September 25, 2025 Minutes

7:00 PM
Branding Iron

Call To Order:

President Nathan S

Roll Call:

Nathan S, Kesley, Heather, Katie, Mike, Derek, Nathan T and Wes joining 10 minutes after start of meeting

Approval of previous minutes:

Motion to approve: Mike, Second: Kelsey, unanimous approval

Public member commentary:

Toi Lyn Flick: Comments on dissolution of the creative committee

Some members are upset because the decision to transition the creative committee into the volunteer committee happened suddenly and members were not consulted and there is now concern about the planning of future seasons. Derek explained the original purpose of the creative committee and explained why the transition to focus on volunteers make sense for the organization going forward. Derek also reminded that it is the sole responsibility of the executive director to plan the season but stated that he will continue to take member feedback and suggestions on shows as he has in the past.

Sharon Thompson: Fine arts booster discussion

FAB is looking for a local activity for the junior/senior art enrichment and is interested in another theater activity for the kids. Enjoyed the dinner theater with serafim previously but do not have the funds for that this year and hoping for a more affordable option in march, april, or may.

The theater has discussed putting together improv work and will try to figure out if we can have something for this.

Executive Director Report:

Is He Dead?

Is He Dead? Ate up a lot of my time for September but the show went very well. I do wish we had slightly larger audiences. The crowds themselves were great, very responsive and complimentary, but not as many people as I had anticipated or had hoped for. Ultimately a bit down from where I thought we would be. I do think the large storm on Friday hurt our numbers that night, but I don’t think those numbers were made up on the next performances. All that to be said, ticket sales were down from where I had anticipated which left this show in the red unfortunately.

The cast and crew did a phenomenal job with the show though. I heard nothing but compliments and praise from people who saw the show. I do think it was a strong show that really showcased BFACT’s talent, not only on the stage but our creativity for set and decoration. We did pick up some people who hadn’t participated in a while on stage and a new person. In talking to the cast, most expressed an enthusiastic desire to keep doing BFACT and getting more and more involved. Ari will be directing for us for the first time next year because of this show. Also, Jonathan was a great assistant director and wants to take the leap to full director, unfortunately, due to his schedule 2026 won’t work for him but he hopes to in 2027 and I think he could handle directing one of our larger productions.

In total we sold 227 tickets across all three shows, with Sunday being the biggest at 92 tickets. Total ticket revenue was $2,625. The bake sale did very well at $530.22 for a total revenue of $3,155.22. Unfortunately we spend more money than anticipated. We ended up spending $5,199.03. This was more than initially approved by the board, but I did speak with the board members in the production to make sure that was approved before doing so. Really the big reason was, we had hoped to have some more materials left over from Charlie that could be used, but due to how that set was constructed, that just wasn’t possible. We ended up having to purchase all new luan, because there were only a couple of sheets at 4×8. So while that did cost more money for this show, there is now a large stack of full sheets of luan going into the new year that can be used for productions, so that should save some money in the future. Unfortunately, lumber costs keep going up so they are quite expensive as well as paint going up in price. I will make sure in subsequent shows to make sure to up those numbers in proposed budgets so we have a more accurate cost projection. If anyone would like a more detailed breakdown, I do have my full breakdown in Drive.

15 Season Donation Drive

Even though money wasn’t where we wanted it for the show itself we did get some really great news for the 15 Season Donation Drive. We did receive $270 in donations for that which puts us $558.51 which is kind of behind where I wanted to be, but because of Is He Dead? We had an anonymous donor give us a matching donation up to $1,500 for this drive. I asked if they wanted to be recognized, but they did not want to be. This generous person has really saved this Drive and will be very helpful to BFACT going into 2026.

Grants

I am almost ready to start applying for Grants and hitting up larger regional businesses for private grants, just waiting for a finalized 2026 season to mention that in the grants. I did find out from Black Hills Area Community Foundation that the Jim Hess Award is up again and the deadline is October 13, so I am going to apply for that again. We tried last year, but didn’t get it but I think it is worth trying again. This grant is up to $15,000. It is specifically only for this area, Butte, Lawrence, and I think Meade county so it is a much smaller pool of applicants then some. I will let the board knows how it goes.Not anticipating arts council funds as federal funding for them has been reduced.

Sound

I have spoken to Jody about the sound installation and although they don’t have a final date yet, they are hoping it to be around early October. There is a chance this happens while our Playwriting Festival is happening, not the event itself. I told Jody, due the nature of the event, it won’t be an issue if some of the days leading up to October 17 & 18 we need to be in the Dakota Room. She was appreciative of that. Some of the work needing to be done won’t require us to leave the the theater, lots of the work will be in the seating area, but some will. She said though, it won’t conflict with the actual showcase dates. She said she would let me know as soon as they have official dates.

Purple Pride

So we had a senior actually take us up on using BFACT for their Purple Pride hours, my niece Jazlyn. She came and put in some hours the last set building weekend for Is He Dead? And was a great help. Unfortunately after she told me she was informed her hours wouldn’t count. I got the contact information of the new person in charge of Purple Pride to try and sort this out and found some new information, or maybe not new, but different from when we started up with the program years ago. All events must be approved ahead of time for a student to be able to register hours. So it is not a matter of being an approved organization, you must submit an event to Purple Pride and get approved first. So unfortunately Jaz’s hours will not count for her. I am going to submit the Playwriting Showcase and the Christmas Show and see if we are approved in case other students want to spend hours with us.

Playwriting Festival

We are gearing up for the Playwriting Festival. As of right now we only have two people submitted, but we have many more that we are hoping to have in, so I am hoping to have five or six total. Bella will be the one really running this program, with me backing her up. The writers workshop will be on October 6 and open to everyone, not just our writers. Bella and I are getting the details worked out now, and will announce when finished. If anyone on the Board is interested in being a writer you can still submit, or if you are interested in Directing or acting, just let Bella know.

GOAT Retreat

We had talked several months ago about us having a GOAT retreat coming up to find ways that we can expand our partnership with the other Northern Hills theaters beyond just GOAT. We applied for a grant to pay for the event to pay Anna to facilitate it and pay for a space, food, etc. We will know if we get this grant in a few weeks. If the grant doesn’t come through, we have already spoken to the other theaters that all the participating groups will kick in a little money to cover everything. I will let the board know. We will be having the retreat on January 17, location TBD. The plan is that every theater will have two participants. I had figured one of them would be me, but then we need to decide who else we would like to send. We can also send more, but it was agreed that if anyone sent more they would need to provide money for that person to cover food and such. We can talk more as more details come in.

Officer Reports:

President
- Nothing to report
Vice President
- Nothing to report
Secretary
- Nothing to report
Treasurer
- Current balance 17,041.99
Creative Committee
- The Committee Moving Forward
  - I have been doing a lot of thinking this past year about the needs of BFACT now and moving forward with it being our 15th Season. In talking to Board members and other people throughout the organization it has been made very clear that one of our greatest needs is Volunteer outreach, recruitment and retention. I don’t think this would be shocking to the Board, given we have been trying to get a Volunteer committee going for quite some time but just haven’t been able to get it really off the ground unfortunately. I have been speaking with Katie over the last couple of months and we came up with an idea to help this happen, we are merging the Creative Committee and Volunteer Committee. The Creative Committee has been our largest committee but meets fairly infrequently, which is my fault. I only have so much time, and I need to spend time with the Volunteer Committee which would give me even less time with a Creative Committee and even some of the responsibilities of the CC would fit nicely with a VC. So the idea was to merge committees and to no longer have a CC. So I had a meeting with the CC and let them know of this new idea. In hindsight, I should have let them know before this meeting of this new plan. I informed them of the plan of merging these committees and that the responsibilities of the CC would move into VC with some added ones. Hopefully the VC will meet more as well under Katie as the Chair with me being a large part of it. I let everyone know on the CC they were invited to be on the VC, I also let everyone that was unable to attend the meeting afterwards of this as well. So far Allie and Anna are the only people who have responded yes they would like to and Angela has said no she doesn’t have time. I will keep talking to everyone until I get an answer one way or another. So this will be the last report of the CC and hopefully we will have our first meeting of the new Volunteer Committee very soon.
- 2026 Season
  - We did discuss the 2026 Season at this last meeting and did throw around some ideas for the 2026 Season and I am hoping to get things finalized very soon after lining up directors and such. We have spoken about a night of one-acts in the Spring, possibly some kind of theater camp and showcase in the summer, a summer show (non-musical) and GOAT in October. Probably no Christmas show, or if It’s a Wonderful Life goes well, maybe something more like that. What I am really seeing is that our regular directors need a little bit of a break and we need to get some new ones in. Also, there is a lot of uncertainty going into 2026 in a lot of facets, sponsorships, grants, rental space, etc so I want this season to be something that is not as big and over the top as this year was. It is less expensive and more easy to execute if we run into some issues. We will still put on some amazing productions, but they will be things that have a bit more flexibility in case we do run into issues.
Public Relations
- Engagement numbers are up thanks to Is He Dead campaign.currently have a list of over 50 locations for posters to go up. Newsletters back up and running and going out. Silver lining is interested in working with us and Derek has their contact info. We were contacted about perhaps helping with some of the 4th of July re-enactments. Derek also has that info.
Volunteer Committee
- Working on encouraging involvement with social hour. These will be the 2nd Saturday of every month beginning in 2026. Next event scheduled 10/11/25. Facebook events being created. Hoping these will be meetups for games, socializing, questions, and planning. Volunteer committee meetings to coincide with social hours so members will already be there when the event starts. Currently working out duties and expectations. Bella is searching for volunteer management systems.
Fundraising Committee
- Meeting with Derek soon to discuss silent auction fundraiser for Christmas show
Strat Committee
- Comprehensive report complete. Members are currently providing feedback. Nathan will integrate and get a first draft with the goal to present it at a future board meeting.