Thank you to everyone who attended the July All Hands meeting! It was small but mighty and we had a LOT of info to pass along to our community.
Whether you were in attendance or couldn’t make it this time around, we’ve made a comprehensive recap of the most recent All-Hands Meeting with information for you to read at your leisure.
Please Note- we hold All Hands meetings every quarter on the third Thursday of the month. They are open to anyone in our community- students, performers, volunteers, etc. The next All Hands meeting will be on Thursday, October 16 from 7 to 9 pm.
New Staff
- Sterling Arroyo- Marketing Director
- Aaron Hall- House Teams Coordinator
- Winter Bishop and Siobhan Gee- Development Interns
- Will Holston- Adult Instructor
Upcoming Performer Opportunities
We are committed to making sure there are many entry points to getting on the SG stage and that performers at all levels have opportunities to perform
- Throwdown Submissions just closed. We had an overhwelming number of submissions- almost 40 teams! Notifications will be going out soon. Next year, we will be able to plan accordingly and open up the tournament to more teams.
- House Team Auditions are August 16! House teams are the cornerstone to beginning your performer journey after graduating from the Training Center. You get regular rehearsals with an SG-trained coach and a six-month run of shows on the weekends.
- The Not Myself Today Character show is taking ongoing submissions. There is no prerequisite for submitting. Show us those characters!
- The Let’s Get Weird Late Night Experimental Open Mic opens the first week of September. Let’s get weird! If you have an act that pushes the boundaries of comedy or is just a little whacky show us what ya got!
- The Incubator is returning this September and October. Greg, the Training Center Director, will be opening up submissions soon, so be sure to watch your Student Newsletter email. You can throw your name in the hat to join a team and have a month of rehearsals followed by a show every Sunday.
- The Thunderdome is a great way to hop onstage in a supportive, fun environment after completing Level One improv. We’ll be offering another Thunderdome workshop in September, and after you’ve completed it you’re eligible to play!
Other Opportunities
- In the coming weeks, we will be hiring a part-time Improv for Work Salesperson. We will be looking for someone with experience in Sales. Watch your inbox for more details if you’re interested in this opportunity!
- We’re looking to add more Youth Improv instructors to the team who can work after-school programs, in-school programs, and beyond! We need folks with teaching experience in addition to their improv training. If this is you, send your resume to lindsay@stompinggroundcomedy.org.
- We’re busting at the seams, and we’re looking for supplemental space nearby so that we can offer more classes (and subsequently open up our space for more shows). If you know someone in our neighborhood who perhaps runs a 9-5 business and would be willing to partner to offer classes in the evening, please connect them with lindsay@stompinggroundcomedy.org.
Marketing Updates from Sterling Arroyo
- We want to know how improv and the SG community have impacted you. We’re evolving our blog so that we can better tell our story, and we want to include your personal narrative! If you have an idea for a blog, submit it here.
- Follow, comment, share, and engage with the SG social media posts! “Liking” doesn’t impact us as much as comments and shares do, so be sure to have fun with us on social media.
- The team often tags the performers in show posts. Please re-share those in your posts and stories!
- You’re an awesome performer, so tell people you have shows. Every time we see you share a post about your show we get a ticket sale. It’s really that simple!
- Cute new stuff- A new social media plan and strategy are coming soon along with a brand-spankin’ new pre-show slideshow!
- Sample texts and post copy- We’ll be adding some easy copy & paste show promotion text to our Backstage page to make show promotion even easier.
Development updates from Kelly Kaufman
- September 18 is North Texas Giving Day, and we will be celebrating our charity champions! Please make plans to attend one of our free events that day, but most importantly, our Charity Champions event that evening. There will be friends, fun, and great raffle prizes.
- At his Superhero Birthday Ball, performer and student Raymund King raised over $4500 for Stomping Ground. Plus, we had a ball! Thank you for sharing your birthday (and talent) with us, Raymund.
- We added several new folks to the Donor Wall this month and toasted to their generosity. Huge thank you to Lin Woodson, David Parsons, Mike Christian, Steve Childers, Tyler Vornberg, Greg Mihalik, Justin Wayne, Joshua Franklin, Lynsey Hale & Holly Bagwell!
- We’re so grateful to performer and community member Wes Phillips for pitching Stomping Ground at the GEICO Fastpitch program! We walked away with $6,500 to go towards our mission. Thank you, Wes!
- If you have similar charity opportunities or fundraising opportunities (including volunteer hours matches) at your place of business and would like to submit Stomping Ground, please connect with kelly@stompinggroundcomedy.org.
- Corporate Matches- many big companies offer donation matches, meaning that if you donate any dollar amount to Stomping Ground they will donate that same amount! This is an easy, painless way to make your donation go farther.
Stomping Ground Comedy 2025-2026 Strategic Plan
In April, the SG Board of Directors spent a full day at their Annual Board Retreat planning the 2025-2026 fiscal year. At this All Hands, we shared our plan with our stakeholders! While we won’t recap that entire plan here, we’ll hit you with the highlights
Stomping Ground makes value-based decisions about what’s next for our organization. Our values are:
- Risk Mitigation
- Responsible Growth
- Sustainability
- Appreciation
At our Board Retreat, the team went through each of our departments (Artistic/Shows, Education/Training Center, Improv for Life, Youth, Operations, and Development) and determined goals and how to implement them. At the All-Hands, we talked through each department. For our Dear Readers, here are the highlights:
- Operations:
- We will be working to streamline processes and procedures in our Box Office and beyond
- We will be training more folks to run jams and community events to reduce burnout. Many people want to get more involved and many hands make light work!
- Training Center:
- We aim to free up the Training Center Director’s time to focus on high-level management
- We have hired a House Team Coordinator to fine-tune and streamline our House Team Program
- We are at capacity! We are searching for supplemental classroom space nearby
- Artistic:
- We aim to continue to create more opportunities for performers at every level
- We will continue evolving show programming and do everything we can to get bigger audiences
- We will build a great Producer pipeline with organized, thorough producers overseeing shows and teams
- Improv for Life:
- We will focus on our Improv for Caregivers program and sharing it with the wider community
- We’re exploring new class times for many of our Improv for Life classes
- We’re streamlining our offerings. As mentioned many times in the meeting- “We can do anything…but we can’t do everything.” As our organization grows, so will our life-changing offerings.
- Improv for Work:
- We are working to free up margin for the Improv for Life Director by hiring an Improv for Work Salesperson to handle Improv for Work
- We hope to pursue new leads this year
- We will be rolling out a new webpage for Improv for Work very soon!
- Youth:
- Our Youth program has grown by leaps and bounds and we need to support that growth by hiring and training more Youth instructors
- We are now offering in-school programs at Booker T Washington High School for the Performing & Visual Arts and Winston School.
- We will be offering after-school programs at multiple schools
- We will be expanding our Youth House Team program and finding ways for cross-pollination and community-building between teams
- Development:
- We are working to streamline our donor management systems and improve our stewardship
- We are working with Family Foundations and Donor Advised Funds
- Development has hired two new interns to help support this work
If you’ve made it this far, thank you! We’re sorry that we missed you at the meeting, and we hope to see you at the next All Hands on the third Thursday of October!