Greetings and Happy New Year!

Our core group of volunteers took a bit of well-deserved time off over the holidays, but we have recently take back the reels, so to speak. We have been revising our projections, meeting the AMC regarding rent and use of the building, and thinking more about fundraising.

It looks like we have cleared up the rental for the Foss Auditorium, although we have yet to draft up a lease. The base rental will be $300/day, plus costs for cleaning, maintenance, replacement, etc.

We are also closing in on solid numbers for licensing the movies. The licensing/box office costs and the rent are the vast majority of our expenses. At $5 ticket, we would need to sell about 375 tickets for three showings a weekend just to break even. That's about 125 seats per showing or about 1/3 of the capacity of the auditorium. We would need to average this amount of course, with some movies selling out and others being flops. Even so, this seems like quite a high break-even number to us. We would be more comfortable with a break-even at about 50 seats per showing.

So, this means we need to focus on fundraising from grants and earned revenue such as advertising and sponsorships. We would like to explore the ideas of soliciting businesses for ads (slides or short videos) that we can project before the movies, for posters, for sponsored movies or snacks, ads on our website, etc.

If there is anyone on this list with interest in or experience with this kind of thing, please respond to me.

If we make sufficient progress to convene another meeting, it MIGHT be February 18, but wait for that confirmation please. Maybe just pencil it in for now.

Cheers,

Mark

November 4th:

The next meeting will be Tuesday November 17, 6 - 8 pm at the Foss Auditorium in the American Mountaineering Center.  

Come join us!

October 15, 2009

Greetings everyone,

Our next meeting will be from 6-8pm on October 29 at the Foss Auditorium in the American Mountaineering Center. We will hear the updates from the tasks outlined below.

We had an excellent meeting last night. I provided a brief recap of the previous meetings and welcomed the newcomers. I also provided each committee with my research notes and computer files for the work I’ve put in so far. We then split up into the different committee groups to begin work and brainstorming. After an hour or so, each group designated its coordinator and gave a report to the full group. Lots of great ideas were shared, including some exciting short term goals. Each committee gave themselves some homework and most committees are planning to meet again in the next week or two. All homework will be due for a report at our next full group meeting, which will be from 6-8pm on October 29 at the Foss Auditorium in the American Mountaineering Center.

While work as begun in earnest to make this vision a reality, we still need your help! Even if you have missed all of our meetings so far, please contact the Committee Coordinators to learn their meeting schedule and how you might contribute. Bring a friend! Bring five friends! 

Booking and Programming
Erin Dawes

• Will work on trying to book a holiday-type movie to show after the Candlelight Walk
• Will work to book one movie per month for January-March as a way to keep interest high until we are prepared to really “open the doors” for good
• Will work closely with the Communications Committee to coordinate the selection and promotion of all events, and to distribute a movie preference survey
• Will work closely with Operations Committee to keep it appraised of costs of proposals

Communications and Marketing
August Miller

• Going with the name Golden Gem Cinema
• GURA has already reserved domain names for goldengemcinema.com, .org, and .net.
• GURA has also reserved pages on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace
• Will begin work on website, utilizing social media, and other promotions
• Will work with Booking and Programming to draft and distribute an electronic and hardcopy survey to the community to help determine movie preferences
• Will work closely with Operations Committee to keep it appraised of costs of proposals

Organization (delete and Development)
Francine Butler

• GREAT has approved making the Golden Gem Cinema Project its primary focus; the project will benefit by the existing 501-C-3 status of GREAT.
• This will solve many of the basic organizational challenges we might have faced
• The Coordinating Committee members will form the preliminary advisory board to GREAT
• This group will work with a Development Committee to oversee major donor and membership fundraising
• Will work closely with Operations Committee to keep it appraised of costs of proposals

Concessions
Sarah Scher
Marcia Sadler

• Will work with Operations Committee to evaluate need for and cost of permits to serve food and beverage
• Will investigate healthy and cheap snacks and drinks
• Will investigate using local vendors to provide concessions, possibly tying into the theme of movies
• Will work closely with Operations Committee to keep it appraised of costs of proposals

Operations
Dan O’Neill

• Will work closely with American Mountaineering Center to establish rent, availability of auditorium, and maintenance costs and procedures
• Will refine preliminary operating budget, start up expenses, and attendance projections
• Will work with other committees to include costs of projects in the budgets

We’re off to a great start!

Mark Heller, JD, AICP
Executive Director
Golden Urban Renewal Authority
922 Washington Avenue, Suite 100
Golden, CO 80401
303 279 4162
mark@gura.com 
www.gura.com