June 17, 2023 Minutes

Black Hills Diner
10:00 AM

CALL TO ORDER:

President Nathan S

ROLL CALL:

Nathan S, Nathan T, Heather, Kelsey, Angela, Sharon, Allie

APPROVAL OF PREVIOUS MINUTES:

Motioned Angela, Second Kelsey, passed unanimously

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR REPORT:

Grants, Sponsorships & SAM

We were turned down for the Midco grant, again. We can reapply in July and I will, this time I might ask for less money and see if we have any more luck. We are still waiting on 3 different grants for a total of $14,000. I’m really not sure what our odds are for any but we will cross our fingers. I will make another push for grants once ‘Rock of Ages’ is done and hopefully we can get a couple of others as we finish off this season. I will be calling a few specific businesses to see if we can get them onboard for a sponsorship ahead of ‘Rock of Ages,’ I am hoping we might get at least a couple of more during this push. Lastly I will be renewing our SAMS account at the end of this month, this is used for grants and other government verification purposes.

I need to check with Kelsey to see if we ever got that $250 from Walmart for Spark. If not, I will reach out and try and get that money

Website

I ran into a few technical snags while working on the new website. I have reached out to a programmer we use for our work and he said he would help when he gets a minute. I won’t be able to really crank on the website until after ‘Rock of Ages’ is done but I am hoping to have it done in enough time for the Halloween show. I still need a few sentence bio from everyone on the board except Nathan. Please get those to me in the next month or so. We will be taking photos for ‘Rock of Ages’ at the end of the month and we will work to get BOD photos taken around then. I will let you know when I have specifics.

Banner

I was able to order a banner for the rest of our season, it cost $147.10. It is an 8 x 4 heavy-duty vinyl banner with grommets. We will use this banner on our float for the 4th of July and then the Rec will hang it outside the building on the theater wall. They have agreed to hang the banner several weeks before each show we have left. If you want to look at it, it is in a box in the storage closet in the theater garage.

Cleanup

We started the theater cleanup on June 10 and 11. We had a pretty decent turnout on Saturday and even more on Sunday. We got through a lot of work. Thanks to Sentel we made one large load to the dump and have one more load of stuff that needs to go out of the theater. This needs to be done before June 23. I have spoken with Nathan about this and he is coming up with a date we can do this last load. It will require a couple of hands to load everything out.

When we spoke with the school we learned the storage at the Middle School actually won’t work for the storage of costumes unfortunately. With that in mind we built a rack in the cage for certain large items to hang and a coat rack above the piano. All of the rest of the costumes were gone through and sorted into new totes that are all labeled. Moving forward we will make sure that each group that uses these costumes will put things back in appropriate totes so it will be easier to find what we need. Reva has gotten approval from the school to purchase an additional 20 totes for shared use. We moved a couple of cabinets into the storage closet in the garage and are now storing all tools and items needed for building there. The paint was gone through and put in cabinets on the stage and makeup was moved to the men’s dressing room. We moved props above the piano case and built some more structure around the wood box.

What we have left to do is build some stairs to go up to the wood box which Terry will be working on, a curtain system of some kind to go in front of the black wall, attach the piano door in a new way so it works with the new system, and take a load of items to the storage shed at the HS track. I am hoping to do these either on June 24 or July 1. I will let people know when I have more concrete plans.

Nate has already looked at what we have done and is pretty pleased. We just need to do some finishing touches and then we will be done with this project for a while and there will be more space on the stage and it will look a bit more neat and tidy.

Karaoke Fundraiser

I will let Allie go into the finer details on the Karaoke Fundraiser but things are moving forward with this now. It will be July 14 from 8 – 11pm at the Branding Iron. We have spoken to the cast and most of them should be there for this event. We are telling them to come around 7 to stake out some spots to make sure all of our people have a place in the restaurant. I will be running the sound and we will be using our sound system. Hopefully we can use Sharon’s version of the karaoke app, otherwise I will get it purchased. Marketing is starting on this and we will push it as much as we can. We need to work on getting a list of places that have been covered both for the fundraiser and for future show promotion so it will be easier to get posters up efficiently in the future.

Budget Issue

We spoke about what should be done when a show goes over budget at the last meeting. My recommendation would be this: if a show goes a certain percentage (maybe 20%) over-budget or a set amount (maybe $500) the Executive Director will come back to the BOD to get that overage approved. I don’t think the budget should have to be reauthorized if it is over by a small amount, that can easily happen when the price of lumber, licensing, etc fluctuates somewhat. That would be my recommendation. Hopefully this won’t be a common issue, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was the only show in the last few years that went over budget by a significant amount, the other was ‘Take a Bow’ due to the rescheduling due to weather. Upon discussion, we believe it should be 15% or $400, whichever is less. We will be sending this recommendation to the creative committee.

Motioned: Sharon, second Angela, passed unanimously

Catalyst Theater

I was approached by Joana Lawler of Rapid City about a new theater she is a part of. She and her husband directed the 24 hour play I wrote two years ago. They have started a new theater company in Rapid called Catalyst Theater. They already have their 2023 – 2024 season in place and their shows will take place at a space at 513 7th St. She seemed interested in trying to help each other out, so I am going to be meeting with her at the end of the month. Not sure if anything will come of this other than sharing each other’s shows, but we will see. No matter what, it is exciting to see more theater cropping up the area. Allie will join catalyst meeting if able.

OFFICER REPORTS:

President
- Updated information from IRS still not received. Will get ED contract to Secretary for physical record keeping by next meeting.
Vice President
- Quarterly audit complete. Waiting for a letter from the city on float position for the parade. Terry’s truck and trailer have been donated for the float. Still in need of bluetooth speakers but will put call out to cast and crew to see if one is available. Will also connect with derek on getting the banners and decor for the float.
Secretary
- Nothing to report at this time
Treasurer
- Current bank balance: $9508.33. We do currently have a paypal, will look into getting venmo prior to the fundraiser.
Creative Committee
- Summer Camp
  - The summer camp was held on July 6 – 8 from 1:15 – 3:15 pm at the Middle School. We worked together with the Jam program on this. Nathan, Tyler Schone, Toi Lyn Flick, Reva Potter, Naomi Bricker and Olivia Furrow all volunteered their time to teach some basics of theater to the kids. I was there as well on Thursday. The event went really well and the kids, there were 30 – 40 of them, seemed to really enjoy it. The Jam volunteers seemed very pleased with the event as well. Sharon had a nice write-up in the last newsletter about it and included comments from the kids themselves. This was such a success we will be looking at doing something similar next summer.
- Pride & Prejudice
  - I don’t have the final number of money brought in for the show, Kelsey should have that number, but I believe our raw numbers between tickets and bake sale was around $2,500. That doesn’t include Arts People fees, we don’t really know what that is until we get paid out from them. Our total expenses were $2,604.77 so we came pretty close to breaking even. I was hoping for a little bit more of a financial success, but overall the show went great and we attracted a lot of new volunteers to this show. Word of mouth was also very good so I am hoping that helps get tickets sold for the rest of the season. If you want to look at our budget and expense, you can view the budget here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17Dmo2jdCPvfMkRQ3sjZphFAGtY2r1vF8uB2szwS30IM/edit?usp=sharing
- Rock of Ages
  - ‘Rock of Ages’ has begun practices and it is going really well. We had a good turnout for auditions and we have a lot of first-time volunteers with this show which is a good sign for upcoming events and shows. Marketing will really begin towards the end of the month and the cast will be on our float for the 4th of July and at the Karaoke Fundraiser. We were able to work out a deal with the Arts Council and Rec Center to have the rain site for the Summer concert series in the park to be the Rec Center gym on July 26 since it will be our final dress rehearsal. Thank you to Angela for helping get that all sorted out.
- GOAT
  - Allie and Tyler have picked the one-act we will be performing for GOAT, ‘Couch Potato.’ I have gotten the show ordered and licensed. It cost $174.30 for licensing and taxes and $87.92 for scripts and shipping. The scripts were a little more because PlayScripts requires the purchase of at least 8 scripts for each show, regardless of cast size. Auditions are set for August 4 from 6 – 8pm and August 5 from 4 – 6pm. We will start promoting auditions in July. I will work with Allie when I get back from vacation on a practice schedule and budget. We will have the budget ready for approval at the next board meeting. I have also started talking with the other theaters about the show to iron out some more details and we will be meeting at the beginning of July to go over these. I will be creating the marketing materials again for the overall show that others will use.
- Next Season
  - The Creative Committee has begun work on finding shows for next season and once ‘Rock of Ages’ is done we will start getting more concrete plans in place. Board recommends perhaps looking into a cabaret or doing individual scenes from various shows.
- Director Communication
  - Nathan and I spoke at some length about the issues we ran into with ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as far as budget and other issues. When we looked at the form we had created before about responsibilities we realized a lot of things were laid out directly there so the issue was not that we don’t have policies, just that we didn’t follow them closely enough and I didn’t communicate them enough to Nathan. To address this issue I will do a better job going forward with Director communication. I will meet with any Director before the show starts auditions and go over all of the responsibilities we expect of them. I will also check-in with the Directors on a weekly basis. I will start this with GOAT, we don’t need to worry about it with ‘Rock of Ages’ since I am directing the show. We will see how GOAT and the Halloween show goes and see if we need to revise our policies then
Public Relations
- River fest fell through due to weather. Continuing to attend meetings with tri state museum, arts council, chamber of commerce, and writers group. Planning to meet with head of walking history tours to get more info on upcoming events and potential for actors needed.
Membership Committee
- Newsletter went out, working on getting it out sooner. Hoping for 1 week prior to the fundraiser. Intending to promote the show with interviews and pics, recap of parade, and upcoming couch potato auditions. Picked up some lovely clothes from the theater cleanup that were judged too nice for costuming. Will look into the value and potentially auction to fundraise for the theater. Allie and perhaps her mother can assist; allie’s mom has an estate sale business. Angela will also offer assistance.
Grant & Fundraising Committee
- The plan is to keep the fundraiser as simple as possible. No door prizes. No cover charge. We will be in the main restaurant so we can use existing staff to serve, we will not be charged for rental. Nathan S will host in character as Lonny, tip to sing a song or bid to make someone else sing. Allie and Nathan T will be around collecting money with buckets for cash and qr codes for venmo. A poster will be drawn up with the rules. Nathan S will announce dares and we will boo people who refuse (lol). Angela will donate glow sticks and hersruds is donating a DJ. derek will look into adding them as an in kind sponsor for this generous donation. Angela is still planning to run the auction in the fall.

OLD BUSINESS:

Proxy Voting- tabled to bring exact language to next meeting
Parade- see report of vp.

NEW BUSINESS:

Vote on bylaw- Nathan S will print and sign new bylaw.
1. Motion to amend bylaw to include diversity statement: Angela, second Allie, passed unanimously