Board Meeting Minutes - March 28, 2017
Agenda
1. Spring Events
2. Fundraisers
3. Band Camp
4. Other items
5. Discuss next steps
Carleen opened the meeting at 5:35 pm.
We discussed the drum set first. Mr. Pace has arranged the purchase of the drum set. They are from
Carolina Percussion’s drum corp. who are performing at Dayton, OH. We have two options for receiving the drums:
1. Take them home after their performance in Dayton, OH. We would need to rent a truck and
drive them back to Greenville since there is not room on the trailer.
2. Carolina takes them back after Dayton and we pick them up in Raleigh a week later.
Robyn spoke with Cowart Awards regarding the memorial plaque for the drums. They have offered
stickers or little metal plaques for each drum. We agreed that the little plaques would be better and we can attach them to the drum cases.
Spring Events:
1. Spring Clinic – May 6 th from 9-5 with a parent meeting at 4pm. Boosters will provide lunch for the
kids. We discussed pizza or sandwiches. We have extra chips from the Furman event and a Wal-
Mark gift card to purchase fruit for a supplement. We will provide water only, no soda or Gatorade.
Carleen will provide the banana bread also.
2. Banquet – Mr. Pace does not have the date confirmed yet, but we proposed to have the banquet on Tuesday, May 2 nd . Back up dates – May 4 th and May 9 th from 6-8 pm.
The boosters will need to purchase two awards – Directors Award and John Phillips Sousa Award
from the website: http://store.theinstrumentalist.com/ . Tracy and Kathryn will take care of
ordering the packages.
We will need to plan for décor (balloons and table clothes), cake and catering. We decided on
Charlie’s BBQ and Sean Sperry confirmed it would be $7.50/person. We agreed to charge students
$5.00 each and parents $10.00 each to cover the cost. Tracy will make the cake. We can use the
brownies and cookies already purchased for the bake sale.
Boosters will sell the new car magnets for $10.00 each at the banquet. We will also set up chrome
books for the parents to log in and complete the welcome packet forms.
There will be a slide show and senior speeches while we are eating. Mr. Pace will present a preview
of next year’s show and the awards after the meal.
Band Camp:
Tracy presented an idea for a Band Camp Packet to the group. This packet would include a neon or
bright shirt (preferably white with just 2K17 and small logo), lanyard, and 1 gallon water jug. The idea behind this packet is that everyone would have the necessary water jug and have matching shirts. The lanyard would serve as a name tag but could also have their music laminated. We all liked this idea. She will look into getting most of the items donated; otherwise, the Booster would need to pay for the items up front and get reimbursed by the students later. Cost estimate would be $15.00/packet.
Dates – 1 st two weeks in August (July 31 – August 11 th ), 9am – 1pm and 5-9pm.
Percussion and Color guard will have a mini-camp the week prior (July 26 th -28 th ) with Color guard in AM and Percussion in PM.
We need at least 2 chaperones (male and female) available for medical issues, bathroom breaks and present during release time.
No lunch provided to the students this year.
Robyn presented an idea for the first day of Band Camp – parents could come early to socialize with
returning parents and have a social where they can ask questions.
Mr. Pace confirmed that the athletic trainer will talk to the kids the first day of Band Camp about hydration and other health related topics.
We would like to have a fun activity once a week during Band Camp to promote fun and camaraderie amongst the kids.
The props should be completed during Band Camp. Tracy gave Mr. Pace her contact with the theater troop. We should also coordinate with Sean Sperry since he was involved with the props last year.
Other Items:
1. Sponsorships – Tracy is going to reach back out to the businesses she has made contact with now that we have our non-profit status. Depending on the business we can pitch several ways;
expensive activity, health/safety, building a program for community, etc.
2. Show Shirts – This will be an additional shirt and not the Band Camp shirt. It will have sponsors and be themed to our show.
3. Financials – We have $496 in the new BB&T account and $$2589 in the First Citizens account. These balances are after all bills and donations have been paid.
4. No bake sale this Friday. Kathryn discussed the details of “school sponsored” fundraisers with Anne Peterson. Any fundraiser conducted on school property is considered “school sponsored” and the money is processed through the school and deposited in Mr. Pace’s account for band; however, if he does not use it by a certain date then that money is sent back to the general fund. Mr. Pace only has a week to submit another PO. Based on this information we decided to not hold the bake sale this Friday and consider doing it next year.
5. Soccer does not have concessions for their games. We need to consider working with them to open the concession stand in the spring and splitting the proceeds.
6. MemberPlanet – Robyn brought up our online database we started last year. MemberPlanet does
not have all of the functionality that we need for the band, i.e. siblings require an additional email
account, limited messages, no tracking of uniforms, no sign ups inside app.
She has been researching other options and came across another app, Member Tool Kit. This app
provides more functionality but it costs more money per year ($390.00). MemberPlanet only costs
$30.00/year.
Better for multiple kids in a family. Parents register their band members as a family unit
instead of individually.
No PayPal charge
Have to start profiles from scratch unlike MemberPlanet where most of them are already
set up
Robyn needs to confirm if there is a limit to the messages.
Conversation about switching:
Fear of chasing the right app year after year
Ultimate goal is to use Charms or something like Charms since this app was built for bands
If we are going to move to Charms or Charms-like app in the next 2-3 years is a transition to
Member Tool Kit worth the extra money and headache?
Do the benefits of changing to Member Tool Kit outweigh the work involved to make the
transition?
Switching apps again this year would be the second year in a row where we would be asking
parents to adopt a new process
There are some concerns that MemberPlanet does not always function properly and
sometimes can make it hard to communicate.
Would it be better to keep MemberPlanet and take the lessons learned from this year and
improve what we can until we transition to Charms or Charms-like app? We could set up
Google Docs for contact information if we stick with MemberPlanet to address above
concern.
7. Thank You Notes - Mr. Pace requested we send out a Thank You note to League for them allowing us to use their facilities for Winter Guard. Winter guard kids will sign also. We will also create thank
you notes for the companies that donated to John Robb’s Celebration of Life event (Pebble Creek
Pizza, Zaxby’s, Wal-Mart, Marvin’s Produce). We will each sign these thank you notes and Tracy will
make sure they are distributed.
8. Spring Training Clinics – Drum line will have training clinics at WHHS on April 4 th and 18 th from 4-6 pm. Color guard will have training clinics at WHHS on April 18 th , 25 th , and 27 th from 4-6 pm.
Members must be present at all clinics.
9. Percussion Class has been asked to perform at a black tie event at the Hyatt on Monday, April 3 rd . They will wear concert black and will leave straight from school. Boosters will need to rent a truck for the equipment and it should be ready immediately after school for loading.
10. Carleen will be at Sevier Middle School’s concert band spring concert on April 4 th . She will discuss marching band with the kids and be available for questions.
11. Mr. Pace advised that due to taxes we are $630.00 short in purchasing the drum line. We will look at financials at the end of the year and help out as needed.
Next Steps:
1. Plan Spring Events – schedule separate meeting
2. Begin communication of next year’s board vote
3. Next Parent Meeting is Tuesday, April 4 th at 7:00 pm in the Band Room.
4. Next Board Meeting, April 25 th at 6:30 in the Band Room.
Meeting adjourned at 7:00 pm.
