Present: Dave, Maria, Can, Stacey, Greg, Mike, Alice, Lynn, Sally, Mary Ellen, Tania, Mark
Minutes by: Tania
1. Old Business
General Report - (1) Weekly dance status report. Maria said that attendance is down slightly due to summer activities, from about 70 to 72 people per week before our picnic to about 58 to 60 people per week now. She said the air conditioning is working OK. She has had some problems getting door volunteers due to summer and other event conflicts. Maria is stepping down as Hop Coordinator and Dave Moran agreed to take over the job. Maria will train Dave. Dave's term does not expire until he finds a successor. Tania commended Maria for doing a great job as hop coordinator.
(2) Hanover Square series for 2002. Tania reported that she has volunteer instructors for the remaining event dates and SSDS was paid for the first three dates. Tania will send an invoice for the last two dates (7/19 and 8/2). Mary Ellen did a great job teaching the lesson on August 2.
(3) Proposal to Ukrainian Home regarding floor refinishing. Tracie said in a previous email (attached) that we probably should withdraw this proposal because the management at the UK Home keeps changing and the floors were fine for the Robau workshops. Mary Ellen confirmed that the president of the UK Home said they are trying to sell the building. We do not want to risk spending money on the floors given an imminent sale, even if we sought to protect our investment with a contract of some sort. Organizers received no complaints about the UK Home floor during the Robau weekend. We will stop working on this proposal.
(4) Demo on October 12 for Eldercare Foundation. Lynn is having trouble getting in touch with the event organizer but will keep trying. Lynn & Co. is available and they are trying to get more dancers to participate. Any other demo team is free to participate and should contact Lynn.
(5) Update on new checking account. Greg reported that he opened an SSDS checking account at HSBC which is linked to our existing savings account. HSBC charges no fee if our balance is $15,000 and we do no more than 75 transactions per month. Greg did comparison shopping at some credit unions, but they would not open accounts for non-profit corporations. Greg said that we would try the account at HSBC for a while and explore other banks if the HSBC fees are too high. He will explore ways to avoid paying the HSBC fees, such as making deposits into savings and transferring funds to checking as needed. Greg is in the process of taking over the bookkeeping from Steve. Greg is familiar with the spreadsheet that Steve is currently using.
(6) Salsa demo on August 29 at Jefferson Community College. Tania said that a student from JCC contacted her specifically requesting a salsa demo for the college's fall festival. Tania gave the information to Roseann, who contacted the student. Roseann said that she, Brian, and Nadim and Suzanne Catel will perform a demo and lesson.
Financial Report - Deferred.
Committee Reports
(1) Workshop documents. Tania said there was no report.
(2) Dance venues. Maria said there was no report. She will ask Tracie for a copy of the venue quadrant list.
(3) Workshop review classes. Deferred due to Tracie's absence.
Marketing Report. Deferred.
Progress on upcoming events.
(1) Kyle & Sara workshops Sept. 20-22, 2002. Tania reported that she and Steve went over the various contract proposals and Steve sent S&K an email on 7/30 with an offer. In consideration for changing the dates to Sept 14 & 15, we asked them to consider a lower fee (no profit sharing) and drop their requirement for guaranteed private lessons, among other things. Steve knows that they read the email, but they have not responded. We agreed that we need to get this settled quickly so that we can promote the weekend properly. Tania will ask Steve to call them and get an answer no later than August 15. Maria suggested that S&K teach 8 workshops over the two days, four on each day.
(2) Diane Nardone Nov. 15-17. (Kim). No report. Ukrainian Home is reserved.
(3) Halloween Dance October 26. Ukrainian Home is reserved. Can still is working on getting Israel Hagan and Seaway Swing in touch with each other; both are available for the date. Steve Olin is going to have the bandleader contact Can. Ithaca has booked Seaway Swing for a workshop event on October 23.
2. New Business
Review of Mario Robau workshops July 12-14, 2002. Maria reported that total income for the weekend was $10,311.71, total expenses were $4,630.41, for a net gain of $5,681.30. Mario per his contract got 50 percent of profit, or $2,840.65, on top of his $1900 hourly fee. SSDS income was $2,840.65 plus the $1,000 we budget for volunteer time, or $3,840.65. These figures do not include the video notebook data. We are selling 29 videos at $20 each ($580), but we don't know the expenses yet. Mario gets a 50/50 split on the notebooks too. Maria said she is trying to keep costs to $10 per video. Video sales are limited to people who bought the weekend pass. Tania gave Mario's profit-sharing check to Maria to mail out.
Maria estimated that 200 people attended the dance Saturday night, and 170 people took at least one lesson. 92 people were in Sunday's advanced class (second lesson), and the Saturday night lesson was well attended. The hustle classes on Friday were well attended; some people went for hustle and nothing else. We sold 88 weekend passes. Greg estimated that the weekend served three populations: hustle, beginner WCS and advanced WCS.
Maria said that she is working on a "lessons learned" document with Tracie and Mary Ellen and will distribute it via email. We will discuss it at the September business meeting.
Tania noted that Maria did a wonderful job organizing this event and thanked her for her work on behalf of SSDS. Maria's handlers are to be commended as well.
Maria said that Robau wants to come back to Syracuse in 2003, and she will schedule this in September 2002. He liked the UK Home's size and ambiance, noting that people should perceive the lessons as full, crowded and exciting.
We talked a bit about ways to improve our workshops. We need to make registration quicker and easier for students. We can put registration tables on the stair landings and outside, more tables in the dance hall, and more volunteers everywhere. Maria said we need security at the back door because people snuck in to take some lessons. We need more colored markers, and wrist bands are the easiest way to keep track of people. We need to keep the private lessons off premises and schedule things so that people can register quickly and get into the hall to warm up.
We discussed allocation of private lessons. Maria already has three on the list for privates with Mario in 2003. The workshop document committee will fully consider this issue. We suggested that half the lesson slots be reserved for Syracuse dancers. Greg suggested that we could put a start date for sign-ups on our flyers. We all agree that people who support the weekend by taking workshops get the privates over people who take a few or no classes. Maria said she had a list of 14 names for 6 privates with Mario in 2002. Some people have told her they only will come for the weekend if they can get a private. Mario was open to as many privates as the schedule would allow.
Mary Ellen noted that for the next event we have at the UK Home, we need to plan to be there a day early to clean and prepare. She and Steve did a lot of work cleaning the floor, moving furniture, etc. UK Home did not do the work to prepare the hall.
Greg noted a general need to reconsider the way that we account for volunteers' time. Volunteers put in a huge amount of time and there is no way to keep track of it. We generally estimate the volunteer hours, but we seriously underestimate. Maria noted that we need to balance our profit (by truly accounting for all volunteer time) with the need to compensate the instructor adequately through profit-sharing so that he/she will want to come back. Maria said that most organizers take $1000 or so off the top for volunteer time so that they can make some money.
Other business (1) Maria said that a couple from Ottawa that supported the Mario workshops asked for SSDS's help in promoting their WCS dance event in October 2002 in Ottawa by distributing flyers, making announcements, etc. Can will put the event information on the web with a link to their web page. It is the usual practice of SSDS to promote regional dance events.
(2) We discussed the planning meeting scheduled for August 18. We will order pizza based on how many people attend. Tania explained that the purpose of this meeting is not to discuss day-to-day business as we do at the monthly meetings. Instead, there is no agenda and we want to encourage an open-ended discussion about people's ideas and dreams for the dance community. We will reflect on our achievements since the last planning meeting and consider new goals. Tania asked people to look at the minutes from last summer's planning meeting, which are on the web. Tania also asked organizers to encourage all dancers, especially those who do not usually attend business meetings, to attend this special meeting. Can noted that he would like to encourage representatives from the other dance communities to attend so we can discuss collaborative projects and sharing. We have had successful collaborations this year with the New Years Eve party, Erie Canal Museum dance, etc. Collaboration will be a definite topic for the planning meeting.
Next Meeting: Annual planning meeting Sunday August 18 at 6 p.m at Can's new house.
Next Business Meeting: Sunday September 8 at 7 p.m. at Mike and Alice's house.