C.Holland

I think a few others make those hard decisons and stick to the budget. But also have found board members who WANT to raise money. That’s the really hard part. In-kind donations only go so far.

Students now only get a few seasons to march. And they go to places where they enjoy the programming, and the staff. If you want to tell a student “sorry kid, you’re stuck with (corps names)” you’re going to kill corps much faster when they can’t fill ranks and you’ve now made the activity give students a bad taste. now that doesn’t mean a student doesn’t take their closest option to start out for a season or two to learn. But they then often go to audition for one or two of the places they really like.

I’ve watched more than a few arts boards with way too many passionate people missing either the ability to get the money donated or to donate their income themselves. Those groups are all now dead. Non producing.

If you want a regional tour model. You need to first cultivate regional show operators and sponsors. There’s no incentive to start a show right now. You need to pony up a large sum of cash and become a “dci event partner” which is a gamble with little known return on the investment.

We trade staff passes to each other when we leave tour as it is. All corps are limited on capacity of who can be on tour when. And we all share our stipends. The hours a tech puts in amounts to barely a buck an hour over a season. So we add 30 staff to cover while each of us is away working our real jobs so the landlords don’t kick us out. Cause drum corps doesn’t pay our rent. And we don’t get more money, we end us sharing that stipend. So we often get less over a season.

For profit vs non profit are very different. Non profit theatre/dance/opera are very different than drum corps. Frankly it’s easier in regional theatre because the local community can see first hand that good of the education wings of those non profits. Now that still doesn’t always amount to funding, but it’s easier to market it when it’s a direct program helping the local area. Not a group consisting of out of towners, that visits its home base for a month then leaves.

Those MAKE money for the corps. They’re sold as fundraisers. Gear is given to the corps either for free or at a discount. Which is then sold to band at minimum for cost and usually for a profit.

They have an entire weekend. More than one actually.

Before you do ANYTHING, you need to find a way to get rid of the “dci show partners” and find a way to incentivize new show operators and sponsors. There’s currently not a lot of shows in each region. At least not enough to provide a good summer opportunity in each region. There’s also no great return for a potential new show operator to gamble a large sum of money to create a new event. you find a way to create local show opportunities you might be able to drive down costs while increasing revenue.

Open class get a pittance from mixed shows and ZERO from OC shows. They’re ALLOWED to exist under the dci umbrella. aint that some ****

This group has done this before. Brought it back from the dead. Dealt with debt. Dealt with recruiting. The costs go up every year. Volunteer and fundraising hours need to increase. Perhaps they made the budget, saw the costs go up, saw who wants to raise money, and without more people wanting to help, it’s either do it yourself (which they’ve already done) or accept reality before you get on the road. it is sad, I still have an SW pin on my jacket when we were under the same umbrella. But it would be worse to get 30 days into tour and there’s no money for food, or fuel, or any other number of things we’ve all watched (or were part of) happen.

Which is also the absolute possible LEAST amount of effort.

We’ll just punish ourselves, sort of, and maybe that’ll make this all go away.

The appearance of concern. safeSport? Right. the appearance of “doing the right thing”. Welcome to dci. Where decades of suspect behavior is tolerated as long as they can bring ticket sales without being the downfall catalyst.

You mean from November camps all the way through until August. Oversight is a role of the governing body.

Open class receives zero payment for open class shows. They basically are allowed to exist under the dci umbrella. what they do receive from OC shows is next to nothing. dear fans, find your local OC corps, and donate. Or better yet. Help them plan a 5K fundraiser. Help them plan a beer garden fundraiser at their homeshow. But seriously. Help.

Thank you for coming forward. I do not believe your intent is to eradicate it. I do unfortunately believe, that for change to happen, which needs to happen, that the entire org needs to feel the affects of this.

These two circumstances aren’t even close in comparison. People are worth more than money. (Read that again) a corps that can’t manage its own money no one cares about. (This isn’t new… there were decades of corps as loved or in some cases more loved than SCV that went belly up and it didn’t make the org flinch) dci is happier why corps flame out that way. Means they won’t take anyone with them. But human mistreatment. (Youth mistreatment actually) If there actually was zero tolerance for it, this stuff would have stopped years, or even decades ago. How long did it take for hazing to go away? Has it actually? Sexual assault isn’t new in drum corps. What’s new is that people finally feel they can come forth about it. (Shame we can’t get Hopkins actually banned from fields, or that dci doesn’t have the balls to enforce it… think about that for a minute) Now Regardless of the BS on the webpage. Member safety isn’t the top priority. It may not even be in The top 3 priorities. Remember this though. the org is expected to be oversight. And when the corps is not doing its due diligence, and then dci not doing it’s due diligence, or even sort of mildly thinking about almost doing due diligence, has lead to us out here in the virtual pitch reading repeatedly about the same ol **** happening because the org has a problem with oversight.

Open class? That doesn’t affect anyone up the food chain. Neither do the groups in the bottom tier. gotta bring big hurt to bring big change. and now a few words from our sponsor… Don’t bring a gas can and a zippo. Head on down to Bob’s House of Napalm during their Black Friday sale n pick yerself up an XL18! The favorite of the US Military and Meal Team Six wannabes alike.

Let’s be real. Everyone of us who’s ever been in this activity as a member, educator, board member, or administrator, all know that nothing will truly change until something gets burned to the ground. AND it threatens everyone else’s (at the top) livelihood. WE can be the change we want to see, but we need those at the top to actually feel pain before they will fully start to institute true prevention (and purge) of problematic individuals.

You mean giving OC more than… zero? We’ve been there. WC dislikes that.

They’re doing that on their own. Same as corps who want to bring down costs. They fundraise, on their own. They’re not sending members to fundraise for corps operations (yes I’m looking at you dca corps who send your membership out there with calendar dates to buy which don’t go to individual fees) they have people in charge of development, grant writing, and donor cultivation. DCI (from an exec level) handles season operations, marketing, and scheduling. Individual corps still gotta go fund themselves.

Well. Welcome to the age where nothing is free for the corps, so those costs are passed back onto you. You can do what so many others do, and go find a job. Yes it stinks. Yes it takes up time you should be practicing, and yes, handling customers in retail is awful. Work those sat and Sunday shifts. Work those evenings. Schedule your practice time. And save your cash. very few worthwhile things in life come easily.

Depends where you live. There’s DCI All Age, Open Class, and even Soundsport. here’s the real secret, from someone who marched a few years, taught in both dci and dca, and now plays music for money. anywhere you start, will teach you the fundamentals. Body movement, musicality, technique… but only YOU can have the drive to put in the time at home. On your own. You need to be self motivated to be a great performer. And you need to be self policing to get better. (This is true before auditioning as well as years after you’ve aged out) Whether it’s taping yourself and listening/watching it, practicing the same thing way down tempo until it becomes muscle memory, planning your practice time down to the minute to cover all aspects of technique, musicality, new phrases… etc. it’s up to you.

It requires a revamp of the sheet. And rewarding things that many here will argue “the general public has no clue what’s entertaining, that’s why we have highly trained knuckleheads in polo shirts tells us it was entertaining”