New Season and Upcoming Changes
Dear members, please take a moment to read the post below from the Board and familiarise yourselves with the changes coming into effect this season.
Dear chorus members,
.
A new season is about to start. With an almost entirely new board, fresh faces in the artistic team, in this message we’d like to inform you of some upcoming changes.
Please take some time to read through all the information below carefully. If you have any questions or would like to discuss any of the changes with us, the new Board will be available for a Q&A on September 2 at 7:00 PM sharp. This is completely optional and open to anyone who would like to ask questions, share their thoughts or discuss any of the points in more detail.
You’re also always welcome to approach one of us for a chat during a break or after rehearsal. It will be a busy and exciting first rehearsal, as we’ll also be welcoming around 20 potential new singers and dancers for the first time. The general rehearsal will start as usual at 7:30 PM.
Very recently we have filled our remaining board vacancies and after already having had a few board meetings, I’m personally very much looking forward to this collaboration and to planning for the future of our wonderful chorus.
Going forward your board will be:
Chairman: Gerrit Groot Karsijn
Secretary: Tom Atkins
Treasurer: Rudy Wansink
PR and communications: Bharat Dhingra
Member Admin: Yang Tang
Your chair,
Gerrit
Updated Website along with Vision, Mission, T&C and Code of Conduct
"While our name reflects our proud heritage, today we welcome people from across the queer community whose vocal range is suited to our chorus."
We have updated our vision, mission and terms of conditions. First and foremost we want to be more inclusive. You will find that going forward we will value and welcome diversity, while still acknowledging our heritage as a gay men’s chorus. Please also read our updated Terms & Conditions, as well as all other parts of our website, as they were very much due an update.
We’d also like everyone to read through the Code of Conduct and Membership policy we’ve created. Thankfully it doesn’t happen often that lines are crossed, but it does/can sometimes happen and we feel it’s important to know what those lines are and how the board could then act accordingly, both for new members and for current ones.
If you have any questions, we will be happy to answer them. New members are asked to agree to the Terms & Conditions and Code of Conduct when joining the AMSGMC. The updated documents will apply from 1st Sept 2026. We encourage all current members to familiarise themselves with the changes and reach out to the Board if anything is unclear.
Call for Volunteers – Get Involved!
Our chorus is much more than what happens during rehearsals and performances, and many of the things that make our community special are only possible when members get involved.
That’s why we would love to see more members coming forward with their time, skills and ideas. You don’t need previous experience, and volunteering doesn’t always have to mean a big commitment. Whether you want to help organise something, support an event for a few hours, or have an idea for a social activity you’d like to make happen we’d love to hear from you. Let one of the board members know and we will add you in the Volunteers group.
Talent Show – Sunday, 8 November
Our next Talent Show is coming up, and we’re looking for:
Talent Show Coordinator: Someone to coordinate member sign-ups, help organise the event and take the lead on the day itself. The venue Nassaukerk is already arranged, and the Board will be there to support you along the way.
Event Volunteers: We’re also looking for two people to help on the day with welcoming guests, scanning tickets and helping with our own bar/drink sales.
Social activities – your ideas are welcome!
We’ve heard that many members would love to have more social activities throughout the year and we’d love that too!
The Board won’t always have the capacity to organise every social activity ourselves, so we’d love to see members take the initiative too. Have an idea for a dinner, party, picnic, karaoke night, outing, workshop or something completely different? Bring the idea forward, invite the chorus and help make it happen! It doesn’t have to be complicated or a big commitment, sometimes all it takes is a great idea and someone to get the ball rolling.
We can help communicate activities to the chorus and support where appropriate, but they don’t all need to be Board-organised events. This is our community, and everyone can help shape what happens within it.
And looking ahead to 2027…
We’re also exploring the possibility of having another chorus weekend retreat in 2027.
Nothing has been decided yet, but we’d love to know whether there are members interested in helping us explore and potentially organise it. Ideally, we’d like to find two volunteers who would be interested in working together on this, with support from the Board.
Want to help with something else?
Volunteering doesn’t have to be limited to the things listed above. If you have a skill, an idea, or simply some time you’d like to contribute, come and talk to us.
The more of us who get involved, the more we can do together.
Taking a break
We are changing the rules around taking a break. At this moment 14 members are taking breaks, and to maintain our chorus numbers we have invited 14 new members. This of course provides a risk of an overcrowded chorus in the future and we feel it’s become too easy to say you’re taking a break, when you might already know you won’t return.
Over the past few months we’ve compared our rule with many other choruses and we’ve found we’re very lenient.
Therefore the new rules are: only a break of 6 months is allowed, so half a season. And to maintain your spot in the chorus: you will have to pay 50% of that half season membership fee. If you can’t rejoin after your 6 month break, you’ll have to join the waiting list again.
If there’s special (personal or medical) circumstances involved, the board may decide to deviate from these new rules.
Members who have just taken a break will be informed of our new rules and offered a compromise.
Membership fee
Our chorus has a sound financial basis and we aim to keep it that way. Our budgeting principle is that we want the regular activities (rehearsals, talent shows, new member introduction) and any small performances during the year to be budget neutral. This means that the membership fees, subsidies and donations should be able to pay for the costs for instructions, rent, sheet music and other recurring expenses.
The large shows and events (such as a weekend retreat) are budgeted separately, and need to be self-funding.
Over the last two seasons, the membership fees didn’t fully cover the regular costs. We had to rely on the profit made from the large shows to fund our regular activities. This worked well up to now, but we also want to investigate reducing the ticket price for our summershow, and making a profit from our shows is not guaranteed.
The Board decided to increase the membership fees for a half season to €200 (this is €10 per rehearsal) for chorus members and dancers, and to €80 for Nexus members.
We have also looked at membership fees of comparable choruses, and the new fee remains in line with what similar organisations charge. As usual, we’re supporting any member who wants to discuss a payment arrangement. We also invite members who can afford to pay a bit extra to donate.
We will soon share the payment details via a separate online post. One post for the membership fee and another one for donations.
Ways of Communication
We’re making some changes to how we communicate within the chorus. Our goal is simple: make information easier to find, reduce messages getting lost, and give everyone a clearer idea of where to post and where to look.
To help with this, we’re introducing a new structure for our WhatsApp communication.
From now on, all important posts and updates will continue to be available on our website, as usual, but an announcement will also be shared via WhatsApp.
Instead of having different conversations and information mixed together, we’ll have dedicated WhatsApp groups for different purposes:
Announcements – This group will stay focused on all important updates and information that should not get lost between conversations. Only the Board, AT, Joost and Rafael will have access to post here.
General Chat – This group is for everyday chorus conversations, questions, recommendations and anything else you’d like to share with the community.
Photos & Videos – A dedicated place for sharing photos and videos from rehearsals, performances, events and other chorus moments. This will also help our social media team to quickly take content and post further.
Social & Events – This group is for social activities, meet-ups, birthdays and events happening in and around our community. A place where you can share events or organise together events as a chorus family.
Volunteer Support – This is only for volunteers who are available to help us with any opportunities with shows, events, projects and other chorus activities. This is an optional group where you can join if you want to be considered as a volunteer. The board and AT will use this group to coordinate with volunteers for any events.
We’ll be making these changes in WhatsApp over the coming days, so keep an eye out for the new groups and structure!
What about Signal?
We know that there has previously been interest in moving our chorus-wide communication from WhatsApp to Signal, and we recognise that Signal is already widely used within the chorus, including for voice-group communication.
For now, however, we have decided to continue using WhatsApp for our main chorus-wide communication.
Our main consideration has been how effectively we can organise communication for a community of our size. As part of the new structure, we want to clearly separate announcements, general conversation, photos and videos, social activities and volunteering, while keeping these spaces easy to manage and navigate. Based on our current communication needs and the functionality available to us, we believe WhatsApp provides the most practical solution for introducing this structure at this time.
We also recognise that some members prefer Signal because of privacy considerations and concerns around Meta. At the same time, the chorus currently uses Meta platforms such as Instagram and Facebook extensively for our external communication and marketing. Our relationship with Meta platforms is therefore a broader topic than the choice of messaging app alone.
Our immediate priority is to improve how information is communicated and organised across the chorus. This is not a permanent decision against Signal. Once the new structure has been in use for some time, we can review how well it is working and reconsider the platform if another solution better meets the chorus’s needs.
Updated files and calendar
We’re making a couple of changes to make accessing chorus resources easier and more reliable from this season.
Fileshare
We're moving away from the Wix File Share. We've found it can be slow and unreliable, and the Google Drive interface should provide a much better experience.
We'll provide access to the Drive with the same email address that you used to sign in to Wix - you don't need to request access separately. You’ll receive an email invite once your email address is registered.
Once you’re in, you can easily access the files:
On your phone: through the Google Drive app, or directly in your browser.
On your laptop/computer: through your browser – we recommend bookmarking the Drive folder for quick access.
You don’t need a Gmail address, access will be linked to the email address registered with us.
If you don’t want your email address added to the Drive, please let Ray know by 2nd September to opt out. If you opt out, you’ll need to arrange access to music files and other documents through another chorus member.
Calendar
The calendar displayed through the Wix site has unfortunately been unreliable, so we recommend accessing the underlying public Google Calendar directly
Instructions for adding the calendar to your mobile device can be found here:
If you have trouble accessing either the Drive or calendar, please contact Ray.
We hope these updates will help us start the new season with clearer communication, a strong foundation and more opportunities for everyone to get involved.
We’re really looking forward to starting this new chapter together and seeing you all again on September 2!
Thank you for the very comprehensive update! Very clear.
Impressive update! The link to the Code of Conduct currently points to the Photo section.
Keep up the good work! 👍