C.Holland
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Posts posted by C.Holland
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On 11/10/2023 at 5:20 PM, Jeff Ream said:
Smart design and smart teaching goes a long way.
When you have performers of a certain caliber, show design can start at a higher level. You spend less time teaching how to perform, and more time what to perform. Better performers, tougher programming, lesser needs to teach fundamentals. So you can plan the base level show, the next level adaptations, and the plans for finals prep while everyone else is still teaching technique.
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On 11/8/2023 at 9:54 AM, Jeff Ream said:
so are colleges. plus you have to factor in athletics department issues when you need multiple fields.
Not during ST. Colleges are dead at that point. Right after graduations until almost end of June campuses are ghost towns. A double edged sword, many college staff (my wife included) take their vacations because it’s the earliest they can.
They do however have competition for field rental from sports camps.
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5 hours ago, Old Guy said:
Buy your own bus!!
More work. Some unknown. But even with paying someone 80k to maintain fleet you would still save money.
At 2000$/day x 60 days is 120 000$ renting.
Buying for 40 000$ (start small and conservative). Gaz: 20 000$. Insurance 10 000$. Maintenance 40 000$ = 110 000$.
Numbers are out of nowhere because I am not familiar with coach busses. But I am with school bus:
Buy after 11 years of service 5 000$
Maintenance: 8000$ On a bad year
Gaz (4 weeks) open class tour: 5 000$
Insurance: 2000$
Drivers: volunteers! Or 700$/week
Total: 20 000$.
Rental: 30 days x 1500$ = 45 000$+ you can use your vehicle all year long for other purpose (camp, audition, spring training, trading services with others- like private school)
Cost of buying divide by 5 years.
Throw out the volunteers for maintenance. It’s hard enough to get them to help sit and check in students at camp or to even to stand around gudining people at an already organized 5k.
cost to store, cost to maintain, and then cost to service when they break. When you rent everything else is covered. And if you break it, they bring you a new one.
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On 11/6/2023 at 10:33 AM, Jeff Ream said:
from what i have seen and heard, not cheaper than high schools. sure no busses.
so a 7 week spring training for a 6 week tour. lets look at baseball, and yeah i know, pro athletes. 6 weeks of spring training for a 6 month season.
College housing where you can use the cafeteria. Versus the internal costs of touring a cook truck. High schools are costing more each season.
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14 hours ago, mingusmonk said:
1 Transportation
2 Transportation
3 Transportation
4 Transportation (depending on the suitability of ST location for actually hosting a clinic)
5 Transportation
Still cheaper than driving show-to-show across multiple state borders of course, but not as cut and dried as your first post example.
Except. Locals gigs can be done with cheaper busses and a daily rental than the tour cost. If you use small ensembles , it becomes a van rental from budget and not a tour bus.
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Every corps situation is different. Every level of performer is different. And some corps use that extra time in one place to make connections to their local community.
it ain’t much but it’s a step in the right direction. Would we all prefer they figure out how to re-cultivate some shows that no longer exist. Of course.
but I don’t think being in the home town area (as long as it is the actual home town area) for 6 weeks is a bad thing. I think some of it may be necessary if this activity ever wants to have some grass roots again. Get that corps out playing appearances at minor league ball games, playing firemen’s parades, and fair opening days. Let them offer some clinics for students in the local area, and combine those with some concerts in the park.
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On 10/29/2023 at 2:50 PM, Jeff Ream said:
i agree things need worked out. but again several corps were in ST longer than on the road. and when you look at the final results, i often wonder exactly what was going on in ST.
oh wasted time on an ending that'll get rehearsed and actually performed for maybe 14 days. and while rehearsing that new ending, other stuff doesn't get rehearsed....and then everyone will ##### about BD winning.
I can tell you the logic from the interviews I did for the podcast. When you’re not renting trucks and busses to move things, you’re saving money. So they rented the trucks a busses to get people to ST (a day rental), the sent them away to save a months rental. They only then had to spend on food and housing. They could focus on member experience and fundamentals instead of trying to cram it all into 4 to 6 hour days. They got 8 to 12. They also got more days off.
now did training on fundamentals happen to the level needed for the show? Maybe? Maybe Not really?. But no one gets a performer like BD right now. Those performers already come with enough fundamentals that you’re not teaching “how to (skill)” you’re instead teaching the show element requiring that skill. So I would not bother with the BD argument.
sitting in ST longer is a money saver. Plain and simple. When heavy equipment is rented by weeks or months. You push that off as long as possible.
now if the staff doesn’t make the best use of 6 weeks of training, it’s time to find a new staff.
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11 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:
there is no one easy solution. there's many pieces of the puzzle.
of course i have been saying now spring training needs to not run 6 weeks or more. thats easily 6 figures savings....housing, feeding, transportation costs getting people in and out...several corps last year spent more time in ST than on tour!
I suspect that aside from the cost of taking a show across the states, there’s a bit of Broadwayism at work here influencing the time stuck in spring training purgatory.
There’s so many elements to a show now, many dual performance aspects a performer needs to do in this era (that many haven’t been trained well enough to handle to do from a beginner point or even trained at all before move in) that requires so much time to learn and the expectation of cleanliness we expect that it becomes an excuse for extended time in one place.
when shows were simpler we didn’t need 6 weeks to train battery to delicately poop squat in 16 variations or train brass how to arabesque to a level we expect from youth ballet.
but like you said earlier, it’s not one solution, there’s many choices over time that have lead us to the current situation of the activity.
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On 10/27/2023 at 9:12 AM, IllianaLancerContra said:
My comment was in reply to a post where author was discussing running a nonprofit dance group and obtaining local support.
I would think that obtaining local support is a lot easier with a local presence. But that ship has sailed, esp for World Class Corps.
I suppose that running local bingo (like BD & SCV, perhaps others) at least keeps the name out there.
My point was that we had a touring company, a student company, a professional company, a school, and a robust development team to support them all. But we also found ways to connect to the local area which we used the name of. If you want to be an arts org, and you want to chase those small donors and grants (which lead to larger donors and grants) you need to show people how THEIR money helps the community. If you can’t do that, you won’t get it.
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56 minutes ago, scheherazadesghost said:
Looks like a way bigger budget there, but the point stands.
Our budget was large. But we also have a venue to run, dancers to care for (and pay), apprentices to train, studios to operate, classes that were taught, community engagement that happened regularly, free concerts in the park, studio company to send on tours, technical and design staff to pay, stage and production mangers to pay, warehouses to operate for scenic storage and rental …
it’s a large org, engrained in the local community. My point was more about if you have a great development team, you can make things happen that technically shouldn’t.
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On 10/21/2023 at 11:09 AM, scheherazadesghost said:
I'll have to respectfully disagree with you there. I was in nonprofit development for a stint. My whole job was securing corporate sponsors. It's not a pipe dream. NPs rely on corporate sponsors just as much as they do grants. Just checked the aforementioned previous employer and their top tier of donors, who give $10k or more give them no less than $180k each year. According to the latest available SCV numbers, that's half the tour food budget right there.
But this is why I've been harping in other threads on demonstrating value (or ROI in nonprofit speak,) 'cause in that way, you're correct. But it doesn't come down to people knowing and understanding drum corps entirely. If you can prove that your website and your live events pull in enough eyeballs, you can secure small corporate donors. It'd be a silly strategy for anyone to go for the billion dollar companies. LOL VMAPA was criticized (after attempts, AFAIK) for going to the Googles, Metas, and other giants in Silicon Valley and being rejected. That's just silly. You go for the smaller companies first, just like grants. You have to prove to them your worth, consistently over time, and then the big hitters will begin to trust you.
But again, NPs rely on corporate sponsors all day every day. It's not a pipe dream. There just doesn't seem to be many in the drum corps world who know what they're doing in this regard. It's not rocket science though.
Yup. Houston Ballet was able to get Annheiser Bush sponsoring while it performed in a building that had a service agreement to sell only Miller Coors products.
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1 minute ago, dbc03 said:
I mean, there is a very recent example of a corps announcing their financial issues publicly without having to have their dirty laundry aired by someone else
This is an anomaly.
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We’ve watched the same mistakes made, repeatedly, and the governing body does nothing except just almost enough to quiet the uproar that should actually happen.
Sexual assault? Yup. Repeat offenses.
Financial scandals? Yup. Repeat offenses.
The only similarity is that both are never brought to light until the laundry gets aired by someone else. So there’s no actual internal accountability.
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13 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:
But don’t the Corps pay $ to fly them in and out over summer? That has gotta add up too.
Flights can be cheap if you buy them early. Or stick them on spirit.
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3 hours ago, AlexL said:
Yeah, its easy to say "do a regional tour" but aside from the midwest corps the logistics of that gets tough.
To do regional tour you need regional shows. To host a show you need to be a dci event partner. So they can oversee the tour stop you’re providing them. You as a show sponsor need to gamble your money hoping you can break even and sell a whole lot of concessions.
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1 minute ago, Jeff Ream said:
where was it said it didn't meet code? not doubting you, just the first i saw this anywhere
that building had several deficiencies and had to close starting in June until Sept while things were rectified
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11 hours ago, RiverCityAndTroopersFan said:
My band director has told me that the minimal props we buy are incredibly expensive. Thinking about the cost of dci corps props, they must be 100X that
Depends where you buy them from? A local fabricator? Or a niche band specialized prop builder that you see many others buying their carts and backdrops from? One is way cheaper.
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4 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
and they aren't all there at the same time or being paid for not being there. it's been said a zillion times, but in todays world, people just can't take the whole summer off anymore.
Having 6 more staff means we all can take time to work real jobs so we can pay rent. It also means we have to split the brass tech budget into 6 more portions. It doesn’t mean we all get the same portion.
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13 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
Cadets had an indoor guard and percussion group, a band circuit that did lots of clinics, a dance ensemble....and past mismanagement ruined that.
i said this before....Erie may have that facility, which is great, but that region isn't chock full of monster bands. outside of the city, most of the school districts are small, and there aren't as many districts as Eastern PA has, which is also close to the roots in NJ. Western New York and eastern OH aren't rolling in giant band programs to draw from either.
Eries sports complex didn’t meet code. Read that again. It means it can’t have people in it. So it’s moot.
as someone who taught in Erie area. Erie bands are not great. It’s not the students. It’s the directors who just don’t teach fundamentals very well.
as someone who works with a lot of non profit. Anytime you suspend operations, it means the board didn’t meet their fundraising numbers. And not by a few grand. But by a large number.
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5 minutes ago, TOC said:
And how long before no one wants to audition there because the corps with these limitations ends up way down in the standings?
Sound like a parade corps. That’ll be… fun.
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Just now, ContraFart said:
I already said that we cannot speculate on why Cadets are out this season, but I will bet everything I own and will ever own that is it not props and electronics that is keeping them off the field next summer and they are not reason they are in this position. Trimming 3% off the top is not the make or break of getting a corps down the road, if it is, then they should not be on the road in the first place.
Have you ever considered that maybe they are doing the right thing by taking a year off? That maybe they could get down the road this summer, but it would make things worse long term? It sucks, yes, but making the call this early was smart and responsible.
It is likely that the board had numbers for give (contributions) and get (beg borrow or steal) to meet, and they didn’t meet them by a large number. Which means you either then pass that deficit onto the members, or if it’s too large a gap, you either cripple your members experience to a 2 week seminar of a tour, or you go on hiatus while you try to figure out how to raise money.
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28 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:
Over the years I’ve read posts that lot of members want to be in their “dream corps” or nothing. Reasons were if they were going to spend that amount of money or be a rook-out, then only being in their dream corps would be worth while.
But this helps the case for DCI all age. They can now march, not kill their accounts, not have to travel as far. And still get an Indy weekend.
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1 minute ago, Old Guy said:
For just a few select corps
More than you think. Open class excluded. As long as you have a good relationship with your sales rep, and you manage expectations, you’ll do ok.
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9 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:
Also remember reading a few posts saying that due to school, internships and/or cost they only have one season they can do corps. So make it worth their while or nothing.
And let’s face it, some parts of the country the nearest corps ain’t that close….
I had rook outs in open class. As well as when I marched in the 00s. But I see more of them in this age. They can only spend $5k plus flights for one season. So they’ll do what they can to make it happen.
had I not had people I went to college with in the corps to share gas with, and our dues being one of the lowest in dci in the 90-00s era. I would have not marched my last few seasons. I made several groups but couldn’t afford 1500 in fees plus travel every month.
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Real ideas for sustainability & revenue
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted · Edited by C.Holland
Local “tours” need local show and event sponsors. You first need to find operators dumb enough to gamble event costs. Once you can guarantee events, you’ll then get participants. Doesn’t need to be a competition, could be parades, standstills, festivals, fairs… etc. but you need show ops and funders to help create a tour of events to perform at.