1. Call to Order
Chair, CHAIR, called the meeting to order at: 6:05 pm Eastern
2. Roll:
Present: Noel Yee, Afton Benson, Jonathan Perry, Mike Sullivan, Martin Frost, Sofia Noethe
Absent: Niels Duinker,
Recorder: Jonathan
3. Approval of Agenda
Motion: Jonathan
Second by: Sofia
Discussion: Afton added agenda items
Vote: Passes unanimously
4. Approval of Minutes:
Business Board Meeting (LINK)
Motion: Noel
Second: Jonathan
Discussion:
Vote: Passes unanimously
5. Reports
Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival discussion.
2024 Festival Report (Afton Benson and Noel Yee)
Discussion:
Overall the Festival was a HUGE success! This is the largest festival profit we’ve had in over 15 years, if not more. Green Bay was a really great city, even with multiple flight delays. Afton is working on writing a festival scholarship recap to put out in the newsletter to let folks know how that program is going. Individual IJA members though are making nearly $3,000 through their package donations and donations in general.
“A MODERN RECORD” – Mike Sullivan
Net $76,000. Strong contract and minimal complaints. Raffle raised $5K. Lisa last minute social media posts bumped it up in the last day. Membership donating more and more. UnaMed continues to and wishes to increase donation amount.
Continued veteran/experienced support led to success. How to better communicate it to the general membership? (Noel)
Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion: Peacock feathers (Jonathan)
LUTHER BANGERT joined at 6:22pm Eastern
Future Festival Site Report (Mike and Jake) –
Waiting on very, very slow response from Doutbletree in South Bend regarding revised room block size; they have already agreed to give us more rooms, at $125/night (up from $115 for 770 room/nights), but they didn’t say how many more rooms. We asked on 9/10, still waiting today. Will follow up this week to try to move this along. The Courtyard block and the whole rest of our deal are gated on this number, so if we don’t hear back tomorrow, I will escalate with higher-ups at the Doubletree. I have advised Visit South Bend Mishawaka of our frustration and they will start grinding as well.
After our visit last month, Jake and I declined moving forward with Little Rock, AR. The heat and humidity in mid-August was beyond stifling, and would have been a deal-breaker for many in our group. Additionally, the theater was too big by 2x, as was the Center, the hotel was run-down and poorly managed, the downtown was fairly sparse for food and drink, and so we really didn’t see how the city would make an attractive destination for our group. As I say quite often, not every city is a Fort Wayne or a Cedar Rapids.
Jake and I have been prospecting all the coastal destinations we can find, as well as many others, with no luck.
We copied the Board on the reply from Baltimore – they won’t talk to us until 18 months out.
We either got a negative reply or were ignored by Denver, CO, Atlantic City, NJ, Boulder, CO, Colorado Springs, CO, Spokane, WA, San Jose, CA, Wilmington, DE, Dover, DE, Worcester, MA (recommended by Arthur Lewbel), Kalamazoo, MI, Ft. Collins, CO, Flagstaff, AZ, Charlottesville, VA, and Eugene and Portland, OR.
Waiting to hear back: Fayetteville, AR, Central MA (not Worcester), Green Bay (2029), Albany, NY.
As always, we are eager to speak to anyone, from anywhere, that can offer us the facilities we need, at prices we can afford, in a destination where we can get our jugglers to from everywhere in the world.
Discussion:
- https://www.juggle.org/business/
- College Campus pros/cons were discussed
- Discuss RFP SurveyResults next vision meeting please
eJuggle Report (Scott Seltzer)
Discussion: WOULD LOVE AN eJUGGLE REPORT
Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Membership Data Total members: 1,025
Discussion:
Marketing Report (Matan Presberg)
Discussion:
Afton Update:
Talked to Lisa Ellipse – Very interested in helping craft and develop and oversee marketing team. Similar to festival, but more comprehensive and targeted to how we talk to people online.
- Lots of good ideas from Lisa (Trick tutorial tuesday, collaboration instagram videos)
- Afton is looking to see who all has access to social media accounts and seeing who is ready to team up!
Martin – Who has password to YouTube account? (Matan is the answer)
Afton – Issue is that it is on two-factor authentication
Jonathan – Good job fixing Todd Strong backend issues!
IRC Report (Erin Stephens)
Discussion:
YJA Report (Benjamin Domask-Ruh)
Discussion:
Working on book proposal. Sit tight!
Possible collaboration with EJC and Netherlands Youth Circus Convention
OpsO Report (Ross Berenson)
Discussion:
Jon Udry is updated RFP Survey winner!
6. Motions for Consideration
- Motion to approve the 2024 IJA Festival P&L
Made by: Afton Benson
Motion: Sofia
Second: Luther
Discussion:
- Is it finalized?
- The actual dollar amount won’t change but some names need to be moved around
- We should wait to approve after moving around?
- Will just shift one thing to another but won’t change any bottom numbers
- Dennis uses pretty standard categories but Afton working on streamlining the process
Approval: Noel, Luther, Sofia, Benjamin
Abstain: Jonathan
- Motion to approve Sponsorship for the American Youth Circus Organization for up to $1,000
Made by: Afton Benson
Motion: Sofia
Second: Jonathan
Discussion:
-
- Only issue is to demonstrate there is clearly no conflict of interest.
- No conflict of interest policy at the moment org wide
- Think this opportunity is cool and a nice way for the Org to start connecting and collaborating to get strong outreach happening.
- AYCO/ACE is a non-profit that supports youth in the circus arts. They do a bi-annual youth festival and a bi-annual adult festival (called EdCon helping circus leaders with studios/etc. Learn new techniques for teaching, being better studio owners, etc.) They are looking for sponsors. Afton is the Executive Director. She and here team wanted to reach out and see if the IJA could donate and support new educators helping to get to the festival (similar to IJA’s scholarship fund). Very few of the aerial orgs/youth circus orgs have juggling programs. Having a hand in supporting this org is helping get juggling (good juggling programs) spread to more circus studios across the States.
- IJA will have a prominent display at the festival showing that IJA is a sponsor. Also, IJA is able to get their promotional items into the hands of all the studio owners/circus educators at the festival.
- NOEL LEFT at 7:07pm
Approval: Jonathan, Sofia, Luther
Abstain: Benjamin Domask-Ruh
7. Varia:
From David Cain (Emailed to Board Chair):
I have a problem and I wanted to run a possible solution by you. The IJA Archives are currently stored in a spare bedroom at my mother’s house. This was done because the organization was spending a huge amount of money storing it in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, my mom has had to move into a nursing home due to a slew of health problems. As a result, we will have to sell her house soon and move the archives. The logical thing to do is to move it all to my house, where it would take up my spare bedroom. This is not ideal, as that is where guests usually stay. Nevertheless, I’m willing to make this sacrifice, but I’m hoping the IJA will help me out for doing this. What I’m asking is that in exchange for me storing the archives, I get a comped IJA and vendor package at t he annual festival each year. Financially speaking, this still saves the IJA a ton of money vs. what it was spending for storage previously. It’s a win-win situation. What do you think?
David Cain
- Links of reference:
- IJA Archives Proposal.docx
- Agenda 1/8/2018– Scroll down to Documentation of IJA Archives… Apparently there is an IJA GAVEL?!
- Does David note when a photo/resource is from the IJA Archive?
- People are shipping Afton Archival stuff
- Like meeting minutes or IRS docs/etc
- Our logo copyright (The one before the apostrophe) is at Afton’s now
- Jonathan – Maybe we can find someone in college wants to do some digital archiving?
- Afton – In the realm of him asking money to store it… Sure, it makes sense. But it seems like the only person in the past that charges us to do stuff are the Cains.
- Jonathan – How much stuff is it?
- Sofia – If we need to, it is okay. But to that point, we have to find a long-term solution.
- Afton – David is supposed to be documenting, scanning, and archiving… and he hasn’t.
- Martin – He IS the archive director.
- Do we know what in David’s museum is his vs. the IJA’s?
- We need to see movement in the archiving.
- But if he is using the archives to write his books ad is making money, that is a conflict of interest.
- Martin – There was a group that met in Vegas and spent time digitizing years ago.
- There was also a scanner that was purchased.
- Martin doesn’t know where that stuff is now .
- (They did do some juggling.) But they didn’t get very far.
- Martin has a photo he will send us.
- Jonathan – There ARE services that will digitize stuff.
- How much is stuff vs. paper?
- Martin – Half
- Sandy Brown, reg bacon, martin and alan howard were the Vegas Archive Directors
- Going to be difficult to know what stuff going to his house will be the IJAs
- How to be itemized and marked separately
- Martin suggests – Okay, on this agreement and give comps. But to itemize the props/non-paper stuff.
- Afton – and set a timeline
- No way to verify unless someone goes to do it with him.
Google Workspace help from NeilFred?
- Afton is getting this going as soon as Ross and Amy are back in the country
- Martin will give NeilFred access
- We need the drive access changed
- Backend Google Workspace will happen
- Mike also has some files he would like to move over
Two questions from Mike Sullivan: I left last month’s meeting before Jess Mardini was approved for 2025 Festival Director, so I apologize for that.
Two questions: how can I get in touch – can someone send me their email addy & phone number.
#2 – I cannot find anyone with that last name in the IJA member database. Are they a member? When was the last festival they attended?
8. Confirm Next Meeting
Next meetings will take place on…
for the next vision meeting 8/7/2024 same time
for the next business meeting 8/28/2024 same time
9. Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 7:35 pm Eastern.