The meeting was called to order at 3:30 pm by Caroline Wright at the Wahiawa Botanical Gardens.
Jeb Wiemer's position as Vice President was ratified by a unanimous vote of attending members.
Evelyn Greene's position as Secretary was ratified by a unanimous vote of attending members.
Janet Eblen's and Rene Barthiaume's positions as incoming Directors were ratified by a unanimous vote of attending members.
Scott Rhode motioned, and Ed Redford seconded, to adjourn the meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 3:35.
Caroline Wright called the meeting to order at 4:00pm.
Present: Caroline Wright, President; Teresa Berthiaume, Treasurer; Jeb Wiemer, Director; Scott Rhode, Director. Quorum was reached. (We presently have only two officers and four board members, so four is a quorum.) Also present were members Evelyn Greene and Janet Eblen.
Minutes of the July 26, 2009 meeting were reviewed & highlighted by Caroline Wright. Scott Rhode moved to accept the minutes of the last meeting and Jeb Wiemer seconded. Approved by acclamation.
Teresa Berthiaume gave the Treasurer's report; our bank account has a balance of $839.79. Teresa informed all that we had expenses for Event Insurance, IBMA Membership, DCCA license fee, and we received a total of $497.72 from our last camping weekend for new memberships and donations. Caroline moved to accept the report; Jeb seconded. Approved by acclamation.
Membership Report: Caroline stated that no one as yet has volunteered to be in charge, but someone or a group is needed to manage the Membership terms for each member and to promote membership. Caroline stated that so far we have approximately 55 paid memberships.
A. Advertising and Publicity: Caroline discussed IRS constraints on advertising and publicity, a longstanding issue. Janet volunteered to talk to her mother, an attorney who specializes in non-profits, about this matter.
B. Membership: see Membership Report, above.
C. Insurance: We currently have event Insurance until September 2010. We need to discuss another year of insurance for events, and the possibility of D& O coverage. Issue tabled till next meeting.
D. Taxes: Caroline & Teresa must get together to gather information. We will ask Jim Murphy again if he can assist. We need to file our 990-EX federal return for Organization Exempt from Income Tax for 2009. If Jim is unavailable we will get a quote from HR Block.
E. Elections: Caroline called for nominations for new board members. We currently have three positions open as a result of the resignations of Bob Schacht (Secretary) and Kyle Ford (director), who have moved to the Mainland, and Neal Snyder (Vice President) who has resigned to tend to family matters. Bluegrass Hawai`i extends warmest appreciation to all of them for their service and friendship.
Scott Rhode nominated Evelyn Greene for Secretary; Teresa Berthiaume seconded the nomination. The vote was unanimous. Evelyn was delighted to be our new Secretary, as she is already assisting on the Website and is willing to also be on the Membership committee and work with Bob Schornstheimer to get the database for membership upkeep and email reminders to those whose membership is about to expire.
Teresa nominated Jeb Wiemer for Vice President. Scott Rhode seconded the nomination. The vote for Jeb was unanimous.
Scott Rhode nominated Janet Eblen to take over Jeb Wiemer's now-vacant position as Director. Caroline Wright seconded the nomination. The vote was unanimous.
Teresa nominated Rene Berthiaume, which was discussed with Rene previously, as a new Director, filling the final vacant spot. Scott Rhode seconded; the vote was unanimous. These elections will be ratified at our next jam on February 21.
| 2010 Board Members | Email Address |
| Caroline Wright, President | caroline@bluegrasshawaii.com |
| Jeb Wiemer, Vice President | jebonthenet@hotmail.com |
| Teresa Berthiaume, Treasurer | iamtb@hawaii.rr.com |
| Evelyn Greene, Secretary | evelyn@hcc.hawaii.edu |
| Scott Rhode, Director | keahikai@hawaii.rr.com |
| Susan Wiess, Director | susawon@mailstation.com |
| Rene Berthiaume, Director | berthiaut001@hawaii.rr.com |
| Janet Eblen, Director | jeblen@yahoo.com |
A. Workshops & Activities for Pickin' Weekend: As one of our new Directors, Janet volunteered to schedule Workshops for our next camping weekend in April 2010. Caroline will assist her. Workshop facilitators who volunteered for the last event may be asked again, and there were some additional ideas: Contra Dancers, workshops presented by our guests from Oregon, more instrumental & vocal workshops. If we have a massage therapist available we could offer that too, as was done at the last event.
Scotty mentioned that Honolulu Community College offers both ukulele-making & songwriting classes. He will ask if the instructors are interested in presenting workshops.
B. Publicity for Pickin' Weekend: Caroline will send press releases to local press contacts. Keith Cabiles has offered to design flyers and posters. Everybody in the group can help with distribution at various locations, i.e. UH, HCC, music stores, etc.
C. Hospitality: We need picnic tents (for workshops) and possibly sleeping tents for guests. We will discuss this at our next planning meeting in February with members of the Hospitality Committee (Jim Hancock, Sharon Sawdey, etc.)
D. Fundraising & Raffles: We discussed fundraisers and raffles for Pickin' Weekend. Evelyn offered a half-hour airplane ride in her Sterman airplane, estimated value of $100. (Mahalo, Evelyn!) Jeb Wiemer will work on getting a Pono ukelele or one of his own guitars for the event. BH would buy the materials at cost, and the instrument could be raffled or auctioned. (Mahalo, Jeb!)
We also discussed t-shirts. Caroline has talked to both BH member Jim Hancock (who has silkscreening equipment) and Keith Cabiles, a local designer who created the TwangJam publicity materials, about creating shirts for the event. Keith is already thinking about designs and will talk to Jim about specs for the silkscreen process. Jim told Caroline that he could obtain cotton t-shirts for about $1 apiece. If shirts can be sold for at least $10, Bluegrass Hawai`i might realize a tidy profit.
Caroline reported that Pastor Harry Timmins from Maui has the "Frankenbanjo," the banjo donated to Bluegrass Hawaii several years ago. Harry says the banjo is a 1967 RB-170, Gibson's low-end openback model which at the time of its manufacture sold for $250. Neither the case nor the homemade resonator are original. The neck and action need adjusting; it needs a new 5th string tuner (original one is friction and stripped-toast), a new L-bracket for the tailpiece mount (old one is broken-probably not OEM anyway), new bridge, strings, armrest, 5th string spike, and setup. Per Harry, George Gruhn at Gruhn Guitars in Nashville recently sold one in primo original condition with the original case for 700.00. The parts Harry has ordered for the instrument came to about $75, and he believes it will take several hours of work to get it totally playable. He suggested that we could instead try to sell it when it's restored, but he doubts it would fetch much in today's market. He offered to buy it as a weekend jam model for $500.
After some discussion, Teresa made a motion to accept $500 from Harry Timmins for "Frankenbanjo." The motion was seconded by Scotty and passed by acclamation.
E. Next meeting & jam: More planning needs to be done for this event, and we decided to have a planning meeting after the next jam, which will take place at Wahiawa Botanical Gardens from 11am till 4pm on 2/21/10. The meeting will take place at Caroline's home in Wahiawa on 2/21, directly following the jam at the Botanical Gardens.
Jeb made the motion to adjourn the meeting at 5:55pm. Scotty seconded.
Respectfully submitted,
Teresa Berthiaume, Treasurer