March 12, 2017 ZA Board Meeting Minutes

March 12, 2017 Zimfest Association Board Meeting Synopsis

Members in Attendance: Rujeko Dumbutshena, Jacqueline Fallon, Chris Halaska, Claire Jones, Dana Moffett, Daniel Lockley, Evelyn Mukwedeya, David Simon, Alex Weeks, Janis Weeks
Members Absent: None
Review/modify agenda: Done by email

Zimfest 2018 Next Steps (All)

Discuss what immediate action items can be worked on given that we now have firm booked dates at WOU. It may be too soon to get information from WOU on housing, getting rooms reserved, and food. The website registration system and software could be updated once a new system is chosen. The tech. committee is testing some options in the next few weeks. Ways to keep the community engaged – fundraising initiatives, can the Zimfest stamp be on some of the various events that are being organized this year? Post other events on the Zimfest Facebook page. Start a What’s Happening page to post other events. Give board members access to post on Facebook. Finalize the grant to bring musicians.

Update on Communication with Evergreen (Claire)

Festival dates, schedule for deposit and full payment – Alex and Claire will visit later in March. Claire has given them our preferred dates, but the Evergreen person doesn’t have the calendar yet to say, but is pretty sure he could fit us in one of our preferred weekends. Deposits are due at the time of booking – $500 total with $300 towards our final bill. The college is in the process of building new dorms but they won’t be complete by summer 2019. Claire confirms that the food is good. The campus is off in the trees.

Update on Communication with PLU (Claire)

Claire notified the the PLU team that we cannot afford the required deposit. She will provide an update to the board if PLU reconsiders and offers a deposit payment arrangement we could afford as an organization.

2016 Treasurer’s Report

More updates in April, D&O (Directors and Officers) insurance – is it needed in the off year? Yes. Cost of $1200 per year. There are some people who won’t join a board if there is no D&O insurance. Chris may research and compare prices.

Discussion on the Future Festival Schedule (All)

Bi-annual model pros: Reduce burden on core organizing committee and volunteers. More lead-time for planning and execution of the festival. More lead-time for participants to plan on attending the festival. Increases family’s ability to save up for the festival.

Cons: This will be a large departure from the current Zimfest Association mission:
“The Zimfest Association mission is to produce North America’s premier annual festival of Zimbabwean music, bringing a global community together to celebrate Zimbabwe’s participatory musical traditions through high-quality workshops and performances.” Change Zimfest mission: If we just deleted “annual” we would be fine. Others agreed. Increased learning curve for team due to a year’s break between festivals. Reduced consistency – might lose engagement over time

Conditions that would enable Zimfest to run yearly in a sustainable manner: Finding a permanent/semi-permanent home for Zimfest (reduces work effort). Significant increase in volunteer participation from the community – ideally, communities would volunteer to host and run Zimfest. Standardizing and streamlining festival operations to reduce work burden on the organizing committee. Strong festival coordination support and stable revenue/funding stream.

Some guiding questions: Number of participants – would attendance increase or decrease going to a bi-annual festival – what is our hypothesis? If we do decide to stay with an every year model – how will things be different than they have been over the past several years to ensure that we are not burning out our core group of volunteers?

Discussion on 2017 Priorities and Rough Milestone/Task Calendar (All)

Festival Structure (Daniel)

What would be the reason to not have a flat rate? What about workshop registration? It could still be the same. The flat fee is a security and then those last minute would be extra. Claire-The festival has evolved, are we trying to be like the camps or just offer what we already do. Can we have a hybrid model? Look at the pass idea that we tried a few years ago – limit the number of workshops per day.

Financial Sustainability (David)

Most important item is related to this Tour West Grant, the artists are the biggest piece to help us advertise. Use Community Outreach in Monmouth. We could use a grant writer to help us. Can we realistically raise the funds to match this grant? – $2500. We think so. It’s good motivation for getting donations.

Volunteer Engagement/Marketing (Evelyn)

Things we can do now – get the engagement by posting things that are happening now. For next year – getting on radio stations and newspapers, putting a press kit together for different audiences. Post on Facebook or Dandemutande – bios of teachers or groups that are performing

Tech (Janis/Alex)

They have developed a list of requirements needed for new software and scheduled two appointments for demos of new software. What will the costs be? Most are by participant. We will have to go with somewhat of a compromise with the way we have worked in the past.

Evelyn will be checking in with each of us to get more of an idea of what each of our tasks are.

Next Meeting

April 9th, 7pm PST