Minutes, January 18, 2023

 Minutes, January 18, 2023

The meeting was held remotely, using Zoom software provided by Karl.  Attendees were Marguerite, John, Dianne, Fred and Karl.  The meeting itself commenced around 7:20 when it was apparent no one else would be joining.

The first item was the treasurer's report, provided by Dianne.  This took some time as there was a lot to review.  There was extensive discussion of how to account for funds we "would have spent" if we were paying CMFA 20% of our door.  It was agreed that this needed to be accounted for in such a way so as to account for what we actually spent AND for what we would have spent.  We also agreed that Dianne could deal with this issue as she sees fit.

There was also one item that came up that requires further information.  There is a notation in one of the charts that Dianne showed us, which seems to imply that we gave CMFA $80 dollars for our very first dance at the pink room.  It is not clear right now whether that was put down as an expected expenditure, or whether those dollars were actually paid out, and if so, by who, and to whom.  Dianne is going to check with Victor on this.  It may also be possible to determine whether that $80 dollars disappeared out of the cash kitty, out of the bank account or didn't go away at all, by looking at all the funds we had before that dance and comparing it to all the dollars we had after that dance. 

Next, John reported on the status of the installation of equipment in the pink room (equipment slated to be transferred to CMFA ownership to compensate them for allowing us free use of the room until we have recovered those expenditures).  The status is that all equipment we purchased for this transfer has been installed, and all that remains to be done is to test the bluetooth part of the system, and then brief CMFA staff on how to use the gear.  The formal transfer will take place after those things have been done.

Next, Marguerite provided the status of her booking efforts.  We are making good progress, but some slots (bands and or callers) for upcoming dances remain to be filled.  This discussion also covered the next agenda item, which is the status of which dates at CMFA we have been able to reserve for our use.

Next, the status of our social media outreach was discussed.  Dianne and Karl are handling this, and based on recent increases in attendance at dances, these efforts are effective and are bearing fruit.  One important issue we discussed was how to keep control of our branding and continue to use variants of  the text string "contracola" and keep that within our ownership in the online universe.

Next, John reported that he had collected all information that he thinks he needs to correctly identify which persons and entities are covered by our insurance.  John will write up what he thinks are correct identifiers, and negotiate with our insurance agent to correct our insurance documents in a manner acceptable to us and the insurer.

Next we discussed our future plans, basically how far ahead to try and plan dances.  Marguerite pointed out that planning as far ahead as possible makes her job easier (more lead time).  On the other hand, our future plans ought to be somewhat guided by finding out what works and what doesn't.  For now, we seem to be happy with looking ahead about three months, except that, as Karl pointed out, there are some special cases where we have to decide what our plans are way ahead of time, such as during the November and December holidays.

The attendance at our last two dances was the next agenda item, but this had already been covered earlier during the discussion regarding our social media outreach.   

We finished by setting our next board meeting as Wednesday March 1.

MINUTES NOVEMBER 16,2022

Attendees  were :
Virginia Winn, John Wetzel, Karl Smith, and Marguerite Frongillo. During votes, John was proxy for Fred, and Marguerite was proxy for Dianne.

At 7:30,  The meeting commenced with a report on the November 5 dance:
In spite of being unannounced at our previous dance (10-22), there were 16 dancers (ncluding two board members). We charged $8 admission, as the first mailchimp announcement of this dance, sent 10-28, gave $8 as the admission cost. We needed to charge this amount, as subsequent personal advertising by board members had to adhere to that price, so as to avoid any potential charges of false advertising.
Karl kindly is contributing $54.00 in cash to help with door shortfall.
Future dances will have $10.00 admission, as this is our normal charge..
So far we have not paid anything for CMFA. At this point we have paid out (or will pay out) about $750 for sound equipment that John, Karl, and other COTMD members have purchased for and installed at CMFA for the use of all CMFA clients.  Our room rent for CMFA is expected to be 20% of the door for a given dance. Twenty per cent of the door for our 4 dances at CMFA have not yet added up to $750, so we have not paid any room rent yet.

John and Marguerite provided different parts of the treasurer's report, since Victor was not present.  Those present voted to approve the report.
Aside from the normal "status of funds" part of the report, it also included mention of a $500 contribution from an anonymous doner, and a $54 cash donation from Karl to help cover the shortfall caused by our inability to charge a full $10 per dancer at the last dance.

The attendees voted to approve the minutes of the previous "emergency" meeting (these are posted on our board website!)

There was an agenda item to approve expenditures of $100 for canned music, but this item was not taken up for discussion.

Approve expenditures for sound gear for CMFA:
John provided a list of costs for all already-purchased and installed "intended for transfer to CMFA" sound equipment, as well as for other items intended for the same that still needed to be purchased, with the latter being close estimates and the former being the actual amounts spent.  The total amount we expect to spend for gear that is intended for transfer to CMFA  should total less than $750.00.  It is intended that COTMD ‘s donation of this equipment will serve two purposes:
1. The funds thus spent will be considered as substituting for fees we would ordinarily be charged for use of the CMFA space.
2. The equipment will allow more flexible use of the "pink room" by our group and other groups which might be able to make use of a complete sound system that can handle any audio source (microphones, line level signals and bluetooth signals).

A vote to approve all of the above previous and future expenditures (expected to total less than $750) was proposed, seconded and approved by vote.  The vote has the effect of approving all expenditures for the CMFA intended equipment that has already been paid out by Victor, and all of the above items that have not yet actually been purchased, once those expenditures are submitted to our new treasurer.

Victor had recently announced via email his intention to resign his position as our treasurer.  Dianne Britton offered to serve as our next treasurer.  A motion was tendered to approve her as our new treasurer.  The motion was seconded and all present voted in favor.

John announced that Dianne has kindly volunteered to (in addition to acting as treasurer) be in charge of our BlogSpot website, as well as MailChimp marketing or our dances.

Those present enthusiastically suggested much needed steps that we hope that Dianne will address:
A] Update the “Dance Information” section of our BlogSpot, designating music as “recorded or live band”
B] Have a prominent button or link where people can request having our email notifications sent to their email address; have this in multiple places- even in MailChimp emails.
C] Have a prominent “donation” button in our BlogSpot.
D] Get rid of our outdated, unused websites, such as Lake Murray Contra.
E] Every link we have – email, Twitter, Facebook, Meetup, Instagram etc- needs to be displayed on every marketing outreach item. Karl said  he would help with Twitter, Meetup,  and Instagram, but it might be best to have a designated board member who could handle all online and real world marketing efforts.  For now, Karl and Dianne will be handling their respective marketing platforms and efforts.

John explained that our insurance contract holds harmless our organization AND both of our venue owners, CMFA and “Lexington County Contradance.” The latter term does not correctly identify the protected entity, so that needs to be changed to whoever is the responsible owner of the land parcel that contains the Lake Murray Contra Hall (most likely Susan Fort or someone in her immediate family).

We discussed possible ways to manage contacts between our insurer and the board:  Currently we need to remember to contact our agent yearly, to pay the bill. It would be much better for us to give our agent our contact information and contact us every year. Karl is on record for contacting our agent, who works for a subsidiary of the insurance company.

The meeting attendees were informed that we have paid out $650 for insurance this year, and this will be an ongoing yearly expense.

We discussed the current problems associated with not having a fixed, known to be available for sure venue, which holds up our ability to hire callers and bands because we cannot do that if we don't have a venue pinned down.

We briefly discussed "music licensing" in general and Emily Rush in particular:
John mentioned that music licensing and recorded music contributed to changing square dancing from a folk tradition to a money-making modern "club square dancing" phenomenon. John also stated that Emily Rush is a great (and widely acclaimed) caller.  However, charging as much for a collection of recorded music curated by her as would ordinarily suffice to pay for a live band seems excessive (John's opinion).

John also shared pertinent comments that board member Kenny sent via email and that are paraphrased here:
1. It is crucial that we be able to plan our dances a well in advance, and announce each dance way ahead of time, so our dancers know we will be there for them.
2. It is important to minimize, or even phase out the recorded music dances within about a year because our crowd wants live music.
3. The caller runs the dance. Others need to acknowledge that the caller has a plan, and to cooperate with the caller.

Much time having past, John adjourned the meeting at about 9:15 PM.

NOTE (by John Wetzel): Although this information does not match what was decided AT this meeting, the next meeting has been scheduled for January 18 at Marguerite's house.

Minutes, Occtober 27, 2022

On October 27, 2022 a hastily planned "emergency" meeting was held at Marguerite's house. Since low attendance was expected, several people gave proxy voting powers to other board members who they expected to attend. Only Marguerite, Bob and John were actually able to attend.  Victor was planning to attend, but could not.  Virginia, Fred and Dianne gave proxy voting powers to John and Marguerite, to be used if appropriate.  Karl attended via a telephone set on speakerphone mode.   Since this meeting was not a regular meeting, and because there were very few people present, John W decided to limit the agenda to the "emergency" items.  The emergency consisted primarily of disorganized scrambling to figure out whether we could have dances AND should have dances in November (previously planned) and December (previously rejected) AND, if so, how to pull that off.  A secondary consideration was looking ahead to the first three months of 2023, and trying to do some longer range planning to cut down on the disorganized, very short fused zig zagging of our organization.

Karl reported that per a meeting with Joseph, the following dates were available:  Nov 5 and Dec 10.  Marguerite responded that Kenny was available on Nov 5 and that no one had responded regarding December.  The board had previously decided that December would have no dances, but Karl insisted this was a bad idea.  Because Karl was on the phone, the entire rest of the meeting was taken up by the participants arguing about whether to consider a December dance.  Because of the way phones work, this ended up with everyone present being very annoyed at our inability to converse in full duplex mode (meaning you and the other person can talk and hear each other at the same time).  It quickly became apparent that the conversation and the meeting were a waste of time, and so the meeting was halted with some basic planning instructions as the only take-away.  John asked Karl to approach Joseph (of CMFA) about the following dates in January, February and March of 2022:  The second Saturday of each of those months AND the Friday just before that (for canned dances) AND the fourth Saturday of each of those months (for Live band dances).  Karl was asked to explore ALL of those dates with Joseph, and to inform Marguerite immediatly of the subset of those days that were provisionally available.  John also asked Marguerite to investigate the availability of callers (and bands where applicable) as soon as Karl provided her with those provisionally available venue dates.

It is important to note that as of this meeting, the official board plan was still to have NO December dance.  This point was re-iterated to all board members after the meeting, via email.

Because of the emergency nature of the meeting, the lack of participants and the ongoing lack of agreement about how to proceed, no attempt was made to conduct ordinary business, such as treasurer's reports.  No formal board approved decisions were made at this meeting. 

As previously agreed, the next regular meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, November 16, 2022, at Virginia's house.

Minutes September 7, 2022

 COTMD Board Meeting September 7, 2022 at Virginia Winn's house.

John called the meeting to order at 7:30pm.

Attending in person: John, Dianne, Bob [Barb], Fred, Virginia, Marguerite, Victor; nobody was remote.  It was determined that we have a quorum.

Victor presented an abbreviated treasures' report stating the cash on hand balance in the checking account.  Victor dontated $100 to help cover expenses for the last dance (held 8/28/22 at Lake Murray.)

Minutes of the previous meetings were read and approved.  These were for the Board meetings held July 13, and May 25.

The main topic of dicussion was around issues for using the CMFA [Columbia Music Festival Association] space on Pulaski Street.  It was generally agreed that using this space as much as we can is a good thing in view of the fact that Lake Murray is so far out of town.

There are issues:
    (a) Scheduling: it is unclear when we can get commitment for our dances;
    (b) How often and when to promote the new location.
    (c) Sound support issues because of equipment.
    (d) A donation to CFMA is expected; the question is how much; $80/dance?
    (e) CFMA requires insurance.

We are striving for two dances per month.  The 4th Saturday dance will be with a live band.  The 2nd Saturday dance will be with recorded music.

[NOTE: At the time these notes were transcribed, we had in fact held three dances at Pulaski Street, on 9/17/22, 10/08/22, and 10/22/22.  The 9/17/22 and 10/08/22 dances were with recorded music.  The 10/22/22 dance was with a live band.]

The Board authorized Karl to get the insurance coverage as required by CFMA.  He stated that the cost might be in the $600 range per year.  CFMA has contacts that are familiar with the requirements.

There was a lot of discussion about sound support, given that it had already been established at Lake Murray.  The going forward plan is to buy a mixing board (~$250) and some powered speakers.  The board approved these expenditures.

Booking for Pulaski Street can not proceed until the venue schedule has been finalized.  It was agreed that we would have band scheduled through October.  November and December schedules are unclear.

The next board meeting was scheduled for 11/16/22.

The meeting adjourned at 8:32pm.

Fred Druseikis
transcribed on 10/23/2022 from notes