Minutes, May 21, 2019

Minutes, May 21, 2019

--Natalie Weston (via telephone)

--Bob Fellenstein

--Virginia Winn
--John Wetzel
--Dianne Britton
--Fred Drusekis

--Marguerite Frongillo

The minutes of the previous meeting were approved.

The treasurer gave a brief report on available funds.

Various people provided their thoughts on the last two dances, which were both at our new venue at the Quaker meeting hall.

Attendance is low, but the dancers who attended the last dance seemed to enjoy themselves.  The working capacity of the hall seems to be about 46 to 48 dancers, allowing 40 to dance at most at one time.

We can cover the costs of most dances with that many dancers, but not our yearly costs, and not "big name/expensive" bands and such.

Dianne Cahill sent us an email indicating that she has determined she cannot continue to serve on the board, but she is happy to help us out when she can.

There was some discussion of using Survey Monkey to reach out to our dancers and get feedback.  Natalie agreed to look into the Survey Monkey issue, including possible downsides, such as this service possibly requesting that survey respondents identify themselves using (for example) their facebook ID, and then demanding access to friend lists and things of that sort in order to respond to the survey.

We discussed the fact that apparently no one has updated the list of email recipients in a while.  Virginia will try to find copies of the handwritten lists of people wanting to join our email lists.  These were photographed, and may even exist as paper copies with the names crossed out once they were photographed.  Virginia will also check with Victor to see if he has any of those photographs of email lists.  We will then be able to include those new email recipients on our newsletters and such.

We agreed that Natalie would take over the maintaining of the email list (ie. trying to keep the email list of dancers up to date) and that Fred would maintain and update the website with things such as the current pricing scheme, which was incorrect as of the time of the last dance.

We discussed how to proceed with booking, which required us to first look at our upcoming schedule in light of recent events and issues (venue change being prime).

We decided not to have a dance in July, and to have one in August, with a pot luck included in that one.

We decided that booking could proceed for next season on that basis, with some reservation about the December date, which is far too close to Christmas.

Natalie reported on her research on the metrics of our mailchimp outreach.  Those metrics looked pretty good.

Natalie and Connie agreed to be responsible for sending out reminder/newsletter emails.

We discussed continuing our efforts to find a better venue.  This included the idea that we need to maintain a list of places we have "checked out".  We also agreed that this is best done by use of a spreadsheet, and that Fred should be the one to set up and maintain the spreadsheet.  Presumably this spreadsheet would be available for viewing by all (and possibly for editing by anyone investigating veneus?), in order to prevent different board members from investigating venues that have already been checked on and rejected (or are already in process of evaluation).  The spreadsheet allows us to have columns for accept/reject, as well as things like parking, bathrooms, ambience etc.

We did not discuss the need for recruiting new board members, other than to welcome a new one at this meeting.  Welcome, Bob Fellenstein!

We voted in the slate of officer candidates as developed during the last meeting, as follows:

President:  John Wetzel

Vice Presidient/Booking agent: Marguerite Frongillo

Secretary:  Fred Druseikis

Treasurer: Virginia Winn

We also voted in the following members-at-large:

Jonathan Janzen

Bob Fellenstein

Connie Robinette

Natalie Weston

Cayce Thompson

Dianne Britton

Kenny Greer

Victor Gascon  (Victor has resigned, but we are hoping he will agree to rejoin us as a member at large if and when he is able and willing)

The next meeting will be on July 16, 2019

The meeting was adjourned.