BQPA General Meeting 7 September, 2019

Meeting called to order at 10:00 AM with 29 members present.

Ken Yergler introduced as new board member and Secretary.

Departed Friends: Ted Bradshaw - September 2, 2019 Lead Singer with “Western Continentals”, 1968 Champions Paul Graham - 2019, Baritone Singer with “Western Continentals” Grady Kerr - Was the Historian for The Barbershop Harmony Society WIllard Kapes - October, 2018 Quartet was “A Touch Of Old Spice” Larry Weaver - Harden “Doc” Olsen April, 2019

“The Old Songs” sung slowly in Ab in recognition of the departed friends.

Treasurer’s Report was presented. We are solvent with approximately $7000 in the bank. Complete copies of the Treasurers Report available upon request.

Actions since last meeting: Frank Fliszar has completed the “Who’s Who” list and it is ready for updating. Members encouraged to submit photos for the list if they haven’t done so. Tom would take pictures if anyone interested.

Chicago Festival: Gerry Carroll announced that The Best Western venue in Chicago has changed management. It looks like we’ll be back again to meet here next year (2020). There may be some changes coming in the future due to the management change.

Tempe Festival: Bernie Esberner announced that we will be at the same venue in 2020 as we were this year with nearly the same rates but there will probably be a $5 increase in room rates. Happy Hour and Breakfast will be included again. Bernie also brought out that he had checked with several possible venues and the rates were as much as $140 to $170/day for individual rooms, and $600/day for a meeting room (one as much as $1500/day) because our Spring Festival is in “prime season” for Arizona. If we could move our Spring Festival date to late May or early June, we could get better rates and probably a better venue as this is “off season” for the hotel businesses. Most venues want a minimum of 20 plus rooms. A straw poll was taken of those present and indicated that there could be a willingness to move to late May. There was a question asked about possibly subsidizing the costs from the treasury. The higher rates would deplete our treasury rather quickly. We have had a shortfall in the Arizona Festival the past

couple years which was covered from treasury. The membership was encouraged to send thank you notes to the venues in appreciation for their services.

Web Master’s Report: Bernie Esberner reported on what he’s been doing with the site. The website was redone this year and that some new web changes are probably coming soon.

Membership Report: Lee Taylor We have approximately 400 listed in our Who’s Who list. 300 members listed as active, 60 inactive, and 1 withdrawn membership. We have 3 new members signed up at this Festival as off the time of this General Meeting. We had 46 members signed in at the Tempe Spring Festival with 48 present Friday and 84 Saturday. The average for Saturday nights has been 91 attending.

Registration Report: The Spring Festival had 46 members present, including 8 new members. The average attendance over the past 11 Festivals is 57.3. Our house on Friday was 48 and on Saturday was 84 partly because Adam Kaufman had promoted 7 quartets which brought in many extras. The average attendance for the Saturday night house, based on 18 Festivals, is 91. We have enough BQPA pins to cover our new members and others. We have BQPA/Pioneers self adhesive labels available as well as S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A. (the old style) labels. Also cloth patches, Afterglow song books, BQPA/Pioneer business cards. The “thermometer” has helped in contributions. Average is about $22 per member this year for the Fall Festival. Spring Festival average was a little over $17 per member. The registration updating is important as it keeps us up to date on your latest contact information. We use email to contact you if we need to. BQPA business cards are available for us all to pass out. There are blank spaces to put your own contact information on them, and it’s more effective to personally hand them to people and explain that we get together for 4 days, twice per year, to do-it-yourself quartet singing. Friday evening’s number of registered members was 26 (including the new ones) and our house was 37. When visiting with people and explaining who we are, rather than just saying BQPA, we need to emphasize the letters QP (Quartet Preservation) as well as explaining that we were originally called The Pioneers, as many of the older Barber Shoppers have heard of that name and may connect with who we are.

Lee mentioned the Board is trying to come up with a better way to market our organization. Anyone who wishes to volunteer is welcome, and he actually considered doing it himself.

Other Old Business: Ray pointed out that we need to be more pro-active in contacting prospective attendees more than once (dripping) and keep reminding them to come and give the BQPA a try. He also suggested that we do pre-registration for the Festivals to help us better plan activities for the up-coming Festival. Possibly get better room rates, etc. Adam Kaufman has volunteered to work with pre-registration.

New Business: Tom Noble: We need to consider and then begin to store our documents digitally. Presently, almost everything is stored on Tom’s personal computer. After discussion, it was decided that we should use a “Cloud” for this.

Tom brought up that it would be nice if we could pursue getting “Aqua-Clips” with the BQPA logo to be available for purchase. The Aqua-Clip is a belt clip water bottle holder. It could be used as a promotional item for new membership. He is still trying to contact the company for more details.

The need for a Leadership Succession was discussed. Our baseline age is rather advanced and it would be nice to have people willing to step up to be in the BQPA leadership.

Good of the Organization: Gerry expressed a big “Thank You” to Dave Brady for organizing the golf outings for the fall Festival and also to Jim Jarosz for storing, maintaining, and setting up the sound system. Suggestion that we may need an additional microphone or two as one doesn’t appear to be enough to hear the officers during our meetings.

Ray announced we have several really good quartets lined up for the Saturday night show. Also, there will be a raffle of CD’s and a couple other items donated by John Olsen.

Meeting adjourned at 11:20 AM