Tuesday August 8th, 2023, 7:30pm

Attendees: BOARD MEMBERS; Staff:Lee Hartman, Jeanine Asay; Members: Rose Rodriguez, J.J. Pearse, Rameka Jennings, Nathan Brown, Steven Irving, Christian Montes, Joy Hope

Called to order at 7:35 pm.

Fundraising, Rameka

I am scheduling a committee meeting for later in August, confirming availability with a couple key folks. I will additionally be recruiting to the larger band when the date is set for the meetings. We are focusing on the following priorities for the upcoming season. Drafts of the corporate sponsorship and giving program and being worked and and will be shared with the board for approval.

Based on research of other local/national groups I think we should lean into creating (or resurrecting) our Legacy Funds. I have a contact at the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation that can help with resources for setting up a fund.

Random thought regarding merch - Is there a way to use square/stripe (can’t remember the platform) back end to load and track merch inventory. (In my humble opinon)Unless we are tracking sales and making sure we are getting a return on our investment, there is no point in the band investing money into having merch.

Goal is to invest in getting storage containers to help organize items for easier access to FOH staff. Lee will donate containers.

Marketing, Joy

$400 cost for marketing with Classical KC. Committee meeting brought about the idea of creating a TikTok account for the band. Currently brainstorming different ways to create content to gain viewership.

Membership, Rose

Snack rotation is making a comeback.

Estimated attendance is about 30 people, we’re going to plan on 50 for the season kick off picnic.

Plan is to start setting up around 1:30PM to have everything ready to go.

Performance Opportunities, Rose and Steven

No report. We’ll look into St Joe pride 2024.

Note: JOCO Pride.

Old Business

No old business

New Business

Repairs on the Baritone Saxophone might need to be made, could be expensive.

Reports

Secretary, Steven

No report submitted.

Artistic Director, Lee

I’m very ready for the season to start and thanks to all involved with getting us up on running! Looks like we should be ready for the first rehearsal kudos to the librarians and Nathan. Percussion meets on Thursday to assign parts.

I met with a representative from NASCAR of all places this morning. They were looking for bands to perform for their opening races either this September or next September. In my opinion it’s a non-starter as they want everyone performing to pay $40/individual. Basically a pay-to-play exposure situation. If you feel differently about this opportunity, I’d be happy to discuss.

We got invited to apply for a band invitational in Joplin from the Heartland Concert Band for June 22, 2024. It’s like a family band day thing called Community Band Outdoor Picnic theme for 2024 is Follow the Music. We’d be paid $2500 if accepted. I think we should go for it. Happy to discuss thoughts and concerns. We’d of course need to gauge availability.

MAC Final Report, Folly Final Report, and NTDF Final Reports have all been filed and accepted. We received our award letter from this cycle of MAC at $16,070.00 This is the largest grant amount MAFB has ever awarded. Interim report is due to them in September and I’ll handle that as per usual. Folly still hasn’t released their Metzler-Copaken Initiative guidelines for this upcoming season and I’ve followed up with them. Nathan - We need to pay our deposit to them for our May 10 usage: $1,976.47 with the roll over from last time.

Met with the commissioned composers for upcoming seasons: Sonya Leonore Stahl for this holiday and then Jenn Jolley, Anthony R. Green, and Olivia Kieffer for the Timpani Concerto for 2025. We’re going to use a consortium model for the Timpani Concerto so we will need to build a page on our website for that. Here is the draft language and we’d need a composite image with the three composers to accompany it. We can either invoice consortium partners or have them pay in another manner but we will need to keep tight track of those amounts so the composers will be paid properly.

Would like to get a season postcard mailed to everyone on our list after we secure the date with the Zoo (shortly after September 1 with their aquarium opening.)

Can we get the tickets live within the coming days, both season and individual?

Assistant Artistic Director, Jessie

Hi all! Sorry to miss, I am at a conference in Seattle. All of last year’s MMJO members are returning, yay! Auditions are open until Friday, and really the only thing we could use are a couple more trumpets to fill out the section. I will target-ask a few key players after auditions close.

Board Chair, Alex

Made some changes to the participant handbook to reflect staffing changes that have happened. You can see it here

The attendance form has been prepared and I will generate a new QR Code each week so we can track attendance. You can see the base form here

Looking forward to getting back to rehearsals! Hope to see everybody that can make it at the cookout. I’m glad that we’ve got that going again.

Conference registration has closed. We have 10 members that will be attending the conference with us.

Vice Chair, J.J. Pearse

Thank you librarians for getting music put together.

Treasurer, Nathan

Report available upon request.

Business Operations, Ian

I am out of the country this week so I will not be able to join the meeting. We will be starting our work meetings about the same time as the Board starts its meeting. See following Notes:

Season 21 Participant Agreements, Dues, and Staff Contracts

All staff contracts for Season 21 have been fully executed and a copy is loaded to the Drive

The Flipcause site for Season 21 Dues and Participation Agreements is up and running. We should clarify with everyone that, if they are paying dues, they do not have to separately fill out the participation agreement as it will be covered in their dues process.

ACB Outreach

I sent a note to the ACB points of contact in late July noting some of our questions and concerns. They have acknowledged receipt of the email but have not provided any response. I will reach out to them again to follow up.

I have not seen any additional discussion about a meeting with the ACB conference team for further discussion.

Other Notes:

Our paperwork is in for the Gem to hold the date in the fall and they sent us the actual contract a couple weeks ago. There were errors in that contract (applicable times of day) and I have asked for them to be corrected and resubmitted to us. That action is still pending and I will follow up with them. NATHAN - Can we confirm that we sent them the deposit for that date? (Nathan: Yes, check has been sent <3)

I would like to revisit the process by which we inventory the Band’s property. As we discovered last year, our records on band-owned instruments, etc. are not complete and I’d like to make sure that our property inventories are up-to-date. This helps from both knowing what we actually have as well as defining our property for insurance purposes.

I want to ensure that we’re covering all of our property, not just instruments.

I’m looking at a way to better identify and document band property including better asset tags than we have now (most of our tags are home-made labels). It would be helpful to identify by the item’s serial number and a unique MAFB asset number in case something doesn’t have a serial (or we cant find it). I should be able to secure some better tags relatively inexpensively and use the operations discretionary budget.

I am planning to be there on the night of the first rehearsal so I can help with people who haven't done participation agreements yet. I would also like to get instrument loan agreements started that night for those borrowing band instruments.

Jeanine, Librarian

Bea, Tyler, and I are working as a team to get all the music scanned for the first MAFB and MMJO concerts of the season.

Bea and Tyler’s email addresses need to be added as recipients of forwarding from librarian@freedomband.com. Not sure who is able to assist with this.

Webmaster, Erin

Updated website with notes provided by Lee and Jessie. Please let me know if you would like to update your staff photo 🙂

Meeting adjourned at 8:18PM