February 9, 2014 Zimfest Association Board Meeting Minutes Synopsis
Members in attendance: Jacqueline Fallon, Tsitsi Hantuba, Paul Mataruse, Amy Robinson, David Simon
Nonvoting member present: Claire Jones
Absent: Jennifer Kyker, Alex Weeks
1) Review and approval of Jan. meeting minutes and synopsis and Dec. synopsis—December synopsis needs minor editing. David will send an email to Larry to post the December and January synopses when ready.
2) Membership drive and fundraising—Claire completed grant requests to Umpqua Bank and the Tacoma Community Foundation. She is looking at other grant options. There have only been a few new memberships in the past month. We anticipate more memberships with Zimfest registrations. The organizing committee needs to consider membership benefits further.
3) Interview with Dana Moffett—She is interested in joining the board. Current board projects and processes were discussed. After the call, those present agreed to invite Dana to join.
4) Zimfest 2014 planning update—Claire—We discussed strategies to help the Zimbabweans make their travel more affordable and whether there would be a minimum number of workshops taught for the Zimbabwean performers. We also discussed the issue as to how to effectively give feedback to the Zimbabwean teacher. Further discussion is pending. Mookumba’s manager would like us to be involved in some way with their tour. Perhaps we can help promote their concert. The festival guide will be worked on during May. The Village Meeting agenda should be ready for publication then.
5) Status of ZMF IT Activities—Gretel is organizing the various IT activities and team now. She said that there is now a live 2014 website. Larry will use WordPress to update content in a more modern platform. The www.zimfest.org site will be combined with the 2014 registration site. The off the shelf project to research software is not happening yet. The next IT team meets again this upcoming Tuesday night.
6) Volunteer activities update—Jacqueline—we should follow up with Lisa to share a request for specific tasks. Send job descriptions to Jacqueline who then can contact Lisa.
7) Zimfest brochure status—per Jacqueline, Jennifer did not start this yet but can have something ready by the next board meeting.
8) Village meeting and Zim. discussion—A meeting of the Zimbabweans could take place immediately before or after the teacher’s meeting. Perhaps several can serve as spokespeople to the board for a lunch meeting. The board will meet with some Zimbabweans prior to the Village meeting. Paul will contact Lucky to discuss when these meetings will be held and try to discuss agenda items for the Village meeting.
9) Peter Swing’s proposal—Our consensus at this time: we are not able to make compensation per performer. We still have a policy of travel reimbursement that will better compensate bands that wish to apply. We will continue to “pay for performance slot.” If the festival is profitable we will revisit the idea of increasing reimbursement to the performers. Also, we are still exploring the option of using grants in the future to better compensate performers. We have discussed this at three board meetings
10) Tax preparation—We need help. Please let Tsitsi know ASAP. Preferably someone in Washington state.
Next meeting—March 9, 6-8 pm PST
