ACGA Board Meeting Minutes

August 14, 2023 via Zoom

Present: Mari Emori, April Zilber, Sally Jackson (recorder), Jan Schachter, Ren Lee, Susie Rubenstein, Cheryl Costantini, Iver Hennig, Emil Yanos, Barbara Prodaniuk, Chris Johnson, Lee Middleman (Absent: Sonja Hinrichsen, Joe Battiato, Vicki Gunter, Trudy Chiddix)

The meeting commenced at 5:30 pm.

Welcome (Mari)

Mari thanked everyone for making the recent Clay & Glass Festival a huge success. Several issues were addressed quickly at the beginning of the meeting:

Mari noted that Cobb Mountain Arts and Ecology appreciated our invitation to participate in the festival, but did not have enough time to prepare. They would like to participate next year.

Emil encouraged everyone to change their password occasionally when logging onto our website. This is the best way to prevent unwanted cyber activity and security breaches.

Mari warned us to be alert for phishing emails, especially those that appear to be from us to each other. This happens now and then. Mari also noted that if you forward our newsletter to others, and they activate MailChimp’s “Unsubscribe” option at the bottom of the email, it will unsubscribe you. The easiest solution is to delete that part of the MailChimp email before forwarding the newsletter.

Treasurer’s Report & Preliminary Festival Report (April)

April has been working with Julie Taber to teach her the Treasurer’s job. Our total assets as of June 30 were $89,037. By July 30 that number jumped to $120,300 because of festival income. Preliminary results show that total sales at the festival were around $418,000 and the average per artist was around $3800. Net festival income as of July 30 was $34,012. This number will decrease as additional bills come due, but the overall outcome was excellent. CERF+ earned $2347, similar to $2400 last year.

People’s Choice Award (Barbara)

Barbara reported that the People’s Choice Award at the festival received 86 votes from visitors. She suggested that next year we use a juror (rather than visitor votes) for the selection process. Other Board members felt that getting visitors to vote was an important way to engage the public. Better publicity and more signs promoting the award would perhaps increase the number of people voting.

Communications (Susie)

Susie proposed that we add Linktree to our Instagram account at $5/month. This will enable us to connect our IG posts to the ACGA website, shop, forms, and so on. Those present voted unanimously in favor of adopting this.

Payment for Festival Publicity on Social Media (Mari)

Mari proposed paying Ren Lee for all the extra social media posting before and during the festival. The Board agreed to give this issue some thought between now and our next meeting, when it will be discussed in more detail.

The meeting adjourned at 7:03 pm.

 Next Meeting: 5:30 pm, September 11, 2023 via Zoom