Invigorate Your Local Economy with a Festival

A festival, either one-time or annual, can provide the kind of economic stimulus required to perk up a lagging economy. You want your event both to circulate cash within your community and bring in cash from outside. You also want to generate goodwill and community spirit throughout the process. A successful and well-planned event engenders community pride and will leave fond memories with visitors, encouraging them to come back again. Making your event into a money-maker will require planning for that to happen, though.

Sometimes, selling your community leaders on the idea of a festival or event may be difficult. Often community leaders worry about how much work this is going to be and how much it will cost for initial outlay. Therefore, before presenting your idea to any type of planning organization, get all of your ducks in a row and have a proposal outlined with benefits stressed, a variety of ideas ready to put forth and some individuals and organizations at the ready to provide much of the work. YOUR prior planning will make the difference in whether the event gets off the planning room floor. Have current estimates ready for extra costs such as lighting, trash removal and security so there are no unpleasant surprises. Your tentative budget should show what you will charge each group or activity to cover their share of the set costs.

First, tie your event into something either historical to your town or state, or a holiday where people expect festivals. If necessary, make up a reason to celebrate that will become identified with your town-there's no reason a good storyteller couldn't invent a reason to celebrate Purple Possum Day. A community clean-up day in preparation for a festival can get home-owners enthused, particularly if there's a contest for best decorating theme in conjunction with the event.

Free admission is a solid key to making money, as people who would balk at spending outright to attend will often spend a lot more on activities and food. Make sure you point out the opportunity for holiday sales and specials to add economic interest, coupons printed for local restaurant meal specials in neighboring town newspapers to draw from adjoining communities, having a contest for the largest extended family in attendance(with more out-of-town visitors) or those whose relatives came the farthest.

Extending your event over a week-end can maximize return for local lodging and restaurants-which will be providing special meal-deals and can coordinate coupons with local hotels. Planning adult evening events encourages out-of-towners to stay over. Events such as antique car shows, softball tournaments and specialty swap-shops will bring in visitors from miles away to spend the entire week-end and provide economic stimulus to all types of businesses.

A parade is nearly mandatory for any type of community involvement. With enough lead-time, the local dollar store can stock up on crepe paper, balloons and foil streamers for decorating kids' bikes and specialty floats. Most areas of the country have small mom and pop carnival companies who will provide kiddies rides and games and possibly food wagons and will pay a small fee for the opportunity. What parent can deny their child the opportunity to enjoy pick-a-duck or the circus train? Setting up a ticket-a-ride percentage system can allow the sponsoring organization to recoup costs for lighting, police protection and event insurance. Just make sure you aren't funneling so much money off the top that the ride operator doesn't have any profits to pay for his time, maintenance and costs.

Many non-profit and service organizations earn a large part of their operating funds with activities such as chicken bar-b-ques and casino nights. It is perfectly legitimate to require a fee for allowing the privilege of making cash at your event. That way, you make your operating costs and the service group has the money necessary to do good works in your community throughout the year. In other cases, you may wish to trade their free participation for clean-up detail after the event. It will be your job as organiser to assure that there are not too many food booths or activities in direct competition to each other. Everyone has a need to make enough to cover their costs and time invested. Overbooking similar vendors will simply assure none of them are happy and they probably wont come back next year. If the local Lion's Club Chicken Bar-B-Que is the main food attraction, other food concessions should be concentrated on things like Ice Cream or Desserts or specialy drinks so the two compliment each other.

Local crafters will welcome the chance to sell their hand-crafted items for a small table fee-and they can provide their own table. If yours is a semi-rural area, an antique farm equipment show will be a big draw for the elderly rural folk-and many may have old-time skills such as sheep shearing they would like to demonstrate. These demonstrations have the power to draw spectators from larger cities if properly advertised. These spectators may come for the free activity but few leave without spending something.

Make sure you contract locally for everything possible: a local business that stands to generate a profit from either providing a service or participating in the event will be far more cooperative and generous when asked to chip in. Utilize a local print shop for flyers, advertise in your local paper, and buy supplies and food products from your local supermarkets and stores. They'll be happy to special-order specific items and will likely give you a discount.

The money-making opportunities are endless. Your plan is that no one will spend a huge amount of money, but that everyone will spend a little money. The major money benefit will not be simply to the festival organizers but to the community both directly from the event and in the future.