New subject: Ideas for revenue BEYOND the door entry price (Winston, Alan P.)

4 Dec 2018

Alan,
Actually Amweek last year applied for a CDSS grant to help us cover scholarships and the
change in registration pricing for last year.  
We went from $700/person to a sliding scale and we were not sure that we would get enough
full & over-paying folks to cover the lower-income folks and scholarships. 
We were able to use the funds to bring in a new to the scene band that has grown in leaps
and bounds over the past year & half and will be the band for our NY Eve dance this
year. 

Claire Takemori (also BACDS dancer, caller, organizer, cat herder) 

On Dec 4, 2018, at 1:11 PM, organizers-request(a)lists.sharedweight.net wrote:

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Today's Topics:

  1. Re: Ideas for revenue BEYOND the door entry price
     (Winston, Alan P.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2018 20:17:53 +0000
From: "Winston, Alan P." &lt;winston(a)slac.stanford.edu&gt;
To: &quot;organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&quot;
	&lt;organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt;
Subject: Re: [Organizers] Ideas for revenue BEYOND the door entry
	price
Message-ID: &lt;1fe10a73-16b7-4643-f29a-068300982101(a)slac.stanford.edu&gt;
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Bay Area Country Dance Society:

- Offers various levels of membership with no additional perks beyond the entry-level (and
that perk is a $2 discount on admission to regular dances, but given that we also have a
"pay what you can" option at those dances you don't really save any money on
buying a membership).

- On the membership form there's also an opportunity to donate for targeted funds, eg
youth scholarships, need-based scholarships.  (Youth scholarship money then goes to get
under-30 people to our camps and weekends, in hopes of encouraging a new generation of
contra and English dancers.)

- As a 501c3 gifts are tax-deductible, and we've occasionally been given something and
had an employer match it.  We don't have a development division and we don't
solicit donations or being named in wills, but sometimes people give us money anyway.

- We're working on  implementation, but people have tried to give us money through
Amazon Smile (where a percentage of your purchases goes to your designated nonprofit
recipient if they provide Amazon with routing numbers, etc) and we think we're going
to do that.  (I personally feel awkward soliciting people to give our dance organization
money through a specific mechanism that could be benefiting organizations that save
lives.)

- We hold three dance weeks (American Week, English Week / Hey Days, Family Week), one
contra weekend (Balance the Bay), one English Weekend (Fall Frolick).  The camps and the
English Weekend all have auctions which often include items like dance/tune compositions,
services (accordion serenade), crafts, and camper-made jams, etc.  The camps don't
always make money but the auctions make it likelier that they will, and when they do make
money it's usually enough to offset losses in other areas of the organization.  (When
a week-long residential camp tanks badly, it loses a lot of money.  A non-residential
weekend where food isn't provided has fixed costs (staff, sound, staff travel, rent)
which put a cap on how much you can lose and have potentially large upside once the fixed
costs are covered.)

- We sponsor a number of performance teams.  Many cover their expenses via member dues and
busking.  Mayfield Morris, when it was active, collected no dues but spent a lot of energy
on various fundraisers which enabled even less-flush team members to participate in team
trips to distant morris ales, England, etc.  The team ran an annual garage sale and a
series of  afternoon teas with entertainment.

We've never applied for a grant as far as I know.

Queer Contra would count the door money before the end of the evening and if they
weren't making rent or couldn't pay the band well enough they'd have an
announcement about the shortfall and pass the hat for more contributions, which worked out
satisfactorily as far as I know.

-- Alan

On 12/4/18 8:25 AM, Emily Addison via Organizers wrote:
Hi fellow shared weight organizers :)

Wearing my CDSS hat, I'm wondering ----> Does your dance have sources of revenue
BEYOND the door entry price???

A few great ideas were shared at the October CDSS Executive community meeting in Toronto
and we're looking for more! Do you have successful experience with:

 *   sponsorships (individual/company/other)
 *   grants
 *   donations (collected at the dance OR one-off/ongoing donor programs)
 *   other fundraising (e.g., pie/cake sales anyone?)
 *   membership
 *   merch ? that make money?
 *   special events ? that make money?
 *   other?

I'm pulling together a curated collection of success stories on this subject for CDSS
that will then be shared back out early in the new year. I would love to hear your ideas
and if you know of someone I should talk to about this, please let me know.

Thanks!
Emily
PS -  I asked shared weight about posters/flyers last month and so wanted to update you
that that collection will be available in January.  I'm just waiting on a few more
contributions.

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Re: [Organizers] Ideas for revenue BEYOND the door entry price (Winston, Alan P.)