April 24, 2023 Minutes

Los Agaves
7:00 PM

CALL TO ORDER:

President Nathan S

ROLL CALL:

Nathan S, Nathan T, Heather, Allie, Sharon, Angela, Derek in attendance

APPROVAL OF PREVIOUS MINUTES:

Motioned Angela, Second Allie, Passed unanimously

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR REPORT:

Sound

I haven’t learned anything more about the sound system upgrades and with Nate on honeymoon we won’t hear anything until later next month. In the meantime I did create a document that has instructions on how to run sound and lights. I am in the process of finishing that up and then once Nate is back he will look over it and help me get it printed and possibly laminated and placed with the sound and light boards to help people with using them. Once these are all finished, I will start working to train new people on the light and sound boards. Will also speak with Nate at the rec about having someone look at the lights: there have been issues with the house lights not turning off in the last couple months.

Since we are unsure of what to do with the three additional hanging mics we have until we get new speakers in, I may place them on the ground in other places on the stage to help with sound for ‘Pride and Prejudice.’

Website & Newsletter

Now that the design is done on the new website, if anyone has any other suggestions or comments please feel free to let me know soon, I have begun work on the build-out. This will take some time to do and the current website will stay live until the new one is finished.

I also helped Sharon with getting all of our volunteers in MailChimp and created a basic template to use for the newsletter. I am also working on changing out all of that information on the website about how to sign-up. Thank you Sharon for getting the newsletter out for April!

I will be doing a photoshoot for the BOD for the new website soon, I will let everyone know when. I would also like very short bios from everyone. This should only be two to three sentences long. They should be written in third person.

Grants and Sponsorships

We have now received sponsorship checks from everyone who has said they will sponsor this season except for one. I am going to make a final push next week on businesses to see if we can pick up one or two more but then the extent of business sponsorships will be done for the season. I am still working on grants though. At the end of March we applied for a grant from the Beyond Idea Grant for $5,000. Thank you Heather for your help on this. We are waiting to hear back on grants we submitted to Midco Foundation, Monument Health, Walmart, the Max & Victoria Dreyfus Foundation and the Beyond Idea Grant. All total that is $19,500. Chances are we won’t get many or any of these, but I am hoping at least one or two come through.

Walmart has started up a program for nonprofits called Spark Good. We got signed up and it works a lot like Amazon Smile, if people purchase things online through Walmart, we can get a small percentage. I have already posted about this on our social media, but I will post more still. Since we signed up so early, we are supposed to be given $250 from Walmart, it is supposed to show up in our account soon.

Theater Cleanup

I will start putting the word out in May, but we are set for the theater cleanup on June 3 and 4. This will be a joint venture between the Rec, the school and us. The school has cleared out part of a shed on the football field and some of our larger pieces will need to go there. The Rec Center has requested that everything we have fit in the cage, small room and under the stairs in the garage and behind our black walls we built on stage left. We can still have items behind the back curtain, but there has to be room for people to be able to cross the stage there. That means some things will go to the shed, things will be organized and several things will be tossed. Nate is still working on getting storage built at the Rec, this work we will do will go a long way to showing the city council we are willing to work with them and the Rec and hopefully help us get that longer term project going. The school is still hoping to have that storage area at the middle school done and we can store costumes there, but there is no specific ETA. Hopefully this coming school year. There has been some talk of pushing this cleaning weekend out to another weekend, but we don’t have anything definite set there. As of right now, the work will be June 3 and 4 and we will need many volunteers to help.

OFFICER REPORTS:

President
- Getting Derek’s contract signed is a priority to be completed prior to next meeting. The rec center board is going from a city board to a community board that will also oversee parks. Plans to monitor transition and keep abreast of how this may affect us.
Vice President
- Nothing to report
Secretary
- Nothing to report at this time
Treasurer
- Bank Account $13,130.09. Didn’t get a chance to work on virtual meeting bylaw update. BFACT physical address should be changed with IRS. Nathan should get a letter in the mail when it is processed. (submitted prior to meeting in absence)
Creative Committee
- We met recently with the Creative Committee and will have another meeting coming up very soon. We recently announced our full season lineup which has gotten pretty good traction. We have begun very preliminary planning on next season as well.
- Summer Camp
  - We have things lined up for sure with JAM to work with them on a summer theater camp. It will be the week of June 5 – 9. The actual days and times are being worked on as well as the curriculum. We are very excited about this partnership and will have much more information next month.
- Pride and Prejudice
  - Things are moving forward on this show. We have begun our marketing push on this show with having the poster created and social media campaign starting to run. I will be going back several times in the next few weeks for more pictures and hopefully some video we can run to promote the show. Tickets are on sale now through the website. The news will be back to do another story on the show on May 2. We have some good buzz on this show already and will continue to push it to get the best attendance possible.
- Rock of Ages
  - We have officially been given the go-ahead to do Rock of Ages. We have already paid for everything, which came to $3,158.82. Scripts and music will be coming in during May. I will be directing this show with Toi as Assistant Director and Sharon as Musical Director. We have set auditions for May 23 and 24. Now that HS musical is done, I will work with Toi and Sharon to get the auditions fleshed out and then start promoting them as well as a schedule and budget. This show already has a lot of buzz around it, so I am expecting it to do well both in terms of volunteers and audience.
- Getting Our Acts Together
  - Allie is directing our one-act as part of this show and we are currently working on finding a script for this show. We have decided to purchase one this year instead of an original. Tyler Schone will be a back-up director in case Allie is unable to finish the show.
- House on Haunted Hill
  - Heather will be officially directing this show with me as Assistant Director. We don’t have much information for this show yet, but it will start gearing up as the season progresses.
Public Relations
- Attended chamber charity dinner. Attended rec center wellness fair and gave out cards. Contacts to be added to member newsletter lists from door prize sign ups. Riverfest will be signed up for. As the costumer for Pride and Prejudice, Angela reports that she overspent on costumes. Budgeted $400, spend $2000. Though she does not expect full reimbursement, it is suggested that period pieces have a more generous budget for costumes. It is also recommended that we develop a plan for how to handle situations that go over budget in the future.
Membership Committee
- Membership committee met on April 10th at 10:30am. Derek reviewed how to use the Mailchimp email platform to design the BFACT Newsletters. Discussion was held on how much content to include in the monthly Newsletter as well as the ideal timing to send out the email. Sharon will format the email to be sent out the week prior to the BOD meeting as well as finish inputting the new volunteer forms from P&P cast and crew. Derek will create the graphic for the Season and the shows to be include in the Newsletter, as well as upload the contacts from the shared file to the MailChimp platform. With just a few hiccups and delays the first Newsletter went out to 86 contacts on April 20th. The second Newsletter will hopefully be released a week prior to Rock of Ages Auditions and announce the fundraising Karaoke Event. Meeting info will be included in newsletters as wells as show and committee spotlights. Spark good link will also be added. Engagement was good. 48% opened, only one unsubscribed. 4% clicked links.
Grant & Fundraising Committee
- Chatted with roxy at the branding iron. We will not be charged to hold the fundraising event. In the main restaurant so we can have servers and bartenders. Short on availability, tentative date of july 14th from 8 to 11. Something borrowed no longer has karaoke machine but a dj we reached out to told us how to do it on our own for free using karafun.com. Promotion to begin shortly.