1. Call to Order
Chair, Benjamin Domask-Ruh, called the meeting to order at: 6:06 pm Eastern
2. Roll:
Present: Afton Benson, Mike Sullivan, Sofia Noethe, Kaylin Meyers, Martin Frost, Ross Berenson, Benjamin Domask-Ruh
Absent:
Niels Duinker (performing tonight in Europe, show doesn’t let out tell 11 PM), Aslynne Howes, Jonathan Perry, Luther Bangert, Noel Yee
Recorder: Benjamin Domask-Ruh
3. Approval of Agenda
Motion: Noel Yee
Second by: Sofia Noethe
Discussion:
Vote: Passes unanimously
4. Approval of Minutes:
Business Board Meeting (Business Meeting Agenda – 05.19.2025)
Motion: Luther Bangert
Second: Sofia Noethe
Discussion:
Vote: Passes Unanimously
5. Reports
Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival discussion.
2025 Festival Report Noel Yee & Afton Benson)
Discussion:
Noel Yee joins at 6:11 pm ET
- Mike asks for logos/designs from festival for Program Mock-ups
- eNewsletter to highlight performers in July?
- Maybe highlight a few performers and link to the festival page so they can explore more
Luther Bangert join at 6:22pm ET
Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion:
Afton makes a big note saying – This is new. We can change the proposed operations anytime. 🙂
Future Festival Site Report (Mike Sullivan and Jake Darrow)
Not much going on. Have had interest from Cincinnati (Sharonville) OH – a northern suburb, about 45 minutes across the city from CVG airport, not a downtown location and not many bars and restaurants, but they want to propose a preliminary bid for 2029 so we are looking to see that in the next week. David and Scott Cain are familiar with the area and are also not terribly optimistic, but we will see.
Next big event is Jake’s “How We Choose Fest Destinations” workshop at the festival, and then our “convention for people who hold conventions” convention in Buffalo in September.
Discussion:
Noel – Is greenbay in our rotation again?
Mike – Yes! We actually have a written offer with a shelf life that begins in Jan. They can’t offer anything in writing until 4 years before the date. Terms are in writing that we CAN accept once the system opens. But we want to keep options open. (But they want us back and they have a good offer)
Noel – For 2029 or 2030?
Mike – Either one!
eJuggle Report (Eric Shibuya)
Discussion: I have been in contact with a few people interested in contributing to eJuggle with articles that were not chosen for the Juggling Education book. In particular, a series on juggling and physical fitness. Naomi will lead in editing that series once I get her and Javier together.
JoAnn Ireland plans on doing a recap of the Philadelphia Juggling Festival. I talked with Stephen Haines there to contribute to Tricks of the Month for 2026.
Donnell and I discussed another call for writers, specifically for the festival. I’ll have something for the July newsletter and post it on IJA FB. The marketing team might also push this if they can. (Request in the marketing spreadsheet)
- Afton adjusted the budget so it calculates differently and makes it easier for Eric to flex funds!
- “Sounds amazing! Thanks for the work and thanks for keeping us posted! Booking forward to it. 🙂 “
Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Membership Data
Discussion:
- Updated June #s?
Marketing Report (Lisa Ellipse)IJA social media requests
-Workshop sign up up today
-Performers being announced starting this week. Planning to do 2 posts on them per week.
Also going to include Pub-crawl, X-treme juggling
Marketing team brainstorming celebration for 100k on Instagram. Idea atm is an 2026 IJA festival package give away. But need to discuss the logistics of that. (can be a vision board thing)
- who gets chosen/what qualifications
- No covering of travel & lodging?
- What other potential things to be mindful of?
Also idea of prop giveaway with venders we have connections with
Discussion:
–
IRC Report (Erin Stephens)
The IRC Sudamérica 2025 – Ecuador is happening this coming weekend. I am on tour in France, simultaneously coordinating all the last minute details along with the organizing team in Ecuador and the IRC representatives from Chile who will be running the event. Everything is going smoothly, medals have been shipped, money has been transferred and we’re getting ready to launch the promotion for the livestream on the IJA Instagram.
The website for the IRC Mexico will soon be ready and we’ll launch promotion, and the IRC in Colombia will have a proposal ready next month.
Discussion:
- Benjamin: So excited for the livestream promotion!
- Does the marketing team know this? Please post in the marketing request when you can? 🙂
-
IJA social media requests
- We want to keep records of our posts and make sure we aren’t missing anything. And so we’re consistent in how things are put out.
YJA Report (Benjamin Domask-Ruh)
Discussion:
Education Book
- Proposals Selected. LoA’s sent to Contributing Authors
Planting the Juggling Seed
- Not happening this year.
Club YJA
- Had team meeting. Things looking good, so far!
Thom Wall Joins at 7:08pm
Curriculum
- Teaching again at the festival. Should we announce it somewhere?
Camp Workshop
- If we remember a note from a while ago, was looking to work with Happy Campers group. Only 1 person signed up and so we postponed it.
OpsO Report (Ross Berenson)
Discussion:
- Officer check-in for 2025-2026 is in progress. Waiting on confirmation from 3 more people
- Email clean up / gmail account – in progress
- Procedure documentation planning – long-term. Create a wiki of IJA related procedures that can easily be searched and maintained.
6. Motions for Consideration
- Motion to approve opening an investment account with Merrill Lynch.
Author: Afton Benson
Motion: Sofia Noethe
Second:Luther Bangert
Discussion:
For opening the ML account, I am suggesting we do the following to begin with.
Open the overall IJA investment account
Invest 100% of the iiWii account into the PG1M Fixed Income/which is the Mutual funds & exchange traded funds; it’s moderately conservative and was what ML suggested we start off with for these funds. YTD annualized performance between 4.71-6.81% so as good as the CD maybe better then. After a year its’ between 11.4-13.37%
For the Savings account funds, I think we should put those into the C10 Moderate size and style which is exchange traded funds. This has a YTD annualized performance 10.43-11.89% and a year was 20.34-22.52% then it levels out to 3-8%.
What I figure is we can get these invested and see how they do for the rest of the year and decide in January/Feb what we’d like to change if anything. And Richard can meet with us to help make things clearer too.
- Questions about sustainable funds. Deciding to move forward with this plan and check in monthly and if we decide to change, we can!
Vote: Passes Unanimously
7. Varia:
Jonathan: Maybe make Vision Meetings once per month in order to foster better attendance?
Benjamin: As it stands, we currently have 1 Vision meeting/month and 1 Business meeting/month. Attendance is consistently higher at all meetings since Benjamin joined the board in 21.
- Questions from this: Is better attendance the goal? Or more intentional meetings?
- With new board members in July, Board Chair is looking to onboard new board members more intentionally at the festival as well as start looking for ways for board members to sign up for role.
- E.g. Physical Storage management, or spearheading the team for video archives, etc.
- Additionally a request from when I started board duties was for each board member to learn a role at the festival so that there are more brains/hands ready to jump in when needed
- E.g. How to run nominations/elections
- Afton – Less meeting usually means less gets done
- Let’s wait discussing this further until we have our new board members
Niels Duinker: Note, Thanks for the opportunity to serve on the board the last 4 years. Next month will be the annual convention and vote for new board members. I wish the new board good luck this upcoming year.
- Thanks so much Niels! We appreciate you being on board and helping the org!
Kaylin – Tutorial of the month in the future! Idea: Re-make the video tutorial contest into the Tutorial of the Month. Like tricks of the month but for tutorials. Where at least once a month we have a special guest make a tutorial on various tricks or even aspects of juggling. Kaylin would be willing to run this.
- Wanting it to be for Ejuggle membership exclusive content to promote membership
- Potentially wait for new system to start up to make payment easier for international jugglers to join
Thom – Board Development. Less Scary, how we recruit?
- Answers of being generally positive, supportive, and informative of the duties while also embracing those that DO stuff.
- Confirm Next Meeting
Next meetings will take place on…
The AGM – Thursday, July 17, 2025 at 1:00pm CT
9. Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 7:41 pm Eastern.