MHCB Board Meeting Minutes 10-3-2014 MHCB Board Minutes October 3, 2014 Attendees: David Cooke – President Paul Peronard – Vice President Vernon Vail – Treasurer Cooper Watts – Scholarship Coordinator Bruce Thron-Weber – Business Manager Roger Oram – Board Member Karen Larson – Board Member, Acting Secretary Rick Mongrain - Director The meeting was called to order at 8:40pm by Board President, David Cooke. Minutes of Previous Meetings Nothing to discuss Directors’ Reports: Mike Lucas Not in attendance Rick Mongrain Will be gone 10/9/14 – no replacements Combo will run their own rehearsal; Intermediate Band rehearsal will be canceled. Thoughts on hiring ringers: Our music is tough, and therefore it may be difficult to get other community band members to play it well on short notice. Rick suggests that our focus should be on putting out the best product possible. He suggests that we should hire professionals for our upcoming concerts and look to fill spots we need in the meantime. Mike already has three people lined up to play with us. Officers’ Reports: President: David Cooke Concerning future gigs: Received an email requesting that our Combo band play at D-Note. Not paid, looking into dates. Suggested looking for a booking agent to line up gigs for the holidays. Need to assess the interest of playing more gigs with the concert band Gigs would not be on a Thursday night We could book gigs for the jazz band and combo band This would be a good way to increase publicity. Because the Wine at the Holidays gig in Arvada is an every-other-year opportunity, we will not be submitting an application this year. There’s a Jamboree Conference in January Municipalities buy their music here for the year, including APEX Could be worth paying for a table to hand out CDs Could be worth paying to perform Dave said he’d send out an e-mail to the Board on this event Vice-President: Paul Peronard The mayor of Jamestown in Boulder County asked if the Combo band would want to play at the Mercantile for their Spring Festival Secretary: Karen Larson, acting secretary in Christine Mitchell’s absence No update. Treasurer: Vern Vail Provided board members with a financial records: Balance and Profit & Loss Will need to amend monetary value of items 1140 and 1150 under Fixed Assets, as we have sold most of our instrument inventory last year. We own a baritone saxophone (good quality), drum set (low quality), concert bass drum, and bass clarinet (good quality). Line item 1140 should be amended to an amount around $1,000 Line item 1150 should only account for value of music stands Will need to check if we are counting depreciating value – Vern will follow up with our accountant in this regard so that our financial records might be brought in line to reflect our current assets and liabilities. We’ve paid everything we’ve up to 10/03/2014 – received invoices for all directors, our music space rental, and our SCFD banner Went to the bank to setup electronic transfer abilities with Paul Peronard The electronic transfer is only setup for Rick Mongrain. We need to speak with Musicians Union, Mike, and Bruce about setting up electronic transfers for them. We can pay our bills online now, but will still continue to write checks for non-monthly bills Process for approving funds in lieu of gathering signatures will be as follows: The Treasurer will alert the board to any bills that need to be paid and will pay them electronically upon the board’s approval. Other Reports: Operations Manager: Bruce Thron-Weber In order to maintain our grants for Jefferson County from SCFD, we need to maintain at least 50% attendance from Jefferson County residents. We need to begin lining up concerts for 2016 soon in order to renew our grant with SCFD. Even with extra filing cabinets, our music storage is still very full for concert band music. There is more room for jazz band music. In terms of dues, we are at our best for having dues paid on time. Requested that we consider budgeting for online advertising for needed instrumentation. Bruce enumerated on several online advertising possibilities and is still researching. He plans to send out viable options to the board via email for suggestions and/or approval. See the New Business section below for more on this endeavor. Old Business: Scholarships: Cooper Watts Our current situation is messy and inefficient. See proposal for fixing the system in the New Business section below. A lot of scholarships ran out at the beginning of the fall 2014 term and have not been renewed. Bruce will send Cooper an active board member list to help him weed out old scholarship recipients. Cooper will send several emails to band members about the scholarship application and renewal process once the script is drafted and the proposal for scholarship management changes have been approved. Promo Videos from Ann Banister A lengthy discussion ensued about what to do with our current videos, the videos from Ann Banister, and if we should look into getting more promo videos at a higher quality. David suggested we pull all bad promo videos from our website and from YouTube, arguing that bad videos are bad publicity. He would like to replace those videos with promo videos of higher quality. A general, informal consensus decided that Ann Banister’s videos as they stand were not quite satisfactory. Vern suggested cutting video clips of 15 seconds or so to post online. Karen agreed and offered, indicating that she has had some videography training and experience, to further edit the videos. We will need to contact Ann Banister about editing permissions. As we did not originally draft a contract with her, the board has no current financial obligations for her work to date. Future work or rights to edit her videos could involve some expense. Karen will arrange with Roger to contact Ann to discuss obtaining the videos for Karen to edit. Another suggestion was to just put up audio clips without video. Business Practices Nothing to report New Business: Online Advertising, idea originally proposed by Bruce Paul proposed a motion that we allow a budget of $100 to be spent on advertising. Bruce will research and decide which mediums would be best to advertise in. Vern seconded this motion. The board voted unanimously in favor of allowing a $100 budget for advertising. Scholarship Application and Renewal Process proposed changes: The board voted unanimously in favor of these changes and processes: Applicants will apply on a term basis, either per term or for all three terms. Initially, applications were accepted monthly. Any applicants applying mid-term will only have a scholarship for the remainder of that term, pending approval. It was proposed to extend all current and new scholarships to January 1, 2015, in order to give Cooper time to review current scholarships, clean up our current records, and to keep our recordkeeping streamlined, organized, and efficient from here on out. Cooper will develop a script for the website explaining our new scholarship process. Current scholarship recipients (extended to expire December 31, 2014): Dave Thomas Cristina Baker Katya Thronweber Sarah Katz Mount Will Roland Mike Patterson Karen Larsen Alex Tyson March Laura Hauser New scholarship application for clarinetist Cassandra Torskewas proposed and approved unanimously by the board: According to Bruce, she requested a partial scholarship, but he believes we can provide a full one. She has college music experience and has worked in a music library, skills that will be very useful for our band. The board unanimously approved a motion to forgive the unpaid $50 dues of our summer 2014 drummer, high school student Olivia. Bruce has tried to get ahold of her to no avail. Bruce wanted to remind the board of an email he had sent out about the subscription dues website technical glitch. Our website designer is working on it. We still have not paid her and do not have an invoice yet. Future Engagements: Red Rocks Community College – November 20, 2014 for all groups Edgewater Senior Center – December 4, 2014 for all groups Discussion ensued about how they forgot we were playing for them last year. Roger will follow up to make sure they are actually expecting our performance and are prepared for it this year, and to make sure that our performances do not coincide with their annual Christmas Lights Tour. Roger will follow up with the board next meeting. Suggestions for Next Meeting: No new suggestions arose at this meeting. Suggestions below have still not been discussed but were suggested from previous meetings. Updating Business Practices Proposed By-law changes Rebuilding the relationship with North High School Meeting adjournment time 9:59pm
