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MAC BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING MINUTESDate of meeting: July 10, 2019Board Members Attending: Julie MillerWendy RussellJennie LittStearns MatthewsSidney MyerApologies:Frank Dain Bob DiamondKim GroggKim SuttonLennie WattsAmy WolkRoy Sander==================================================================Meeting called to order at 7:05pm by Julie Miller.WelcomeJulie welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked everyone who was able to attend. HospitalitySidney brought a stunning array of goodies for us and they were thoroughly enjoyed by all. Wendy joyously exclaimed “these lemon cookies are fresh and delicious,” to which Sidney, in a moment of high drama, loudly uttered “take THAT, President Watts.” This was followed by a brief retelling of something about Cynthia Crane and Bidet.Membership ReportStearns reported that we currently have 586 members. Julie noted it’s about 20 less than this time last year. Stearns will send membership renewal reminders to those recently expired long-time members who have not renewed.Financial ReportWendy reported on three months of bank balances for both of our current bank accounts. $63,954.54 is the current balance. There are only a couple of outstanding checks. She will work on eliminating the Citibank account and transferring those funds to the TD Bank account. When the new website is ready (sometime this Fall), it will be easier to integrate/correlate membership and financial info, and be easier to track membership fees in their own category, as well as other related member income such as label requests or merchandise purchases. Wendy will work on that with Stearns.The 990 tax form is due on July 15th. Wendy will make sure it gets filed on time, and next year, she will file by the regular due date without seeking an extension. Julie requested that Wendy add copies of all of the bank statements to the MAC dropbox and Wendy said she will do that.5. BOD ElectionsJulie reported that Jennie, Amy, Kim G., and Kim S. have their Board terms expiring at the end of August. Jennie said she will be running again (which made everyone in attendance very happy), and Julie will check with the others to see whether they are also running again. We also need to check in with Kim S. to see how she’s doing and what her expectations are regarding her ability to continue with the Board.Julie told the Board that she has created a timeline for the election. She will send out a notice to the membership announcing a submission period and submission rules, and set up the election to run from mid-late August through early-mid September, with the first meeting of the new Board set to be our September 18th meeting date. 6. MAC to SchoolJennie and Stearns reported on the panels and workshops they are setting up for MAC to School. While it is still in formation status, the classes being considered include: Cabaret 101, Cabaret 201, The Business of Cabaret (run by Sue Matsuki), Vocal Workshop with David Sabella (concentrating on range extension and belting), Scat Workshop (if we can find someone qualified to teach it – some names were suggested as possibilities), a Non-Comedy Master Class and a Comedy Master Class, a possible workshop on Social Media, an Image Consult Workshop with Wendy-lane Bailey, A Parade of Original Opening Numbers by our community of songwriters. Jennie has put out a request for submissions of original songs and has already received some submissions. We also discussed possibly having a panel of cabaret reviewers. There was some discussion as to who might be good to invite to lead a master class. Two rooms (where necessary) have been booked for the weekend at 353 Studios. We need to reorder some notebooks for handouts for the weekend. Stearns and Jennie will coordinate this with Amy.Stearns will have the website set up to take MAC to School reservations and payments by mid-August. We will maintain the same price point as in prior years.7. MAC AwardsJulie told the Board that she is working on locking in a date for the 2020 MAC Awards. The date we normally would have requested as first choice (Tuesday March 31) is already firmly booked at Sony Hall and not available to us. The next requested date, Monday March 30, already had a hold on it (as did a number of surrounding dates.) Julie is working with Sony Hall to see if they can free up that date for us. The process is that even if someone has a hold on a certain date, until SONY Hall actually receives a substantial deposit from that party, that date is not considered firmly booked. If another group wants that date, SONY Hall goes back to the original party that has the hold and issues a “challenge.” This basically gives that party 72 hours to show up with money in hand or loose the date. Julie has filled out the preliminary contract paperwork and obtained a down payment check from Wendy and is getting that to SONY Hall as quickly as possible. SONY Hall is issuing a challenge to the group holding that date, and we should learn the outcome soon. Julie discussed possible other dates with the Board in the event this one is not available. The problem is that going into an earlier week will bring us closer to the Bistro Awards than we want to be, and going to a later date would put us in April and take us out of March is Cabaret Month. Julie will let the Board know when we have a date firmly booked.8. Burman and Wallowitch AwardsJulie told the Board that she will oversee the awards and the process, and Frank and Kim G have each volunteered to take one of the awards and chair those committees. Julie will draft the submission rules (basically just updating the same rules we have used in the past), and will ask Frank and Kim G to begin forming their respective committees (hopefully using different people than they used for the MAC Award songwriting committees), and ask them to collectively get one celebrity judge to pick the two winners. Our process for these awards is to ask people to submit three songs that collectively showcase the range of their styles of writing and generally showcase what they believe to be their best work. Each of the committees will narrow down the submitters to three finalists, and then the celebrity judge (we can use the same one for both categories) will select the winners from each list of finalists.Julie had prepared a timeline for this process using the presentation of the award at our upcoming December holiday soiree as the calendar point. During our discussion of the process, Jennie suggested that we might instead want to highlight our winners more extensively by having MAC produce a show of their songs at Mama’s, and that would be part of their prize. This way, people can attend and actually hear the winners’ songs performed rather than just handing them a check at the party with no performance opportunity. Everyone thought that was a great idea and discussion ensued about what that might look like. It was decided it would be a normal length showcase, perhaps on a Sunday afternoon, with each of the two winners having one-half the program – so about six songs each, plus the presentation of their prize money. MAC would pay the costs of the room. We probably would not need a musical director as each composer will probably play piano for their own songs, and each winner would be responsible for bringing along singer(s) for their songs (or perform the songs themselves if they prefer). We would charge a low cover ($5 or $10) just to ensure people who reserve would actually attend. Julie will ask the absent Board members what they think of this plan, and we can discuss what time of year would be best for this program. Some at the meeting thought the first week of March would be good (for March is Cabaret Month programming), but Julie thinks that might be too close to the MAC Awards and we should pick a different time of year – perhaps January. 9. Re-Engagement of Advisory BoardJulie told the Board that she would like to find a way to re-engage the Advisory Board, as we currently have no way for them to participate in the Board in their capacity as Advisory Board members, now that they are no longer invited to attend regular monthly Board meetings. Julie told the Board that every now and then, she tries to think of ways in which Advisory Board members could be brought more into the MAC Board fold, for example, a couple years ago, Julie invited them to attend our Holiday party as MAC’s guests. Julie suggested that we could think about possibly designating one or two meetings during the year at which Advisory Board members would be invited to attend. Julie said that this year, a great way to engage the Advisory Board would be to invite them to be panelists / participants in MAC to School. Everyone agreed this would be a good idea, and Julie asked Stearns and Jennie to look through the programming they are setting up for MAC to School to try to identify panels or roles in which each Advisory Board member could be invited to participate in some capacity (panelist, piano player, etc.). Julie also requested that when the invitations to them are issued, it should be made clear that it is in their capacity as Advisory Board members (to remind them that they are on our Advisory Board), such as “Because you are an important member of our Advisory Board, the MAC Board would like to invite you to be a panelist for our _____ panel that we are presenting as part of our upcoming MAC to School weekend.” Stearns and Jennie will look for the best panels for each person to be invited to join. Julie pointed out that it wouldn’t really matter whether they wanted to participate or not; the most important thing would be that they know we asked them.Stearns suggested that next time we have a special meeting discussing a visioning for the future of MAC, or other type of future planning, that the Advisory Board members should be included in that. Anything that involves Big Picture type discussion.Julie sadly told Board that Advisory Board member Alan Bomser passed away in April. (Amy – please remove his name from the website and letterhead.)10. MAC Roving Open Mic ScheduleThe following Open Mics have been scheduled for the Fall Season:August – hosted by Jennie; MD is Bill Zeffiro. At PangeaSeptember – hosted by Stearns; MD is Gregory Toroian. At The Triad. October – hosted by Kim Grogg, MD is Paul Chamlin. At DTMNovember – hosted by Wendy Russell, MD is William TN Hall. At 53 AboveDecember - no open micJennie will check in with Frank, who hosted the last open mic, to see if he still has the sign up cards.11. Resumption of Regular Monthly MeetingsThis is now the second meeting in a row where it turned out we did not have a quorum. The first one had to be cancelled. This one we went forward with as we really needed to meet, but the lack of a quorum hampers our ability to conduct the business of MAC, and is unfair to those members who do make the effort to attend. Our next meeting is the middle of September, which means it will be five months since we have held a meeting with a quorum (assuming we have one in September). All members attending this meeting agreed that that is not acceptable.When we decided to try reducing the meeting schedule to every other month, we specifically said that to make this work, people needed to make a firm commitment to come to the meetings we do still hold, and people promised that they would. But that is not how it has turned out. We said at the time that if people ended up not doing that, we would need to return to regular monthly meetings. We recognize that everyone needs to miss a meeting now and then, and some things cannot be helped, but having regular monthly meetings will help keep MAC at the forefront of Board members’ minds, and allow for the development of new programming. Also, if a member has to miss a meeting, it will them be only 2 months since they were at a meeting, rather than 4. All members attending this meeting reluctantly agreed that we need to resume a regular monthly meeting schedule.As a result, a motion was made by Julie and seconded by Jennie that regular monthly Board meetings resume beginning with our next scheduled Board meeting on September 18th. All attending Board members (Julie, Wendy, Stearns, Jennie, and Sidney) unanimously voted in favor of the motion. Because we did not have a quorum, this motion remains open for voting by the remaining Board members, and Julie will request their vote once the minutes from this meeting are circulated. Two more affirmative votes will pass this motion.12. Open Floor- After reading the last set of minutes, Sidney wanted the record to show that he wants Miss Kim Grogg to know that we do not pronounce the “i” in Georgia.- Sidney wants everyone to know that The Elegant Ivories are MAC’s best publicist.- In light of Stearns’ upcoming birthday, Julie asked Sidney to opine about whether it is still appropriate to call him “young” Stearns or whether we need a new name for him. Sidney will think on it. Happy Birthday Stearns! You can now run for POTUS! (But he still doesn’t qualify for the Berman Award.)- Wendy is looking forward to the day she can get a senior Metrocard. The meeting adjourned at 8:25pm. Minutes recorded by Julie Miller ................
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