May 13, 2020

Present

Board Members: Jay Steele, Steve Allhoff, Kevin Brownstein, Dallas Carter, Barbara Heninger, Michael Hirsch, , Kimberly Kay, Jen Maggio, Jennifer Petersen, Steve Sammonds, Jordan Selburn

Ex Officio: Sara Dean, Jeffrey Hensen, Doug Hughes, Dan Singletary

Contents

Motions

MOTION: To cancel 2020-21 season as previously proposed. Passed with one abstention.

Actions

ACTION (Jeffrey Henson: To create a plan to shut down the studio. Jeffrey will check with landlord to find out what is possible. What it will cost to leave, and what is the deactivate cost. If exiting is not feasible, have them renegotiate the lease for better terms.

ACTION (Sara Dean): Sara will work with other theaters to find out who is interested in aligning with us for rehearsal space. Talk to Silicon Valley Shakespeare, the Pear, and WVLO. WVLO discussions have already begun.

ACTION CFO (Jen Maggio): Create 6-month budget based on the online season proposal discussion.

ACTION: (Full Board) Agreed to meet again next Wednesday, May 20, to continue discussion on proposal for 2020-21 online season.

Past Actions

First action from the previous meeting (April 8) was completed.

  • Action: Community Outreach, Finance, Programming/Futures, and Development Committee leads to create short slide presentations about their status and activity. DONE
  • Action: Next week, Kathy and Sara will write up a Board match description for the types of Board members that we need to add next week. Then we can advertise in the online Board Match system.
  • Action: Steve will fill out a form (from Sara) for the group re AB5.

Reports Posted in Board Google Drive

Reports

CFO Report (Jen M.)

Presented following Artistic Vision and Planning report.

Marketing (Doug)

See previously distributed report. Freezing the website to move to a lower cost platform.

Noted that all theaters are putting more stuff on their websites. We need to decide what content we think is appropriate for ours.

Fundraising (Jordan)

See previously distributed email (inserted below). Requesting a budget for a continuation grant (second bullet below), needed by May 15.

Jordan’s email:

  • received check for $2k from SVCreates as donor development grant.
  • completing interim report for SVCreates Local Arts Grant for current FY. This report is needed to receive the automatic FY20-21 grant, and needs to be submitted by Friday May 15th. I need estimates for our revenue and expenses for the current year to complete the report.
  • still looking for other COVID-related grants to cover losses/expenses/lost revenues

Diversity and Outreach Committee

Setting up diversity panel meetings. Will put together the same main questions that panel members will answer each time. Will rotate speakers between events. First one scheduled for June 15, by the end of this week they’ll have a list of persons to invite. Will pick 2-3 for first session. Then will meet to discuss more detail.

Outreach – talked to Kathy Switky about searching for alternate rehearsal spaces.

Development Committee

Wrapped up South Pacific ticket donations. There was an increase in regular donations, including Dick Niblock. Richard Wang promised some funds, by beginning of next week will do some. Giving Tuesday brought in about $1300-1500. Dan has automated all the thank you letters. Will get donor tracking started. Donors over $250 get note from Sara. All get a personal email (for now). Sara created monthly message to SBMT donors. One of our top donors reached out after the Pygmalion reading and said he enjoyed it.

Sasha Motalygo has offered to join the Development Committee; committee and Karyn Rondeau will meet next week.

Financial Committee

Waiting for what the season will be like. Planning changeover of financial record processes for new season. Will bring over the Quickbook data into the new system, then run parallel May through July. There will be some variance. Tammy knows her services will end June 30. Jen will handle the regular expense tracking and check writing for rent and salary.

Artistic Development & Vision Committee

See previously distributed presentation. Below is discussion re the presentation.

Discussion – Future of 2020-21 Season

Regarding holding a traditional season, based on what we know now, Sara summarized:

  • Theater holds 285, half is 140. We have heard everything from 50 to 60 seats for social distancing.
  • We couldn’t break even on our overhead expenses with such a small audience.
  • And we still don’t have the capability to quarantine all the actors and or have any way for them sing next to each other, or for musicians to play next to each other.

So, we do not think that a traditional season for 2020-21 is viable.

Financial estimates of our overhead for the next 6 months, from Jen Maggio. She estimated donations, averaged them, then cut it in half (because economy is tanking).

  • By the end of 6 months (December) guessing we might get $35K.
  • Our total overhead right now is close to $80K. That is salary and rent, with almost everything else cut.
  • By the end of June, predicts our cash will be at $105K.
  • If we got the expected donation and paid the expected minimum payments, we would have a 6-month net loss of $44K. So our cash would go from $105K to $60K.

Looking at Jen’s numbers, in the last calendar year we got $40K from people getting their hours matched from their employer (much of the “Donation – Non Box Office). That income won’t be there.

In 3 months we should look at the income and see whether we have to do other things like getting rid of the studio, or the set shop. Can we set “financial trip wires”? if cash balance hits a certain point, we have steps chosen and can do them. Or are we AT the financial trip wire now?

What are the steps we could take?

  • Let go of the rehearsal hall. Is it possible?
    • Lease goes to May, 2024
    • Not a “breakable” lease – would require negotiation
    • Estimate it would take a month to move out

Board agreed we should investigate this. (see actions below)

  • Set shop has offered to lower the rent for the next three months.
  • Merge our set shop with other companies? Merge our rehearsal space with other companies? (see actions below)

ACTION: To create a plan to shut down the studio. Jeffrey will check with landlord to find out what is possible. What it will cost to leave, and what is the deactivate cost. If exiting is not feasible, have them renegotiate the lease for better terms.

ACTION: Sara will work with other theaters to find out who is interested in aligning with us for rehearsal space. Talk to Silicon Valley Shakespeare, the Pear, and WVLO. WVLO discussions have already begun.

Questions about the online season:

  1. What are the licensing and legal restraints?

If we stream, can we include “replays” of material? Depends on content:

  • All the panels, content we created with no licensed material, could be replayed.
  • Past show recordings? No, we don’t have license or permission to do it. There was an addendum to the contract for one of the recent shows (She Loves Me or Gentlemen’s Guide) for online access, we can follow up with MTI on whether a one-time, ticketed re-showing is allowed
  • Thursday Night Readings – plays are licensed so it is not legal to broadcast these. They are not under the company, it is something Sara is handling separately, so we are not putting it under the company.

Sara has been investigating other possible content:

  • Trying to get the rights to Almost, Maine and Book of Will to perform. Book of Will could be streamed, just once, to a certain number of people, must be password protected.
  • 2-person concerts.
  • Suggest that we look into making Brad’s show an online event. Just do a few songs here and there over the months.

For all of these, we have to resolve rights issues. Live performance rights are held by ASCAP for individual songs, MTI & others for performances. The mechanical rights (rights to publish content, which includes “publishing” online) may be owned by the authors, rather than the rights houses. The rights houses are looking into it; Sara has been asking.

  1. What do we market?
    • Suggest we market the subscription and season as a 6-month commitment.
    • Do not say specifically WHAT all the content is. We create it in a rolling manner. Say what TYPE of content it is
    • The committee has mapped out something for about 6 months.

The idea is to create one or two things per month, make it available widely, so that we can get a lot of people to subscribe online monthly. Trying to give our donors, members, and the public enrichment, enlightenment, while we are trying to connect to them.

The message is that we’re evolving, we want their feedback as we go, we are doing what we can.

  1. How do we handle the ‘subscription’ / donations?
    • Should we create donor levels? Makes it very complicated. Tracking all of that is difficult. Sara suggests no.
    • We are not selling ourselves like another Disney plus or some such streaming content corporate. It’s a sell for supporting the group until we can go back to live theater.

Need further discussion.

  1. What kinds of volunteers do we need to make this happen? Sara suggests that we need
    • Content team (Artistic Planning team ?)
    • Feasibility team (logistics for making these things happen, so, technical team)
    • Donation management team – we need people who can track who is donating to receive content.
    • Talent management – facilitate the event as it comes up. (Equivalent of ‘director’ or ‘producer’?)

MOTION: To cancel 2020-21 season as previously proposed. Passed with one abstention.

ACTION: Sara to talk to the current 2020-21 staffs about cancelling the season.

ACTION: Sara to update online calendar proposal with a good idea of what we could program in the next 6 months.

ACTION: Sara and Doug start on communication plan to donors/members/public, to let them know we are cancelling the previously announced season. Message: We’re not giving up, we’re doing what we need to do.

ACTION CFO (Jen Maggio): Create 6-month budget based on the online season proposal discussion.

If we go forward with an online season, there are further actions besides planning and creating the content, such as asking people to join us as sustaining members, or setting up Vendini and website for members to enter subscriptions, and re-designing some website content. Board needs more time to discuss this.

ACTION: Agreed to meet again next Wednesday, May 20, to discuss what’s going on.

Board Membership

There are Board members whose terms are ending, including those who are “termed out” (Barbara) and those who have other commitments (Jen P). Should we ask the membership to vote on an extension for Board members so we don’t have to hold an election in June? Or extend people’s termed out periods.

Suggest we continue this discussion on May 20.

In Camera Meeting

The full Board adjourned, and Board members only held an in camera meeting. Meeting was completed with no resulting motions or actions.

Respectfully submitted on May 14, 2020 by Barbara Heninger. Amended June 15, 2020.