 410 entries. He intends to keep this new list current. It will be

interesting to see how many of the people who were dropped will sign up again once they realize they

are no longer getting the member announcements.

George Otto

Folk Project Newsletter Editor

newsletter@folkproject.org

OPEN STAGE

PUBLICITY

sam.edelston@folkproject.org <sam.edelston@folkproject.org> Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 8:05 PM

To: boardplus@folkproject.org

Cc: publicitycomm@folkproject.org

Hi, all –

Here’s the February Publicity Report, along with the Web stats. (Kathi is on vacation, so I didn’t include her Facebook

charts.)

See you this evening.

Sam

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2 attachments

2025-02 FP Publicity Monthly Report.docx

39K

FPWebNumbers202502.xlsx

38K

SOUND REINFORCEMENT

SPECIAL EVENTS AND TROUBADOUR

STREAMING CONCERTS

TREASURER

SWINGIN’ TERN