August 14, 2022 Zimfest Association Board Meeting Synopsis
Members in Attendance: Daniel Lockley, Cloud Petayi, Mandy Walker-LaFollette, Janis Weeks, Alex Weeks
Members Absent: Chris Halaska, Jacqueline Fallon, Tendai Muparutsa
Non-voting members in attendance: Claire Jones
Review Agenda (All)
June Minutes/Synopsis (All)
Approved
Village Meeting (July) Minutes/Synopsis (All)
Approved
Zimfest 2022 Debrief
- Registration statistics – note people didn’t need to register if they were not camping or taking workshops. Concert tickets not on our website.
- End of online registration 157
- End of onsite registration 174
- Workshop statistics
Total number of workshop sessions 40; enrollments 383 = 9.6 per workshop
(2019: 69 sessions; enrollments 539 = 7.81 per workshop)
(2018: 96 sessions, 889 enrollments, 9.26 per workshop) - Evening Concerts
- Total count three nights: 324 tickets sold (2019: 910 tickets sold)
- OC consensus: Pros: Fairgrounds and Lincoln worked fine for size of audience (but no larger). Cons: Compressed timeline and different logistics made things difficult. Need for Covid messaging in addition to background checks, contracts added to difficulties within time frame. Multiple venues, contracts and modalities made more work for Festival Coordinator.
Follow Ups / Loose Ends
- Survey? Will discuss next month
- How to proceed with online programming performers already accepted?
- Facebook or pay-for-view or RegFox? Mandy, Jake and Parker are on committee to put this on. They will report back with decision and how to move forward.
- Follow-up to Western Union cancellation of Claire’s account – it appears some individuals get flagged for reasons they won’t divulge. Safeguard our non-profit status by using and saving traceable contracts, invoices and/or receipts for moneys sent abroad
Future Plans
Discussion Topics (from Alex)
- Do we have the energy/resources to move forward with Zimfest 2023?
Or, should we consider taking a break year?- FYI: OC has energy for in-person 2023 festival, is awaiting guidance from the Board.
- FYI: Evergreen has reduced its available housing during summer conferences to ~150 people max. Not really an option anymore, sadly.
- Potential locations highest priority to look at: Reach out to: Pacific Lutheran, WOU, OSU, Central Washington in Ellensburg (hasn’t responded in the past), Camp Casey (Seattle Pacific University) on Whidbey Island (food & dorms available) (note: SPU board is standing by blatantly homophobic policies, we’re not interested in working with them while that’s the case)
- Note: camping-style locations suggested during the village meeting would be a ton of extra work, not interested in pursuing currently.
- How can the board improve its processes to support the festival coordinator/OC?
- In particular, we need to improve our follow through for things that block the OC or cause them extra headaches, such as financial tasks.
- How can we reduce the workload for the Festival coordinator? It seems like every year, the scope of this job becomes larger, and this is not fair.
- Would it make sense for us to divide up the job, perhaps a co-coordinator model? This also has the advantage of getting a second person up to speed for the job, preparing for the time when Claire is no longer able to dedicate so much of her time to this.
- Claire’s proposal for two paid co-coordinators
- Initial thoughts from the Board: yes.
- Board Treasurer has a lot of work. Would be good for a second paid person to have some of the festival’s financial responsibilities.
- Will discuss more next month
- Board recruitment
- Alex to write a recruitment email to send out. “We’re looking into possibilities for 2023,” exciting time to get involved, etc.
- Organizing committee recruitment
- FYI: Claire to apply for another WA State grant – Working Washington 5. A Qualifying grant, meaning $ is guaranteed to every applicant as long as they meet eligibility requirements.
Next Meeting
Sunday September 11 at 6:30pm Pacific time on Zoom
Under Future Plans, the minutes say “How can we reduce the workload for the workshop coordinator?” I thought this refered to the workload of the workshop coordinator, Nora, until Claire’s name is mentioned after that. Apparently this is about the festival coordinator (not workshop coordinator).
You are correct, Larry, we should have edited that to the “workload for the festival coordinator’ – Claire
When you are considering sites, you might get increased attendance if you add into the requirements that public transportation would be available to the site from an airport. I love Whidbey Island for instance but it’s difficult, time consuming and expensive to get there if you don’t have a car. Monmouth required most of us coming from afar to rent a car as well as pay for airfare.
Becca, there is a good and reasonably-priced shuttle from the Portland airport to Monmouth (or elsewhere) that some of us coming from California took two or three years. https://beavertonairporter.com. It was prominently listed on the website when Zimfest was at WOU. It was great, if you had 4-6 people, but a bit pricy for fewer. Sorry you didn’t know about it.
Okay, let me add to my request – affordable public transport for a single or couple. It could have been the “pricy for fewer” that made renting a car although not inexpensive, less expensive.