July 27, 2026 Minutes
7:00 PM
Branding Iron
Call To Order:
President Nathan S
Roll Call:
Nathan S, Nathan T, Katie, Mike, Kelsey, Heather
Approval of previous minutes:
Motion to approve: Kelsey, Seconded by Mike, Unanimous passage
Public member commentary:
NA
Executive Director Report:
Sponsorship
We just found out that Monument Health wants to sponsor again, I got them in the program for Minnesela. They are coming in at $1,000. This helps bring our Season total more in line with last year.
Grants
I have applied to Midco for another grant, and will hopefully know soon if we get it or not. Now that Minnesela is done, my hope is to hit several other grants before the end of the year. We also got notice we did receive the Arts Council grant we applied for in the amount of $2910. I will know more about that grant and when it will come in soon.
Center Stage Theater Camp
With Minnesela and Sharon being out of town, we have not been able to get together to go over the event. I am still waiting on some receipts for the program to get a full accounting of what was spent. We will also talk about what worked and didn’t to see if it would be worth it again. She also said she has a check for us for the Improv from the FAB event we did. Not sure how much, but that will be some more money coming in.
GOAT
After much back and forth, Toi and I have decided on doing an original work from Toi for GOAT this year. The script is fun and should work really well. Auditions are coming up early August and practices starting after that.
Minnesela
Since the show just finished I am still rounding up receipts and such and invoices to get a full accounting of what was spent on the show, so I should have that next meeting. For now I just want to say that I think the show was a huge success, we had a great turnout, up from last year’s Is He Dead? There were lots of new people to BFACT who attended the show and we got several new people out to be in the show itself. Overall the reception was fantastic, people seemed to really enjoy the show! The cast and crew were amazing and I can’t thank them enough for their hard work, especially Heather. She did so much with this show, especially with me ending up on stage. She was invaluable to the show and was a great director.
Total ticket sales revenue was $4,009.30 and we spent $220.70 in fees to Ludus, which was less than what we spent for less tickets with Is He Dead? We also received $700 in individual show sponsors for the show and a $200 donation to help pay for the cap guns. We also got $100 in donations (gross revenue $89.95) with the show. These were add-ons people paid when paying for online tickets. We’ve had this option before but was never really done by patrons. The fact we had 13 donations this time, means the Ludus reminders are working in that regards.
Total we had 93 people on Thursday (except that number should be like 85 because I had to refund some comps while we were testing) 80 on Friday, 102 on Saturday and 121 on Sunday. My fear was that we would cannibalize our own patrons by adding a show, but that was not the case.
Ludus
Ludus has been working great and I’m just scratching the surface of it. Ticket sales went through just fine and the donation add-on worked great. The marketing emails have seemed to work just fine which means we are done with MailChimp. We have started using some of the Volunteer tools, I had people sign up for slots for bake sale, and we can utilize that more in the future. We need to move over Volunteers into the system, but overall I am extremely happy with the switch.
Workshops
Crystal will be holding her second part of her Costuming Workshop in September and I am planning on doing my Directing Workshop again sometime in October. I am still hoping for another Workshop other than these still this year, talking with people about options.
Officer Reports:
- President
- $161.50 in current printing costs for the Minnesela programs
- Vice President
- 4th of July recap, everything ran smoothly
- Secretary
- Nothing to report
- Treasurer
- Current bank balance : $7257.36
- Public Relations
- Huge increase in views and engagement on Facebook thanks to Minnsela push. We made $363 on our night selling 50-50 tickets at hometown Thursday nights. Thank you to Geno for coming down in costume to help. Set up promotional director interviews for visit Belle Fourche and the Chamber to advertise Minnesela. City is potentially interested in pairing with us for a major event in 2028 as this will be a big anniversary year for the city. They want to do a cattle drive and would like us to maybe do a Belle Fourche history play? Will contact the city to see who is planning these events so we can sit down with them and determine if this is a viable option to us.
- Volunteer Committee
- Have not been able to meet recently due to Minnsela. Will start getting into ludus and learning functions/ inputting the data we have collected. Will work on creating user guides for things like how to work the bake sale and how to take tickets so new volunteers can get up to speed quickly and we can streamline and standardize our processes. Requests that board members review the model for organizing the drive and begin clearing up to meet strat planning goal.
- Fundraising Committee
- Absent
- Senior outreach Committee
- Now that Minnesela is done I will be getting this Committee together and moving forward with it.
Old Business:
- Review strategic planning to do items: went over list quickly, we are working adequately towards our goals.
New Business:
- Bylaw discussion: Article IX, section 9.1 specifies that grounds to remove a board member include lack of participation or attendance. Member at large Arianna Scherer has not attended a board meeting since March and has not responded to numerous attempts at communication.
- Motion to remove Arianna Scherer as a board member due to 4 absences without communication by Mike, Seconded by Nathan T. Unanimous passage
- The board thanks Arianna for her service. This vote is neither a personal condemnation nor expulsion from membership. The board hopes Ari will continue to participate in BFACT in the future.
- A special election must be held at the next regular board meeting to fill the vacancy.
Next meeting:
8/24/26 @ 7pm Branding Iron
Adjournment:
Motion to adjourn: Kelsey, seconded by Katie. Unanimous passage
Respectfully submitted by Secretary Heather Pittman
