May 18, 2026 Minutes

7:00 PM
Branding Iron

Call To Order:

President Nathan S

Roll Call: 

Nathan S, Nathan T, Heather, Kelsey, Mike, Katie(virtual), Derek

Approval of previous minutes:

Motion to approve:Nathan T, Seconded: Mike. unanimous passage

Public member commentary:

Sharon: overview of kids camp programming presented

Executive Director Report:

Sponsorships

Sponsorships are basically done except for harassing a few businesses that basically said they were sponsoring and trying to get checks from everyone. We did recently receive checks from several outstanding businesses. We had received a payment of $510 that we spoke of last month that I am unsure of what it was from now, we thought it was BHFCU, but I just received a check from them. Will try and research this.

Grants

We are still waiting to hear back from grant requests to Dana Dental and SD Arts Council. I do have some time coming up so I will be working on finding and filling out some more generic grants. My goal is to get several thousand more for the year. We are at $2,000 at the moment, I want to be at around $7,000 for the year so there is lots to do here.

Sound

A huge thank you to Mike running sound for the last Concert Series and for helping the school with sound for their concerts. There were some technical issues, so thank you to Nathan for going down and helping with that. These last couple of events have shown we still need some training on how to run everything that can come up so I am working with Jody to try and get another training session with Haggertys setup for the next couple of months.

Curtain Call

We did just receive our full $400 deposit back from Curtain Call so a huge thank you to everyone who helped get things cleaned up after the show.

Minnesela

Things are proceeding with Minnesela. Auditions are set for next Tuesday and Wednesday and so far we have some decent buzz. I have already reached out to the Roundup committee to see where we could possibly do some cross-promotion and they are supposed to be getting back to me soon. I will be reaching out to the downtown walking tour/gun fight soon as well about the same. I will be preparing a full media blitz as soon as the show is cast. The cast and crew will also take point on the parade float this year, but will look from help from anybody else interested.

I have been doing lots of research on different types of guns that can be used on the stage safely to find better ways to do gun fights on stage compared to what has been done in the past. I have found some really nice cap guns that fire individual caps, these appear to be the only safe type of firearm to be able to fire next to people on stage. I ordered one and it should be getting here soon for testing purposes. If it works, the goal is to purchase about four of them to have for the show and for the rest of the guns needed, to purchase cheap prop ones that don’t fire.

I have also been thinking of adding a show, on Thursday July 23. Since it is an original show, we are not paying licensing on a show basis so we would not be paying extra for that night. We would pay rental, but Thursday would be one of the cheapest nights to do so, probably around $500 ($400 for the whole day rental and if we are out by 10, another $100). That is only about 30 adult tickets to just cover the cost. My hope is we are able to build some hype around this show and with the subject matter be bringing in some different people to our audience, having a Thursday night may not be the worst thing, offering a week night might be easier for some people to attend, especially with weekends always being so busy in the Summer.

GOAT

Toi is working her way through scripts for this. We have one maybe but ordered another perusal on a different script she is excited about. The hope is for a murder-mystery-comedy show.

Seussified

Rachel has been paid for her work on the art piece for Seussfied Christmas Carol. I will be working on another season poster soon with that material and will work to get that out soon.

Workshop

Our costume workshop is happening Thursday with Crystal. The hope is this is part one of three, as long as we have the interest there. I am hoping it goes well, I know Crystal will do great, just hope we get a decent turnout. I am starting to talk to others about other workshops for the year. There has been talk about a Stage Manager workshop, another writing workshop or two, and possibly doing the Directing Workshop again later in the year for those who couldn’t attend.

Improv

I spoke with Geno about Improv and where we are heading. The hope over the next couple of months is to start having several Improv nights for our volunteers. These are nights for our volunteers to get together and do improv together. The other goal of this is for people to get practice and bring new people into the program. Once Geno feels people are ready we will start looking into putting on a show with them, probably in the Fall. We are looking at a Who’s Line is it Anyway type show we could partner with a local restaurant to charge tickets for, possibly more than once. The hope is to also do a murder mystery dinner theater night, like what we did for FAB, but again where we could charge tickets for. We will know more as these Improv nights get off the ground and we get a sense of buy-in from participants and enthusiasm.

Energize!

I spoke at the Energize! Conference in Wall on May 6 about our road to the 15th Season. The talk went very well, with around 18 people at the actual presentation. At the talk was one of the heads of Arts South Dakota and I got to spend some time talking with him at the dinner about what we do. One of the organizers who helped me set up spoke with me about a local community theater they are trying to get off the ground in a small town, they are going to reach out for some help. All in all, I think it went very well and was worth doing.

Center Stage Theater Camp

I have been working with Sharon on getting the Camp ready, she is doing fantastic work. We are still looking for volunteers, so if anyone is interested, please let her know. I am also working to speak with local businesses about donating some items for snacks and such for the kids, Lynns has already said they would donate. I am also reaching out to Purple Pride and other HS activities to see about HS volunteers to help out and get volunteer hours. Things are ramping up and there is lots to do, but Sharon is doing a fantastic job.

Volunteer Materials

At our last volunteer meeting we discussed all the materials needed for different activities we may have booths at, I am working on getting those created/purchased. The goal is to have this all ready by River Fest, we will be having a booth there.

Marketing Materials/Strategic Plan Cleanup

I have not had a chance to work on my Marketing Material work from the Strategic Plan or cleanup of the actual Strategic Plan yet, but hope to in June.

Merch

As I find time I am going to put effor into finding a new print-on-demand service for our merch so we can start offering it again.

Ludus

In doing some research for a CRM I came upon Ludus. They are a service that handles ticket sales for arts organizations and also includes a CRM with email marketing capabilities. Here are the highlights of my conversation with them:

• If you sign-up with them, you get their CRM for free.
• There is no annual or monthly fee, the only thing you are charged to use Ludus is ticket fees
• Ludus only charges for Credit Card tickets we would sale, this is 5% + .75 per ticket. This is only for credit card tickets, we we seel cash or check tickets for an event, we are not charged anything for that. Currently at Arts People we pay around .99 per ticket plus credit card processing fees on any credit card ticket. This is for all tickets, including checks and cash tickets.
• Along with the CRM we get access to their marketing suite which includes email marketing. We can have an unlimited number of sign-ups and can send as many emails as we want each month. For contrast at Mail Chimp we are at the lowest tier but we if we get about a 100 more people into our list we will be charged more and we can only send out so many emails a month before we get moved up a tier and have to pay more. We pay around $14 a month.
• With their email system, we can easily send emails to groups of volunteers from the CRM about events and sign-ups. We can also do automated emails (surveys) to volunteers or audience members to gather data. If we had marketing the cost for credit card tickets goes to 5% + .80 per ticket.
• For the CRM we can create volunteers in the database but we can also create links where people can sign-up/edit their own users. It is easy to input in interests and track what events volunteers have helped with. We can even track volunteer hours for people, or they can enter it themselves and we can approve.
• We can do sign-ups for events and send that out to our volunteers and they can sign-up for any type of job with any type of event, which could greatly help when tracking down help with various events.
• Almost all of our ticket taking functionality is available through Ludus, we can do tickets, discounts, etc. very easily.
• We cannot use our current credit card swiper with Ludus. We would have to either manually enter credit card numbers or purchase a STRIPE device and connect to a ticket taker’s phone. These devices are around $50.
• We we ask people’s names when taking tickets we can start tracking audiences as well, not just credit card purchasers to see audience trends but also make it easier to contact everyone, not just people who paid online.

Motion to app switch to Ludus: Mike, Seconded: Kelsey. Unanimous passage

Officer Reports: 

• President
  • Completed printing cost count: $36.10, paid
  • Working on committee guidelines to discuss at next meeting.
• Vice President
  • Got signed up for the July 4th parade. Will ask Terry to borrow a trailer. 
• Secretary
  • NA
• Treasurer
  • Current balance $10,728.30
• Public Relations
  • Views, interactions, and followers up. Posters for Minnesela, work shop, and camp currently out.
• Volunteer Committee
  • Met and discussed crms. Also discussed list of items to put in a go box for events. Will be attending Riverfest as it is free. Looking for a person to go with derek to riverfest 6/6/26 10 am to 2pm
• Fundraising Committee
  • Absent
• Senior outreach Committee 
  • Ageless Acts
    • The Senior Outreach Committee is officially called, Ageless Acts, thank you Colleen Anderson. We had our first meeting last week and the committee consists of myself, Kelsey, Nathan T, and Colleen Anderson. We are working on what kind of program this will be. Right now we are thinking of creating an almost modular show. We work with different people/acts to work up small pieces of theater that they can do on their own with some direction from us. People working up almost Oral Interp like pieces (duets, monologues, solos, etc) to the point we have several different ones available. We would also have some other things as well, including Improv and possibly pieces from upcoming shows we might have. It’s not feasible to bring whole shows to these places, but we could have people do snippets from a show. Then when we organize a date and time with an organization we contact people from our list and put together an hour-ish show from our available acts. That is then taken and performed. So the show can change slightly depending on people that are available. Costs will be kept low, we wouldn’t do full costuming but maybe provide a small costume piece or prop for some acts. Colleen is helping to contact our first batch of performers so we can get something worked up before Minnesela to take to a Senior Center. Once we have a working program, this committee will disband because hopefully the program will be fairly self-sufficient.

Old Business:

1. 4th of July: Nathan T has signed us up and Minnesela cast is set to prepare float.

New Business:

1. NA

Next meeting:

6/29/26 7pm Branding Iron

Adjournment:

Motion to adjourn Mike, Seconded: Nathan T. unanimous passage

Respectfully submitted by Secretary Heather Pittman