Business Board Meeting December 17th, 2019

1. Call to Order

Chair, Mike Moore, called the meeting to order at: 8:03 pm EST

2. Roll:

Present: Afton Benson, Sofia Noethe, Craig Lewis, Scott Steiskal, Mike Sullivan, Galen Harp, Matan Presberg, Erin Stephens, Amy Wiliczka, Mike Moore

Absent: Eric Shibuya, Exuro Piechocki

Recorder: Mike Moore

3. Approval of Agenda

Motion: Matan Presberg

Second by: Scott Steiskal

Discussion:

Please add a motion to approve moving ahead with Green Bay, Wisconsin as our festival destination in 2024.

-Comment from Mike Moore: Mike Sullivan, you are able to author motions (you just can’t move, second, or vote on them). I have added a motion re: Green Bay (Motion G)

Vote: Motion passes unanimously

4. Approval of Minutes:

Business Board Meeting, Nov 26/2019 (LINK)

Motion: Sofia N.

Second: Amy W.

Discussion:

Vote: Passes unanimously

5. Reports

Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival discussion.

2020 Festival Report (Noel Yee)

Discussion: Matan met with Sam Stefano, Kate Stark, Noel Yee and Nathan Wakefield, made a facebook event and plan to post 3 times a week-starting 12/16/19

Financial Report (Afton Benson)

Discussion: Mike Moore working on General Budget, and getting the festival site launched for getting packages.

Future Festival Site Report (Mike Sullivan & Craig Lewis)

Craig and Mike have decided to move ahead with recommending Green Bay, Wisconsin for our 77th annual festival destination in July, 2024.

Our future festival site report recommending Green Bay for 2024 along with some additional information is available here. Two additional documents are in this month’s Board Meetings folder here.

We urge the Board to approve the recommendation and authorize us to move ahead with contracting with the venues.

…

Secondly, I would like to request that the Future Festival Site operation be given a small budget.

It has never had a budget, but it has always had expenses. Those expenses, with a few exceptions, have been paid by the IJA volunteer serving in the role. The volunteers already give a lot of their lives and expertise to IJA, and they should not also be expected to pay out-of-pocket when traveling on IJA business.

The kinds of things that the budget would be used for would be to reimburse the volunteer for incidental expenses incurred when traveling on site visits for IJA future festival prospecting: origin airport parking, meals enroute, tolls and gas to/from airport for site visit trips, meals on own when on multi-day site visits (when not hosted by destination reps), and so on.

I think a budget of $1,000/year would be more than sufficient, and likely would not be exhausted in most years. All expenses would be supported by written expense reports with receipts. Any residue at the end of each fiscal year could be returned to the treasury. After a couple of years, the annual funding could be re-evaluated and adjusted if needed.

The Future Festivals Site volunteers have helped the IJA find a lot of really great festival destinations, and have saved the organization many, many tens of thousands of dollars by negotiating great deals with venues for our events. Supporting this effort with a small budget seems reasonable and proportional to other mission-critical IJA activities.

Discussion:

Have we done a festival in early July before? (Afton) Seems likely (Mike S.)

4th of July is valid, but it’s on a Thurs.

Where’s the motion for the $1,000 at the bottom (Scott S) Would it be okay to discuss this via email (Mike S.) Discussion moving to email for adding a stipend to the budget.

eJuggle Report (Scott Seltzer) (old report)

Discussion:

No new report at this moment

Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Membership Data

Discussion:

Marketing Report (Erin Stephens/Matan Presberg)

Discussion: Marketing has been going well, our IJA FB group has gotten new requests for members. Looking to partner with Cathedral for our Instagram 65k followers giveaway. Working on the list for the 2020 Tricks of the Month videos.

IRC Report (Erin Stephens)

Discussion: Wrapping up 2019 IRC project. NeilFred and Viveca have been working with Erin on updating Scoring for the Competitions. Good leads for 6 other places to fill up the rest of the year.

What would be a good hosting festival? (Mike M.) The IRC is given one of the main nights, so Fri night usually, they match $300 for prize money, and have someone.

West coast venue would be cool or Turbo.

Made $709 from Giving Tuesday

Met with the director of the World Cup they’re hoping to get the festival site down and set a date.

YJA Report (Galen Harp)

Discussion: Link to the notes from the YJA Meeting:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KHTvpJb5ojntFfent981dEDqDtvFRFx5Y5eqMtmAHZQ/edit?usp=sharing

Still organizing and what roles people are going to be doing. Anni is willing to do all the graphic design on changing the buttons to being multilingual. If the YJA does fundraising how should that be branded and be put forth?

If you do a FB fundraiser have them send a screenshot to Afton with the amount raised for the YJA. Matan and Erin can help promo it on the IJA FB page too.

The educational side of us has a lot of value for corporate sponsorships and partnering with universities. They’re going to start reaching out to celebrity people to see if they’d be willing to help out with YJA.

YJA is posting 3 times a week starting tomorrow

Tiktok: @justinwoodcircus

Mike S-reach out to Justin Wood

6. Motions for Consideration

A: Motion to approve the proposed changes to the “Scoring” category of the IJA Festival Championships and IRC rules. See changes here.

Author : Erin
Motion : Amy W.
Second : Sofia N.

Discussion : Viveca, NeilFred, and Erin discussed it and have updated the scoring category and removed the representation of juggling and replaced with juggling execution. All scoring ranks will have equal weight.

This is for both the IJA Champions and the IRC Championships

Vote :
In favour:
Oppose :
Abstain :
Result : Passes unanimously

B: Motion to approve the proposed changes specific to the IRC and Juggling World Cup rules. (click both links for details)

Author : Erin
Motion : Scott S.
Second : Matan P.

Discussion : Will people be more motivated to get 2nd cause they get cash? (Mike M) Doesn’t sound like that’s been the spirit of most competitors. What if the first place winner cannot go and they know right away (Amy W.)? Unsure, but most people have been competing for the recognition. If someone wins 1st place and they choose not to go does 2nd go and get the money from 2nd as well?

There is a cut off for when the 1st place winners say yes or no. When we have the prelims (for the IJA), they’re not allowed to alter things about their routines. For the JWC, they can improve their routine to support development and growth.