1. Call to Order
Chair, Benjamin, called the meeting to order at: 6:01pm Eastern
2. Roll:
Present: Afton Benson, Jonathan Perry, Ross Berenson, Kaylin Meyers, Asllynne Howes, Mike Sullivan, Jake Darrow, Noel Yee,
Absent: Niels, Luther, Sophia
Recorder: Afton Benson
3. Approval of Agenda
Motion: Jonathan
Second by: Aslynne
Discussion: Note: Afton added last second motion for festival director stuff
Vote: Passes Unanimously
4. Approval of Minutes:
Business Board Meeting (LINK)
Motion: Jonathan
Second: Aslynne
Discussion:
Vote: Passes Unanimously
5. Reports
Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival discussion.
Guest: Richard Gerrity w/Merrill Lynch for Investment Account(s)
Richard will be our contact and can help with donors donating stocks etc. which will make everything easier on both parts.
Looking at a very conservative portfolio 80-90% bonds, treasuries. Last 10-20% will be Blue Chip Stock dividends etc., with review after a year. Management fee is 1.1%.
Afton: making it clear that we have an iiwii fund separate from other funds
Benjamin: can we have a better idea of what to expect?
Richard: Not worrying about income levels being too high since we are a not-for-profit. Looking at liquid investments with minimal fluctuations but can structure each fund differently. Endowment fund will be for receiving the investments from donors. We can hopefully take over the bank accounts and investments together to make it more seamless.
Benjamin: Can we choose how much goes into the investment account?
Afton: yes
Jonathan: Can we have a diverse portfolio in terms of conservatism and growth?
Richard: Yes, we will start more conservative
Afton: we can change as often as we want?
Richard: yes
Jonathan: Can we avoid certain industries etc (ESGs)?
Richard: yes
Additional discussion, Richard leaves call at 6:26pm
2025 Festival Report Noel Yee & Afton Benson)
Discussion:
- Confirmed performers are being added to the website; marketing has the assets and is working on weaving those in
- Confirmed a super dope guest to be publicly announced soon!
- Doubletree (festival hotel) is booked, all double rooms have been taken and there’s about 5-7 King rooms available still
- Added overflow rooms at the Hyatt up the street; waiting for room night costs and booking instructions. No attrition with a 1:25 room comp rate. Added 30 rooms per night Mon-Sun; some doubles some king rooms, but the king rooms have a pull out sofa so same occupancy levels
- 215 people registered for the festival, this is more on par now but still feels low please share with groups you know. Remind college clubs they can sometimes ask for funding from their schools to help them attend
- Have confirmed workshop coordinators and 2 lead registration folks
- Booked a parliamentarian; emailing her the bylaws and draft agenda and CC’ing Benjamin
- Confirmed Zak McAllister is assisting JayKo for filming for the week
- Contacting Crash about shirts
- Awaiting information for Hasty Award ordering, if I don’t have everyone by the end of the week I’m going to place the order w/o those we haven’t talked to
- Missing a contact for Yuriy Pozdyakov and Eric Brenn; both David and Dan have been trying to get ahold of folks for these; also missing Tersit Asefa Dersu they reacted to an instagram message I sent. But nothing else.
Question from Mike Sullivan:
- We have a total of 218 registrations so far, of which 39 are full comps. That means we have 179 paid regs to date, with roughly a month to go before pre-reg closes. This is a catastrophically low number. What is being done to promote registrations?
Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion:
- Got a Quickbooks Online account, Dennis was working on setting up chart of accounts
- Next step is to transfer the books over as of Jan 2025 so we have a fresh set of books and a chart of accounts to look at.
- Layout the budget for next year in a way that QBO can do a budget v actuals for future reporting
Future Festival Site Report (Mike Sullivan and Jake Darrow)
All the civil rights riders for Fort Wayne 2026 have been signed and are filed in the festival G Drive for that year.
We have sent out the civil rights riders for the Paramount and Doubletree/Convention Center for Cedar Rapids 2027, awaiting the return of the one from the hotel/center.
We’ve received inquiries from or made inquiries to two prospective destination leads that came in by email over the past few weeks: suburban Cincinnati, OH (specifically, Sharonville), and Wichita Falls, TX.
We’re also chasing down Muskegon, Michigan, from a lead from a member. We submitted an inquiry request on 5/5 but did not hear back – Mike will call tomorrow to follow-up. Muskegon looks like they have a very, very small tourism staff/CVB.
Sharonville is about 45 minutes from CVG airport, which is an obvious concern, but seems to have most of what else we look for with the exception of the formal performance theater. Hotel and restaurant pricing might be above where we like it in this upscale exurb. The Cain twins have weighed in, and based on their input, we have asked for a telephone conference with the rep from Visit Cincy sometime soon to flesh out more details.
Wichita Falls also looks like it has most of what we want at first glance, so we’ve sent our RFP to the rep and will wait to hear back with their ideas. Initial concerns would be that only AA flies there, and only from DFW, and that it would be even hotter in mid-July than El Paso, as it is not at 4,000-foot elevation in the high desert but on the prairie of the Texas panhandle region.
Also, just today, contact with Richmond, VA who we received a bid from in 2011 for 2013. A member said they are looking to book groups like ours; the facilities are excellent and airlift / driveability is 10/10, but we were priced out in 2011 still coming out of the global financial crisis, so it will be interesting to see if they can get close to where we need the pricing to be. They already replied and assigned our lead to a rep, so we should hear back soon.
As Jake will be sliding into the FFS role full-time later this year, we are now co-signing all emails with both of our contact info so everyone knows we’re both responsive, and when the time comes in the fall, Jake will take over as primary and I’ll be his helper / advisor / emeritus role for a few years. Then he can start the process of adding an assistant / protégé / trainee in a few years and the circle of life will be complete.
I’d like to get Jake a read-only access to YourMembership so he can look up memberships, see dashboards, product sales info, etc. Any objections?
Afton: we can only have 3 accounts attached to YM, so no new accounts, please!
Jonathan: are we also looking at the East even with higher room rates? (approx. $150)
Mike S: yes, but we think it’s going to be prices in excess of $200/room. We are open to bids up to $150/room, but it hasn’t been that much more interest. It likely will put the convention centre much more expensive if it’s a higher hotel rate.
Discussion:
eJuggle Report (Eric Shibuya)
Dr. Steve Ward’s article on Vivalla is in WordPress and awaiting final touches. I expect to publish this before the end of the month. He’s reached out for permission for some (I believe two) images (as we wait, at his suggestion, he believes it is acceptable to add “all efforts were made to obtain permission for the use of the images”). I agree, but will defer to the Board.
Those images could simply be linked via URL (at least one does say it is permissible for use for educational purposes, and this certainly qualifies). To be clear, I do have the links in the article, but I also have the image in the article itself (the link does go to a much nicer version).
Related to this: I will make a note in our image library for these images their URL and permission status
Donnell Griffith recruited Jasper Murphy to write an article on Jasper’s juggling and animation video and edited said article. Every member of the eJuggle editorial team has now edited at least one article.
Awaiting JoAnn Ireland’s recap of Congress of Jugglers
Discussion:
- Board – So great! Thanks team. Yay! 😀
Mike Sullivan departs call 6:53 pm ET
Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Membership Data
Discussion:
Benjamin – What would be a dreamy number?
Aslynne: 8k; Afton 2k
Jonathan: unless we’re using it to target to other goals it’s not worth focusing that right now
Jake Departs meeting at 6:54 pm ET
Marketing Report (Lisa Ellipse)IJA social media requests
IJA instragram password was changed, shared with Ross, and distributed to current media team
Plans to regularly update IG password (every few months and especially after takeovers) (Ross: Please keep me on this list so I can update our password sheet)
Current take over sheet: IJA takeovers
Performer list shared to festival marketing team from Afton to get ahead of content.
Here is current time line: Festival Marketing Timeline
Marketing team document still in progress:Welcome to IJA marketing
Plan to do fun story reshare campaign for 5/31 variations.
Discussion:
IRC Report (Erin Stephens)
Two deadlines passed for the IRC of 2025 in the past couple weeks.
The unfortunate news to report is that there were not enough entries for the IRC Centroamérica to be able to hold the competition. Historically we have required a minimum of 5 entries to hold a competition, and there were only 3 people that entered this year. There are various reasons for this, according to the festival director
- Many jugglers in Honduras do not have juggling props. There is no juggling prop company in Honduras, making it very hard for the jugglers to get new props.
- The stoplight jugglers (which is most jugglers in Centroamérica) say they do not have time to prepare a routine for the IRC because they are too busy working.
- Many jugglers who expressed interest in participating, backed out at the last minute saying that they don’t feel “qualified” to compete in such a prestigious competition. The fact is that the general skill level in Central America tends to be a bit lower than the rest of the Americas … and thus, in seeing videos from the other regions, the jugglers often become self conscious in entering.
Both the director and I feel that this third point can be addressed with making some videos in the future, speaking to the goal of the IRC to promote juggling as it exists within each region and also to encourage the advancement of juggling as an artform in each region.
The other entry deadline that passed is for IRC Sudamérica 2025 – Ecuador. There were 13 total entries, 2 of which were disqualified due to time penalties, leaving a total of 11 finalists. The competitors are from Colombia, Ecuador and Argentina. The finalists website is being built and the finalists will be announced tomorrow.
The promo graphic for IRC Mexico 2025 has been completed and I am now building the website to make the public announcement.
I am awaiting propositions from the final two expected IRC of 2025 – Colombia and Chile.
Discussion:
Benjamin: Let us know how we can help!
Aslynne: Great to see there are more ideas on how to get folks to participate.
Thom: Spanish video from past jugglers who won and how it was helpful for them, and they maybe felt the same as others. And a 90 second video encouraging not to compete against the best of the best, but their peers and build connections!
Ross: This would be good for any festivals too.
YJA Report (Benjamin Domask-Ruh)
Discussion:
Juggling Education Book:
- All submissions in, starting to go through them all and pick! (Eric S: Please send the eJuggle team those that don’t make the cut, along with author contact info, we’ll see if any will be good for eJuggle publication)
Planting the juggling seed
- Library is undergoing renovation, do we want to force a show in the lobby/outside area or skip this year?
Club YJA
- One participant signed up so far! A return from last year. Woohoo!
Juggling Teacher Curriculum workshop at IJA
- Two 2-hour days at the festival this year (who is running workshops?)
- Vickie Pang:
Juggling connection with Happy Camper
- An opportunity to connect with the US Summer Camp scene! More deets to come, but a possible revenue source/membership opportunities through an established system
OpsO Report (Ross Berenson)
Discussion: Nothing special to report. Helping where I can in various areas.
- Looking forward to the days of emails being in proper google workspace
- Website is moving forward
- Talking with Officers and team members for their input!
6. Motions for Consideration
- Motion to Approve Sky King Award – 2025 Nomination
Motion: Aslynne
Seconded: Jonathan
Discussion:
Jorge Vilchis, best known as Conejo Lunar, becomes a true icon of juggling in Mexico and beyond. His passion, dedication, and artistic journey have deeply influenced the Spanish-speaking juggling community, not only as a juggler, but as a bridge between cultures, generations, and styles within the juggling world.
As the director of the Tricks of the Month project for the International Jugglers’ Association, Jorge has opened the doors of global visibility to jugglers everywhere—especially those who speak Spanish and come from underrepresented communities. Under his leadership, the project has embraced an inclusive and diverse vision, where nationality, religion, or any other “difference” do not matter: what matters is the art, the movement, and the community.
Thanks to his generous spirit and tireless work, we can now say that the global juggling scene is richer with voices, styles, and talents that once had no stage. Jorge centers people—not just tricks—and that’s why this recognition is more than deserved.
Thank you, Conejo Lunar, for opening paths, building bridges, and reminding us that juggling can also be a collective act of love.
Vote:
Approve: Jonathan, Benjamin
Abstain: Aslynne
Oppose:
Passes
- Motion to Approve Noel Yee & Afton Benson as Festival Co-Directors for 2025
Motion: Jonathan
Seconded:Aslynne
Discussion: Jess will be compensated $2000 for the work they’ve completed for the IJA festival; the remaining $5,000 would be split between Noel & Afton.
Vote: Passes Unanimously
7. Varia:
There are three Board seats up for election this year. There’s only one nomination and the deadline has passed. Should the Board extend the deadline (as has been done in the past)? Anyone know of potential candidates?
Nominations that are emailed in were:
Bill Biz Olbrisch
-
Motion to approve extending the Board election nomination deadline to June 15th 2025.
Motion: Aslynne
Second: Jonathan
Discussion:
Aslynne will be abstaining because she intends to nominate herself
Vote:
Abstain: Aslynne
Approve:
Oppose:
Vote passes
8. Confirm Next Meeting
Next meetings will take place on…
June 2nd for the next vision meeting
June 16th for the next business meeting
9. Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 7:41 pm Eastern.