Per the California Attorney General Vanguard is operating illegally as a non profit

[Richard Lesher]

5 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

I follow NASCAR and would suggest that it isn’t the model we want DCI to follow.  

What I mean is, Indy Car was the premier motor sport in the USA, and in the 90's somehow NASCAR figured out a better way to reach fans and Indy Car just ended up the minor league (triple A of course) of motor sports in the USA. 

I honestly think the donations and grants are ripe for the Open Class level. Who wants to dump money into the performing arts experiences of a bunch of 20 somethings? It's much different when one can ask for funding to help High School kids verses a bunch of young adults that need to move on. 

Anyway........... different rabbit hole.  

For example, it hit me like a train, when I was in basic training (I enlisted at age 39) I was surrounded by kids of marching age that would be Non Commissioned Officers in the US Army before they would even reach the age out limit of DCI. 

Yes, I biased. I stopped marching at age 19 and use the summers to finish college. Folks are wasting two critical years of their youth in their 20's marching. 

Do not let drum corps be the apex of your life. 

 

 

[greg_orangecounty]

2 hours ago, Richard Lesher said:

Yes, I biased. I stopped marching at age 19 and use the summers to finish college. Folks are wasting two critical years of their youth in their 20's marching. 

Do not let drum corps be the apex of your life. 

I did the same but it was because my corps folded, and I regret not marching my final two years of eligibility to this day.  There are many-many people who graduated from college and/or learned a trade while marching all years of eligibility.  It's not an either-or choice.

Swing-and-a-miss on your advice here.  

[Chief Guns]

3 hours ago, Richard Lesher said:

What I mean is, Indy Car was the premier motor sport in the USA, and in the 90's somehow NASCAR figured out a better way to reach fans and Indy Car just ended up the minor league (triple A of course) of motor sports in the USA. 

I honestly think the donations and grants are ripe for the Open Class level. Who wants to dump money into the performing arts experiences of a bunch of 20 somethings? It's much different when one can ask for funding to help High School kids verses a bunch of young adults that need to move on. 

Anyway........... different rabbit hole.  

For example, it hit me like a train, when I was in basic training (I enlisted at age 39) I was surrounded by kids of marching age that would be Non Commissioned Officers in the US Army before they would even reach the age out limit of DCI. 

Yes, I biased. I stopped marching at age 19 and use the summers to finish college. Folks are wasting two critical years of their youth in their 20's marching. 

Do not let drum corps be the apex of your life. 

 

 

Why can't my kid go to college and do drum corps at age 20-21?

Why does it have to be one or the other? 

What works for one might not work for someone else. 

[Jeff Ream]

13 hours ago, Richard Lesher said:

Welp, frustratingly.................

BD's operations is run by the person that fixed SCV after the bingo fraud, and then resigned under Jeff Fielder, then got picked up by BD by who was the 2018 A-Corps Corps Director from SCV and was snatched up by BD.

SO BD had got the 2018 SCV A-Corps championship director and the SCV Operations Manager who kept SCV on the straight and narrow.  

What I'm essentially saying is SCV had those folks in hand that you are now saying SCV should copy from BD. 

good points, however BD didn't have any known issues prior to this either

[Slingerland]

Various points:

- All Board members get copies of the annual audits, at every non-profit I've ever worked for or been associated with. They might not READ it, but the secretary or Treasurer of the org does make sure copies are available. 

- The idea that community organizations will fund touring drum corps with members who are not from the local community is a non-starter. They won't. I fundraised (very successfully) in the non-profit arts world in a major market for a long time, and if it was about helping under-served communities or providing extraordinary arts experiences, the major corporate and foundation givers were interested. Drum corps does neither. It's summer marching band. That won't move a needle on a $50,000 grant.

BUT...programs like special needs drumlines and guards absolutely have a shot at getting community support. More of those, please.

- ALL THAT SAID, there is absolutely the possibility that the next CEO of DCI could pull together a team of marketing folks who could successfully pitch the tour to some national brand sponsors, if, as part of the process, there is a tightening of the circles between DCI and high school band programs. DCI by itself is meh in terms of numbers; DCI as the pinnacle of elementary and high school music education, and tying the brand into that world more directly adds the number of "participants" to being everyone currently in a band program, which makes it. conduit to millions of households, not less than 5,000 households.

- Vanguard not reporting payments to outside accountants could mean a change in terms of how they classified the expenditure, though....nah, that didn't happen. So if there's a red flag of incompetence/malfeasance in the org, that's the  one the alums need to be pushing hardest on for some sort of answer. Could the outside accountants not have presented a bill for services rendered because they donated the service? Sure, I guess, but that'd be a little weird, since accounting services never comp'd, both because accountants aren't stupid and because it'd present some ethical red flags in terms of the veracity of their work.

A public letter to their Board asking for clarification, signed by several hundred concerned alums/potential donors, is probably in order.


 

Edited May 9, 2023 by Slingerland

[Eustis]

15 hours ago, Tenoris4Jazz said:

Bill Cook funded Star for the first few years entirely, but he also had them develop the charter bus company that Star used during the tour and then ran, as a fund raising business, the rest of the year to whomever needed buses.  By 1987 or '88, the charter service basically paid all of Star's bills.  They also bought brand new King bugles and never bought more horns.  Star had them refurbished every year by the manufacturer.  Right up until 1993 they were still the best sounding horns on tour.

Thanks for the clarification on that, I'd forgotten about the charter bus company and it's a great idea, especially if the operation actually went into the black for Star after the initial investment(s), which are not insignificant. Do you know if any current corps does this? As to the bugle situation, did this earn Star a corporate sponsorship from King? Apologies for the thread drift, I know this was all about SCV's challenges, but funding is crucial to sustaining the activity. Sure, we have corporate sponsorships for equipment, uniforms, perhaps design software, etc. Are corps in general open amongst themselves about their successful income alternatives?

[Terri Schehr]

16 hours ago, Tenoris4Jazz said:

Bill Cook funded Star for the first few years entirely, but he also had them develop the charter bus company that Star used during the tour and then ran, as a fund raising business, the rest of the year to whomever needed buses.  By 1987 or '88, the charter service basically paid all of Star's bills.  They also bought brand new King bugles and never bought more horns.  Star had them refurbished every year by the manufacturer.  Right up until 1993 they were still the best sounding horns on tour.

It’s the operator.  Not the machine.  Yesterday, I was listening to Jeff Kievet and Muchachos on that old junk we played. You’d never know it hearing him play. 

[IllianaLancerContra]

22 hours ago, Richard Lesher said:

Welp, frustratingly.................

BD's operations is run by the person that fixed SCV after the bingo fraud, and then resigned under Jeff Fielder, then got picked up by BD by who was the 2018 A-Corps Corps Director from SCV and was snatched up by BD.

SO BD had got the 2018 SCV A-Corps championship director and the SCV Operations Manager who kept SCV on the straight and narrow.  

What I'm essentially saying is SCV had those folks in hand that you are now saying SCV should copy from BD. 

There is a name that keeps coming up, both in the SCV fiasco as well as in Tricia Nadolny’s investigations.   A name that used to be prominent, is in the HoF, yet now has gone silent.  

[scheherazadesghost]

1 hour ago, Slingerland said:

The idea that community organizations will fund touring drum corps with members who are not from the local community is a non-starter. They won't. I fundraised (very successfully) in the non-profit arts world in a major market for a long time, and if it was about helping under-served communities or providing extraordinary arts experiences, the major corporate and foundation givers were interested. Drum corps does neither. It's summer marching band. That won't move a needle on a $50,000 grant.

BUT...programs like special needs drumlines and guards absolutely have a shot at getting community support. More of those, please.

I appreciate your post overall but I want to lean into this part.

I agree that funders are looking for hyper-locality, services for underserved communities, and arts experiences (extraordinary is in the eye of the beholder.) I firmly believe that drum corps absolutely provides extraordinary arts experiences, it's just a weird initial sell for most prospective donors who are unfamiliar. If corps could clean up their compliance and safeguarding, they could be viable contenders for major funding due to their focus on legacy artmaking and youth education. But that would require a sea change in approach.

A singular $50,000 grant does not justify a grant writer's labor in the context of the world class corps budgets anyway, especially if the upkeep for such a grant requires year-round reporting. Many do. But to your point, yeah, drum corps (as it is currently packaged) is not competitive. Grants also often require NPs to report out internal info like demographics of employees and populations served, as well as how many hours each employee works on each project-type category. I don't think most drum corps have the people power for even smaller grants at this time.

My biggest concern is the interest I've seen in several parts of our community in special needs/underserved ensembles as an incentive for grants. First, funds for such community-oriented programming would be restricted and such programs are very unlikely to ween themselves off external funding. Meaning such programs rarely turn into revenue generators, unless the organization shifts focus entirely to getting good at serving that population and dropping drum corps. Because the funding is likely restricted, it can't be used on anything else, let alone to fund a conventional drum corps tour. I've seen countless nonprofits and other bad actors exploit underserved and marginalized populations in this way before so I just wanted to clarify. There are serious penalties for using restricted funds on areas outside of their stated purpose.

Most importantly, if your mission doesn't directly necessitate services for marginalized communities, suddenly supporting them and getting grants for it looks weird. The org likely doesn't have the expertise built up to support these populations because the mission has been focused on other, better-served populations prior to its interest in grants designated for serving marginalized populations. Unless, of course, your mission was too broad to begin with and you're unaware of the mission creep going on.

If serving these communities is of genuine interest to orgs who don't already specialize in doing so, an appropriate approach would be to build partnerships with nearby orgs who are actually good at doing so, not applying for grants to do it themselves.

Not enough to read? Here's a supportive resource for anyone interested: https://www.501c3.org/misappropriating-nonprofit-funds/

Edited May 9, 2023 by scheherazadesghost

[Eustis]

1 hour ago, Slingerland said:

- All Board members get copies of the annual audits, at every non-profit I've ever worked for or been associated with. They might not READ it, but the secretary or Treasurer of the org does make sure copies are available.

Curious to know the level of approval (vs. responsibility for preparation/consult for input/inform) required for those audits within any given BoD. It seems to me that the some or all members of these boards are or ought to be legally liable for the contents of any audit (as for periodic financial reports and tax filings) to be filed with the responsible regulatory authorities.