Meeting Minutes

January 10, 2002 Alumni Council Meeting

Recorded by Catherine Cohen Topp

In Attendance (* indicates participated via phone)

Alex Saltzman
*Maurice Mizrahi
*Charlie Ledley
*Ivan Rubinstein Gillis
*Nat Budin
Debby Urkin
Eric Weiss
Catherine Cohen Topp
Lewis Frisch
Marc Richter
Jeffrey Paul Bobrick
Stephanie Segal Hartman
*Juliet Ross
Jackie Kevison
Bob Solomon

Jeffrey Paul Bobrick:

New Year; moving along, some practicalities holding some things up, but we’ve moving forward.

Everyone please sign up to become members on friends of bucks rock website. Log onto www.friendsofbucksrock.org and click “Join Us.” Thanks.

Juliet Ross helping with committees coming together. There are a lot of people who want and will want to become involved with the work of Friends of Buck’s Rock, and Juliet Ross will basically be acting as a volunteer coordinator, working with committee directors and with our members. This is very exciting.

Bob Dylan wrote and sang a line about people either “busy dying or busy being born.” Ivan, what’s the exact quote? I’m sure you’ll know.

Ivan: “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

Jeffrey: Thanks Ivan. We, Friends of Buck’s Rock, are busy being born, and there is so much to look forward to.

Stephanie: Just a few housekeeping issues. Since people receive email from many different sources, we would like to maintain a format when emailing, so that people will recognize that it from someone involved with Friend’s of Buck Rock. So the format is as follows: the initial BR followed by the date and then the subject.

Additionally, minutes from all alumni council meeting will now be posted on the website. This will give people who are not as involved with the day to day operations of the organization an opportunity to see the direction the group is going. Most likely we will maintain 2-3 meeting minutes on the site at a time.

Jeffrey: Sounds great. Okay, let’s now turn to Ivan to talk about the proposed concert.

Ivan: I went and took a look at Makor and spoke to the person in charge. I liked it very much, however they are not terribly inclined to allow their space to be used for other non-profits, since they are a non-profit. There would be a fee involved.

So, I went to look at Triad, a club on the upper west side. It typically can hold up to 140-150 people. Tables can be moved around to maximize space.

Peter Martin is the owner. He was very supportive of us doing a performance the space. He has special deals for fundraisers. We can work it one of two ways: 1) take all of the door, but have a two drink minimum or 2) Have a flat fee, which includes two drinks and pay him a straight fee per head.

His suggestion was $20-$25 or perhaps $30, with Triad getting $12 a head.

Stephanie: Do you think he would consider the $12 a head for a certain number and let’s say $10 a head if we go over 140?

Ivan: He might, I can ask him.

Jeffrey: What about dates?

Ivan: As we’ve discussed, we’re talking about an April date. He cannot commit to a Saturday night, but we can get a Sunday afternoon at the end of April.

Jeffrey: What do people think about weekend verses weekday?

Group: Sunday is a good day, especially in the afternoon. People can still have an evening, get home if they are out of town. Can go to dinner after the show, if they want to stay in the city.

Stephanie: He supplies all the liquor and lighting and some staff?

Ivan: Yes.

Jeffrey: I am concerned about the space being too small. Does anyone share this concern, or do we think this space is suitable?

Charlie/Stephanie/Marc: Better we should sell out then have a good number of people in a large space that shallows them up, because we can’t possibly fill it. Since this is our first time out, it is a perfect size. And the deal being offered is tremendous, taking away so much of our burden.

Jeffrey: Does anyone have a date preference?

Stephanie: I prefer the 21st for personal reasons.

Group: The 21st is fine, also this way people who may be in college will not have started finals.

Ivan: I would like someone else to look at the space.

Jeffrey: I can go.

Marc: I can too.

Jeffrey: Marc and I will go in the next week. In the mean time, can you call Monday and let Peter Martin know we are interested in the 21st, we just want to have a few more people look at the space?

Ivan: Yes

Group: This is so great, thank you Ivan.

Ivan: As far as talent we are approaching several people; such as Dan Seiden, Mairi Dorman, Orin Star, Peter Strauss, Kenwyn, and a few others.

Jackie: What about Happy Tram?

Lew: Or Winny Winston. He has a strong connection to the camp.

Ivan: We have a few kids start off the show. I am still trying to put together the right combination of talent.

Jeffrey: Again, thank you Ivan, we look forward to hearing updates.
Let’s move now to the business report.

Bob: We are looking into an accounting program that will be web based, so that different people can have access to the information as well as the ability to input data.

Quicken has a program, Quickbooks, which looks the best. It will hook to your bank account/credit cards, give you check writing ability is secure and you work on it off of Quiken’s web server.

We are looking into the price, which is monthly, but the program seems simple, you can upgrade in the future and can tie into reports.

Group: Would we no longer need PayPal?

Bob: No this is a web based accounting program, it is not a direct pay service like PayPal.

Group: Sounds great.

Jeffrey: Since Charlie, the Chair of the Scholarship Committee, had to leave the call early, I will give the Scholarship Committee report.

Laura Kasper, who is a wonderful volunteer, has time available now to do some research for the committee. She will be doing research to help plan the scholarship application, the criteria, and other infrastructure related issues.

That is it presently for Scholarship. Charlie has been working very hard at setting up PayPal and working out some of the other business and financial aspects, and we so appreciate all the work he has done.

As a side note, we are waiting until we have worked out the kinks with PayPal before we send the membership letter out. We will be sending it soon.

Eric, on to the Legal Report.

Eric: With help of Stephanie and Charlie, the forms went to the IRS on 12/19/01. It typically can take several months to get approval and either they will say everything looks good and give approval or they perhaps come back and ask for more information or additional explanations.

Jeffrey: Great thank you Eric. Hopefully, they won’t need additional information, and we can get approval as quickly as possible. Next is Publicity. Having spoken with Alex, I think we can table this report. Mainly we have talked about editing material that is published and posted on the web site so that it “speaks” in the same voice. Alex will be working very closely with the concert committee once the details are set to publicize the concert.

Newsletter is next, Jackie.

Jackie: We are targeting the first newsletter for the 60th Reunion (July 20th).

The focus will depend on the website. How much of the newsletter is informational and how much is artistic works.

Additionally, the logo is in the works and hopefully in the next few weeks I will have something concrete to show everyone.

Jeffrey: I know we all are excited to see it! Okay, website.

Nat: The web site is now login capable. There is a contact list and eventually a member will be able to use a more sophisticated search method to find people.

Stephanie: What happens if you forget your password?

Nat: For now, people can email me, but it is difficult to find someone’s password. You might have to sign up a second time.

We are going to set up a 24 hour chat room on Dell Net. It is free.

Group: What about safety? There may be kids using the chat room.

Nat: No one can monitor it 24 hours a day.

Jeffrey/Nat: We will put a safety notice online to remind chatters not to give out personal information, such as their address or phone number, to anyone in the chatroom. That is all we can do. Most kids are savvy and know how to protect themselves.

Group: Ok, makes sense.

Jeffrey: Regarding content, if anyone wishes to contribute content to the site, this would be most welcome. If so, please contact Nat or Jackie. Short stories, quotes of the day, artwork, whatever. We hope to have the Alumni Works section up in the near future, so if you have music, art or writing to contribute, that would be fantastic.

Nat: I still need testers.

Alex: I have a Mac so I can help.

Jeffrey/Juliet: Juliet will help get testers.

Jeffrey: Great. Thanks Nat. Membership is next, Catherine.

Catherine: Okay, I have several lists here from Ernst’s memorial, and I need volunteers to take a couple of pages and enter them into a database. We need the names for both the fundraising mailing and to help with membership.

Jackie/Bob/Marc/Debbie: I will take some.

Catherine: Great, thank you. I will email you with the entry procedure once it is in place.

Jeffrey: Fundraising is next, Stephanie.

Stephanie: We are planning a fundraising mailing for approximately 200-300 people. Jessica Halem has agreed to author the letter. I know Jessica and Charlie knows her very well and she is a wonderful, dynamic person, who truly knows how to express herself and I am very excited that she is going to do this. We will have a draft at the end of the month and Juliet’s father has so graciously offered to donate his office space for printing the letter as well as postage.

This is such an incredible donation and we cannot thank Juliet enough for arranging this for us.

Jeffrey: Wonderful. Lastly is the Reunion. Charlie and I have been discussing this with Mickey Morris and I think it is going to be an incredible day for both Friend’s of Buck’s Rock and the camp. Mickey has agreed to host it during camp, as was our preference. It will be held on July 20, 2002. This is the Saturday before Changeover. We can determine our level of participation. Lisa will be working very hard on this through Events Outreach, as will other interested volunteers.

Group: Wonderful.

Jeffrey: So, on that note, let’s schedule the next meeting.

Group: February 27th.

Jeffrey: Okay. I look forward to seeing you all then. This is a fantastic group.

We are going to have to change the Executive Committee Meeting scheduled for February 7th. Eric has a conflict. We can email over the next week and pick a new date.

Thank you everyone. See you on February 27th.