Community Service vs. High Quality Perfomance

[Stu]

Community Service vs. High Quality Perfomance

DCI groups:

a) Highly competitive on the micro, individual, and macro, corps, level. Members fly in from around the world to audition for many units which means it is global not local.

b) Up to 150 highly skilled performers per corps required to execute the state of the art shows.

c) High quality brass instruments, percussion, electronics, guard equipment required to be competitive.

d) Three buses, two simis, equipment trailer, mobile kitchen, all traveling 20k plus miles around the United States late June through mid August each year.

e) Thousands of gallons of fuel for the busses, simis, lead vehicles, and ice-box generator.

e) Highly skilled Designers, Caption Heads, and Techs require a lot of compensation and payment for providing their education, experience, and expertise to the members.

f) Food to feed around 200 people three times a day during camps and over the summer costs a huge amount of money.

g) Fees have to be paid to camp and move-in sites.

h) Fees have to be paid out to all of the housing sites across the United States.

i) Insurance has to be provided for all involved.

j) Approx $500k to $800k operation costs per year for each corps to exist competitively at this level.

k) Since the activity is still exists as a non-profit, money must be raised, not earned. Not many Grants available at this level because the DCI activity is about competition, not community service. Not much Foundation support for the same reason. The well known corps receive large corporate sponsorships, but very few other corps receive much sponsorship capital. Therefore, most operation money has to be generated by the members and that is why membership dues are so expensive.

SDCA groups:

a) It is about having fun, audience entertainment, community service, and anybody can join a group.

b) Most shows are within the local driving area and held in gymnasiums.

c) Show designs range from the old school traditional to the modern Blast type concepts.

d) Audience picks the winner.

e) Donated instruments, personal gear, borrowed items are acceptable.

f) Not much need for multiple busses, simis, and mobile kitchens. A few mini-vans and a rent-a-truck will get you by.

g) Most everyone volunteers a few hours each week, and the focus is putting instruments in the hands of anyone who wants to participate as well as community service.

h) Insurance is needed, but not that expensive relative to DCI.

h) Since SDCA exists on a small scale, it is non-profit, and it truly does support community service, there is a better chance to secure Grants and Foundation support as well as local community support. Therefore, membership dues range from a few hundred dollars to none.

For those of you wanting some sort of Utopia to exist, the enormous costs of providing DCI type quality and SDCA type community service to anyone who wants it, regardless of their financial status, would have to be covered by someone. A private company fully funding the DCI corps activity, or having the tax payers fully fund individual DCI corps, has never been, nor ever will be, a reality. So, who is left to pay: the members; always has been; always will be. Therefore, if you want youth to engage in local community service, get at risk kids off the streets, have very low membership dues, provide entertainment, and have some fun, then SDCA is there and it will not cost the performing members much money. However, if you want the youth to experience a high level performing ensemble, high quality instruction, state of the art show designs, play on the best instruments manufactured, and travel the United States, then DCI is there, but it will cost the performing member a few thousand dollars each year to participate. Choose SDCA for community service and DCI for competitive performance; but it cannot be combined. Problem solved.

[Todd Tanji]

Interesting and insightful perspective, Stu. Thanks.

[fifer]

YEA! is combining it quite well between The Cadets, its marching band circuit, and three Allentown area free community service performance groups.

DCI has been developing an aliance with BOA recently. Maybe DCI should also look to ally with some community service performance organization(s) since it would probably be cost prohibitive to start their own. Any possibilty of DCI and SDCA collaborating?

[Stu]

YEA! is combining it quite well between The Cadets, its marching band circuit, and three Allentown area free community service performance groups.

So what you are saying is that YEA is providing DCI high quality performance along with SDCA type community service both at a low price to the members? I beg to differ; the Cadet member dues are well over $2000 per member per year. If YEA is combining "it" quite well between all of their programs, then why not lower the membership dues to something like $200?

DCI has been developing an alliance with BOA recently. Maybe DCI should also look to ally with some community service performance organization(s) since it would probably be cost prohibitive to start their own.

Even if BOA and DCI develop a more close relationship, BOA is not about community service, or helping the poor, or helping get kids off the streets; but about providing venues for bands in the United States to compete at shows with consistent judging criteria. Moreover, the top band programs that make BOA Grand National Finals still have extremely high membership fees for their high school students that range in the multi thousands of dollars.

Any possibility of DCI and SDCA collaborating?

That would be up DCI and SDCA, and any comment now is just speculation. However, the two entities exist for two vastly different reasons as stated in an earlier post, so the possibility would more than likely be remote.

[Rimba47]

SDCA groups:

a) It is about having fun, audience entertainment, community service, and anybody can join a group.

b) Most shows are within the local driving area and held in gymnasiums.

c) Show designs range from the old school traditional to the modern Blast type concepts.

d) Audience picks the winner.

e) Donated instruments, personal gear, borrowed items are acceptable.

f) Not much need for multiple busses, simis, and mobile kitchens. A few mini-vans and a rent-a-truck will get you by.

g) Most everyone volunteers a few hours each week, and the focus is putting instruments in the hands of anyone who wants to participate as well as community service.

h) Insurance is needed, but not that expensive relative to DCI.

h) Since SDCA exists on a small scale, it is non-profit, and it truly does support community service, there is a better chance to secure Grants and Foundation support as well as local community support. Therefore, membership dues range from a few hundred dollars to none.

Hmm... sounds like a high school marching band to me. If we support music education in our schools then marching band could easily become just like a SDCA group for high school kids. And those highschool age kids who aren't in highschool? They probably have their own path or situations to deal with and probably won't have an interest in band. But if there is a drop-out who wants to do band I can see a band director still letting him march in the band. maybe.

For college level SDCA is similar to the marching band aswell...

I think your idea is great! It would incredible to have both community service and high quality drum corps. But, to me it seems that all the elements are already in place for something like this with highschool marching band, college marching band, and DCA/ all age drum corps. But like all things it has more room to develop into something that you've described.

Edited March 13, 2010 by Rimba47

[euponitone]

So what you are saying is that YEA is providing DCI high quality performance along with SDCA type community service both at a low price to the members? I beg to differ; the Cadet member dues are well over $2000 per member per year. If YEA is combining "it" quite well between all of their programs, then why not lower the membership dues to something like $200?

Um, the organization is OFFERING both things either way, but I'm sure you already knew that. If you mean to point out that they arent offering things that are worth thousands of dollars to people for free, well yeah, good point there. Ok, not really....

No organization can be all things to all people all the time (which i suspect is part of your point), but by offering programs on both ends of the spectrum, they are at least attempting to reach a variety of social demographics...

[MikeD]

So what you are saying is that YEA is providing DCI high quality performance along with SDCA type community service both at a low price to the members? I beg to differ; the Cadet member dues are well over $2000 per member per year. If YEA is combining "it" quite well between all of their programs, then why not lower the membership dues to something like $200?

Where does he say that? YEA! has three urban free community-based organizations who have the aim of providing the experience you are looking for. PLUS it has a top level audition group in the Cadets. Plus it runs a huge band circuit that has bands competing from all sorts of socio-economic levels, from inner city schools to wealthy suburban schools, and everywhere in between.

[fifer]

So what you are saying is that YEA is providing DCI high quality performance along with SDCA type community service both at a low price to the members?

I'm getting the feeling that you support SDCA over DCI and wonder if you truly think both "types" of groups should happily co-exist for the purposes you first stated in your post. Anyway, thanks to those who understood what I originally wrote.

So, you are correct in that YEA! does not offer a single organization that can afford offer both the $2000+ experience and the under $200 price tag. However, they have established a model that can afford to support both extremes (and quite a few of the shards of gray in between) with music education and life changing experiences. Maybe more drum corps should have "sister" community organizations - then maybe we'd also see more of that "local" connection returning to corps.

[euponitone]

I'm getting the feeling that you support SDCA over DCI and wonder if you truly think both "types" of groups should happily co-exist for the purposes you first stated in your post. Anyway, thanks to those who understood what I originally wrote.

So, you are correct in that YEA! does not offer a single organization that can afford offer both the $2000+ experience and the under $200 price tag. However, they have established a model that can afford to support both extremes (and quite a few of the shards of gray in between) with music education and life changing experiences. Maybe more drum corps should have "sister" community organizations - then maybe we'd also see more of that "local" connection returning to corps.

But, but, but....I wanna pay 100$ and get 2000$ worth of instruction, food, touring, etc.... WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.....DCI and YEA is a meany foo-foo for not giving me that!!!

[Fred Windish]

Look, I've lived in the Allentown area my entire life. That's 59 years. I also think I understand drum corps. yea! presents NO obvious presence here to the majority of Lehigh Valley residents. If yea! has specific outreach to local youth, the word of those efforts has not been made public.

yea! is pretty much an unknown contributor around here. More effort is needed.

Sorry, yea!