Minutes of SSDS Business Meeting July 22, 2001

Taken by: Tania

Present: Kim, Tracie, Steve, Maria, Lynn, Sally, Tania, Can

1. Old Business
   • General Report - Review of purchases. Tania will purchase new business cards. SSDS bought wireless microphone for $389, and Tania will add to insurance rider. Can will purchase software that allows all organizers to share formats/forms for flyers, share frequently used files.
   • Third annual picnic. Steve doesn't want kids under four feet tall to participate in games. Kim did a super job with the games. Took in $85 in admissions, spent $131 on food and $75 on site rental, for net loss of $121, plus cost of seven shirts used as prizes. Attendance was down, possibly because picnic took place the day after the Fourth of July holiday. In 2002, July 4th is a Thursday, so we'll have picnic on July 11. Remember next year to thaw out the meat before bringing it to picnic to speed up grilling.
   • Hanover Square dances. Schedule is set for volunteer teachers for remaining dances. The salsa band Los Caribes was a big hit with a mix of Latin, ballroom and swing, but there were some complaints about no jitterbug music. Laurie Reed of Downtown Committee continues to misunderstand SSDS's role in event, which is to promote dances to our members and provide lesson, not to have constant "demos" for three hours.
   • Excess shirt inventory. Tracie with assistance from Maria will be new marketing coordinator. She will inventory shirts, which Tania and Steve currently have. After counting our stock, Tracie will market shirts on our web page and will bring them to major dance events that she attends. Selling shirts at Hanover Square events is a good opportunity; Kim volunteered to buy a card table for displaying shirts. We agreed to keep the price at $8 and $10 until we hear a new pricing recommendation from Tracie after the inventory.
   • Financial Report - Steve reported that SSDS has $10,211.30 in cash. For the Kyle & Sarah workshops, we took in $4,121 and had expenses of $3,686, for a gain of $510.11 (although we need to subtract flyer costs from that amount). Air fare was the major expense for the workshop. We also refunded $90 to people who couldn't take workshops for health reasons.

     We discussed whether we need to raise workshop prices; SSDS dance costs are much lower than other groups' charges. Can said that we're not trying to make money and we should keep prices low to keep events open to as many people as possible. Maria said that people are very aware of the comparable costs of dance events. We agreed that we need better planning on workshop expenses.

     At the Locker Room we are breaking even or losing money for hops. SSDS pays $47 in rent each Thursday and July 12 took in $48, June 21 took in $75, June 28 took in $58. (See also discussion of dance venue below.)

   • Review of Sarah & Kyle workshop June 8-10. Generally a success. We discussed the schedule and whether we started too early and whether people like a longer break in the middle of the day. We did not receive many if any complaints about the S&K schedule, with a start time of 11 a.m. and afternoon break. A lot of the scheduling depends on the instructors. We discussed the venue and whether Ukrainian Home was uncomfortably hot. We agreed to consolidate our list of dance venues for review of other locations. Serving pizza at the Saturday night dance was a good idea; people liked the treat but it was expensive. People are asking about the video notebooks, which are slow in coming.

     We discussed the fact that S&K were not available as partners at the social dances. We agreed that social dancing by instructors is important to SSDS workshops and will put in future contracts that instructors must be available for social dancing. We recognize that this will be difficult to enforce.

     We also discussed that S&K were difficult to deal with in terms of scheduling, airfare, getting them to sign a contract they requested. Weigh all of these facts against their value as teachers. We decided that S&K are worth having back, mainly due to good workshop content. We may try to tie a bonus to their increased social dancing.

     We noted in general that dealing with artists is more difficult. In booking major instructors we need to first plan and strategize re: airfare, availability, possible bonus in contract for extra efforts and/or extra social dancing. Certain cities have ties with artists, e.g., Toronto and Mario Robau. Maria noted that she is having trouble booking Mario for a Syracuse workshop.

   • Volunteer plan - Review of ISDN policy for ideas (see also below under planning meeting follow-up). Tabled until next meeting.
2. New Business
   • Grants - Deadline for next cycle of CRC grant applications is October 11, 2001. Steve, Kim, Can, Maria, Tracie, Lynn (on diversity issue) all expressed interest in helping out on grants. Tania will distribute copies of grant application. Tania needs ideas on project-based or administrative grant applications. Possible outreach projects could be bringing a WCS teacher to teach local dance teachers representing a multi-cultural background for free. We could bring in a hand dance teacher. We could ask Otis to help us distribute publicity, using his contacts in more diverse community. To bring in more diverse group of dancers, we need to take WCS, which already is done to R&B music, and go into the African-American community at places like Southwest Community Center. We could propose a project with Maria Torres as instructor.
   • Thursday Night SD/Hop - Need someone to coordinate finding a new venue; Maria volunteered to be "Hop Coordinator" for a 2-month term; Responsibilities: coordinate finding new venue, take care of finances for Hop, help develop a volunteer policy for door duty, take care of who works the door, put together a job description for "coordinator". Need to put together a list of places that people have looked at for possible locations; will try to do this via e-mail.
   • Westcott Street Cultural Fair - Fair is September 23 (rain date 9/30). Application due August 15. We agreed to ask Alice & Mike if they wanted to handle this. If we do a demo, then we should have a table as well to distribute information.
   • Fall workshops - Kim. Scheduling Diane Nardone for hustle workshop September 14-16. Nardone will teach hustle and salsa, building on prior workshops. We will have two DJ dances and include hustle dance contests.
   • Planning meeting follow-up. See minutes of July 1 meeting for complete list of possible projects, but important areas include:
     • Dance venue. Maria will act as hop coordinator for two months as we look for new location for the weekly dance and collect data on finances, door duty. We will circulate, round-robin, a list of possible locations for weekly dances and special events so that we can collect better data about our options. Steve will call Guzman's as possible space. Someone suggested Knights of Columbus on Taft Rd. - currently not available. We need to consider costs of venue and whether we need to raise the admission price. Also need to consider ways to spread the work among more people. Should examine the policy of "take the class & get in free to the hop" - wait until after the choreography class is through. We might try giving different people two-month terms in which they are responsible for organizing the hops, which includes getting other people to cover the door, taking care of the money, possibly set-up and break-down.
     • Regional dances. We mostly discussed the upcoming Halloween Dance. Steve will check on revenue and expenses for past dances; Steve will email Howard at ISDN with the date of dance. Halloween dance is possible Syracuse exchange modeled after Toronto exchange. Have Friday WCS dance, Saturday traditional dance, plan as expanded event. Tania noted that it is important we do not exclude any dancers who normally come to our Halloween dance (WCS vs. Lindy vs. jitterbug etc.). We will consider different venues, DJ vs. hiring a band.
     • Volunteers. Tabled. Discussion of weekly hops also has volunteer considerations.
     • Welcoming newcomers. Maria and Kim will create mixer dances, possible switch-around dances, to involve more people, especially newcomers. We will have monthly birthday dances at hops. We will move the DJ booth to the other end of the room to avoid appearance of a clique.
     • Better quality workshops. Tania will work on a checklist or general plan to aid in planning/executing workshops.
3. Other business
   • Can wants to stop being the only person who transports the SSDS sound system. We need volunteers with trucks.
   • Maria suggested that we create a half-sheet flyer with hops and lessons listed for distribution at events like Hanover Square dances. Maria suggested that we consider changing the structure of SSDS corporation to require membership in order to generate revenue and increase sense of ownership.

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