NACUSAsf meeting
Thursday, June 17, 2004,
Attending: Herb Gellis
(President), Nancy Bloomer Deussen (Vice-President), Anne Baldwin (Treasurer),
Joanne Carey (Secretary), Dale Victorine, Lori Griswold, Ken Takara, Bob Hall,
Sondra Clark, Art Bodin, Anne Baldwin, Owen Lee and guest, Tom Ingalz.
Financial
Report: Anne Baldwin
Anne reported that we did well with our last concert brining in
$620 in admissions, $580 from the auction, $44 from refreshments and a $250
donation From Diana Tucker’s Music Store to underwrite a violinist. We basically broke even with receipts
slightly topping costs $1518 to $1515.
We now have $5200 in our treasury.
Anne reminded us that the positive balance that we are now seeing is due
to an annual anonymous gift of $1,000.
She warned that we should not count on this gift. The audience count was 69.
Our Fall Concert will cost $2800 for the musicians, and ticket
sales should cover the rest. The
Anne also reported that she
received a thank you note from Foothill Presbyterian Church along with a check
for $291, our share of the receipts for our concert there.
Tom began by describing the nature of the Guitar Society. They
have an eight-member board and members are not all musicians. They sponsor five
concerts per season as well as lectures, master classes, recitals and outreach
events for children and they offer subscription series at Le Petite Trianon,
Their marketing strategies,
while minimal, are have served them well.
v Using regular
mail, they send out postcards three times a year; they also send (by mail or
FAX) announcements of concerts and events to newspapers, always following the
dispatch with a phone call to make sure it reached the right person.
v Their e-calendar
(or e-mail newsletter) is possibly their most effective means of communication
to their members and patrons. It is intended to provide information about the
Society’s activities without any hype and includes no graphics.
v They offer a
guestbook, which is conscientiously maintained.
v They provide
contact/info cards at all their events, sometimes tucking them into programs,
and they offer everyone who turns one in a chance to win a prize. This strategy yields an 80% return of cards,
thus expanding their list, which currently has 1620
e-mail subscribers.
v They offer major
discounts for season ticket buyers: 50% off on general seating and 30% off of
reserved seating.
v Memberships
start at $35 and offer in return the e-mail newsletter, postcards and $2 off on
all tickets. Incentives for higher level
of giving include the typical T-shirts and coffee mugs.
v Tom would like
the Society to produce a CD of music from some of their Open Stage Events or
other great performances made possible by the society. They could be given away at Tapestry Events
and the performers would likely buy many for their friends and relatives.
v Each November
they have a membership drive and send out invitations to join to their ‘list’.
They find that most people have e-mail; for the few who don’t they
are willing to send out the newsletter post haste. It is now a board policy
that they will not share their list with anyone so that subscribers will trust
them and not worry about future spam, junk mail or junk calls.
Through a friend they got involved with the Tapestry
Festival. Their participation at first
was minimal, but the response was so encouraging that now they book 20
ensembles each year. Their performances
at this annual festival have helped the Guitar Society expand their presence in
our community.
Sondra asked Tom if we could arrange a guitar workshop for
composers. She and others expressed interest in this and future collaborations
with guitarists.
Contact
Information:
Their website is: www.sbgs.org (for South Bay Guitar Society).
They also use www.artsopolis.com
to post their performances and events.
To get on their list, send e-mail to sbgs@sbgs.org.
Herb, who is now also President of SVAC (the Silicon Valley Arts
Coalition), would like to advertise NACUSA concerts in “Metro” as part of a
group SVAC ad. At only $35 per ad, Herb
suggests trying two ads per concert.
Garage Sale:
Our annual garage sale will be held, as usual, at
We set two mailing meetings.
For our September 25th Orchestra Concert the meeting is set
for Wednesday August 25th at Lori’s place. For the Foothill’s church
composer’s concert next year on
Herb would like to give CPE musicians a raise to $75 per
service. Sondra told us that we might
lose Miles as our pianist, who lives in
For our upcoming Orchestra Concert there will be two
conductors. This allows Mark to play oboe
in the pieces he is not conducting. John
Beeman is contracting the extra string players; he will hire the best he can
get for $800. Mark said he would cover
any costs that went over the $2000 that we have agreed to pay the orchestra.
Apparently, some players feel they deserve to be paid more than originally
offered.
Herb suggested moving our hired performing group to the Spring for a June concert rather than featuring them in the
Fall. We are looking at 2006.
About our concert space,
Lori said our cookies were
priced too high at $1 a cookie. We all
agreed to sell punch and cookies at 50 cents each.
I’lana wants to step down from
this position and Herb has offered to take it on.
Owen is resigning as editor of
our newsletter. Ken Takara generously
volunteered to take it on. It is sent out quarterly to all NACUSAsf members and
can provide hard copy for any of us who become disconnected.
Herb will contact CPE members to
get their permission to publish their contact information on our website
because composers often need to reach them. Kathy Nitz has already agreed to
this.
John Beeman has relayed to
Anne said that through dues we find out who has joined but we
don’t get names from the national treasurer.
Owen said that we should enroll new members in our NACUSA Yahoo Groups
right away.
All present agreed that we should solicit new material for the 2nd
Composers and Friends Concert at Foothill Presbyterian Church in
In case we can’t get the Stanford Wind Quintet, Herb asked for
suggestions of other groups to hire.
Owen suggested finding a group that has its own audience. PACO (the Palo
Alto Chamber Orchestra) was an obvious choice.
Art Bodin mentioned Mitch Klein’s Peninsula Youth Orchestra.
Herb and Anne told the story of
a patron of this month’s concert and auction who bid on everything that we had
to offer. He ended up actually getting
most of the offerings. We later found
out that he was buying items and especially tickets to events, to help his
wife, who is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s’, keep her wits. We closed with this sweet-sad story.
Meeting adjourned at
Respectfully submitted,
Joanne D. Carey
Secretary to NACUSAsf