Re: [Organizers] Cancellation Policies

We recently had to cancel a Friday night English Ball and a Sat night contra dance - both highly anticipated - due to freezing mist that covered everything in a fine coat of ice.  The Highway Patrol was asking everyone to stay off the roads - so we figured that was a pretty good sign we needed to cancel. The area had hundreds of accidents - but I did not hear of any involving our dancers. We used email and Facebook for the cancellations and for the other events we offered. We held last minute scheduled events on Sat and Sun afternoon as well as a dance on Sunday night.  Attendance was much lower at the afternoon events than we expected and the cancelled evening events - but everyone got paid.  We lost a lot of money.  The community pitched in with donations to cover about 1/3 of the losses - and the rest we chalked up to community building Mac McKeeverChildgrove Country DancersSt Louis. From: David Kirchner via Organizers <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> To: bobfab(a)aol.com Cc: organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2016 5:59 PM Subject: Re: [Organizers] Cancellation Policies I don't recall ever cancelling a dance in the Twin Cities on account of weather, certainly not winter weather. We have a policy for an instant cancellation in the event of a tornado warning or a loss of power at nighttime, but I don't think it has come up since we instituted it. On the other hand, we don't get a lot of big dumps of snow like upstate NY; anything over 6-7 inches is pretty unusual, and 12 inches or more is a once-every-five-years sort of thing -- so the odds of it happening on dance night are pretty low.  It does get cold here, but we had a night with 30-40 below wind chills a couple weeks ago and the dance went on as scheduled. We didn't even bother to post an announcement that it was still on. David On Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 11:11 AM, via Organizers <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: Hi all, In Rochester NY we are often blessed with unpredictably significant quantities of snow over a short time. Generally speaking, it is known by 3pm if the evening dance will cancelled due to weather. We are reviewing our procedures for canceling the dance, and wondered what other communities do to: 0) Decide if a dance should be cancelled?     We are thinking of basing it off Winter Storm Warning by National Weather Service 1) Let the community know the dance is cancelled     Easier if everyone knows to check for a Winter Storm Warning...     But post on website, and facebook event page are also done here 2) Compensate performers who have arrived or are en-route when the dance is cancelled.     In particular, touring performers who may be in the city on their way to the next gig... Any thoughts are appreciated. Bob Fabinski ______________________________ _________________ Organizers mailing list Organizers(a)lists.sharedweight. net http://lists.sharedweight.net/ listinfo.cgi/organizers- sharedweight.net _______________________________________________ Organizers mailing list Organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/organizers-sharedweight.net