Minutes 11/17/2015

Minutes of the COTMD Board meeting of November 17, 2015

Attending were:

Natalie Weston

John Wetzel

Dianne Britton

Virginia Winn

Connie Robinette

Fred Druseikis

Marguerite Frongillo

Victor Gascon

Poonam Dhull

Tim Piesch

The meeting was opened, and began by approving the minutes of the previous meeting.

Virginia presented the treasurers report.  We lost $111 at our most recent dance (some of this may have been funds disbursed between dances, not funds "lost" at the dance).

The losses at our most recent dance was discussed, this included a long discussion about beginner classes.  The board voted to begin all beginner lessons as close as possible to 7PM, using either the hired caller or any available member of the board, whenever possible, regardless of the size of the group being taught.

The mailing list status was briefly reviewed.

Marguerite presented the current status of her booking efforts.

COTMD booking policies have been completed and posted on our website.

COTMD safety & comfort policies have been completed and posted on our website.

Natalie Weston and Poonam Dhull agreed to serve on the board, and were voted in as members at large.

Recruitment among students was discussed at some length, and Poonam agreed to post wherever she could at USC.

Recruitment among non-students was discussed at length, including many ideas for recruiting from churches and other non student community groups of all sorts.  

The "Summer 2016" agenda item for this meeting was tabled for future discussion.

NEW BUSINESS

1. Tim suggested that we add links to dance videos to our website.
2. Poonam suggested that we post our dance events on other dance groups Facebook pages (not limited to Contra groups). We already cross-post with Lake Murray and Charleston, but we can expand to include Swing and Ballroom dance organizations, and perhaps even Meetup groups that we belong to.
3. Connie mentioned the related possibility of joining Midlands Gives with other non profits, to garner some contributions and hopefully a lot of attention.

The next meeting will be on January 12, 2016.

Meeting was adjourned.

Minutes 10/20/2015

Meeting minutes, October 20, 2015

Attendees:

Fred Druseikis
Dianne Britton
John Wetzel
Tim Piesch
Virginia Winn
Connie Robinette
Marguerite Frongillo
---------------
Victor Gascon (by phone link)

Victor telephoned in, and called the meeting to order.

The meeting began by approving the previous minutes, as posted in draft form on the
Board blog/website.

The treasurer's report was presented.  We lost roughly $270 at the September dance, and lost $111 dollars at the October dance.  With those losses, plus a substantial donation by an anonymous donor, our available funds (cash+banked) now stand at $3,425.  The treasurers report was approved.

Virginia mentioned that we are expecting a form from CDSS, and John said he had the form in his car, and would continue to recieve mail from CDSS until their database was updated to show Victor as the current point of contact.

Mailing list status was briefly discussed.

Marguerite reported on the booking situation.  This developed into a discussion about the possibility of collaborating with neighboring contra organizations to bring a band called The Contrarians to our region and to our own dance.

The group voted to approve the posting of our booking policy and our Safety and Comfort policy (authored by Victor) on our website.  Victor will post these policies sometime soon.

The issues of REVIEWING MISSION and REVIEWING VISION (from the agenda for this meeting)
have been set aside to be dealt with at a future meeting, owing to difficulties with telephone conferencing at this meeting.

For the same reason, the issue of having a live band and doing a techno contra for the two dances we anticipate having next summer was set aside, to be handled at the next meeting.  This also includes discussion of sharing an event with another dance group, such as the swing dancers.

The current possibilities for recruiting new board members, and the status of that effort, were discussed.

The pressing need to increase efforts to reach out to students was discussed in detail.

The fact that there was no pricing information available on recent iterations of our website presence, and that some folks were confused about whether we were still even collecting required ticket money at dances, was discussed.  We decided it was important for "somebody" (this probably means all of us) to make sure that pricing information is always present and easily findable on any websites, posters, documents etc.  This probably resulted from taking down the pricing info during the "donations only" summer dances, and then forgetting to put them back up.  We discussed the need to make it VERY CLEAR that such arrangements are temporary, if we use them again in the future.

The urgent need to have another meeting to discuss items passed over in this one was discussed.  We decided to have our next meeting on November 17th, 2015

The meeting was adjourned.