How to Get Money for Your Club Part II

Putting on a gourd festival costs money.  In Part I it was revealed that each city and/or municipality creates a specific tax fund generated from hotels in their city.   This fund is commonly known as “lodging tax.”  Some areas may refer to this money as occupancy tax, hotel tax, or something else – going forward we will be referring to this money as lodging tax.  The great thing about lodging tax, is that the money in that fund may only be used for tourist related facilities, marketing, and/or events.

Going forward we are going to look at some steps on how to get that money.

I don’t want to create any false hope – since we are already into 2018 – it is more than likely you won’t be able to get funding for an event happening in 2018.  Likely, the money for 2018 events was awarded in 2017.

THAT’S OK –

We are going to put you and your club in a position to be able to “win” some of that grant money for the 2019 grant cycle – but you need to start planning now, and do your homework.

STEP 1 – SHOW YOUR WORTH

Somewhere in the application you are going to want to show two things:

• Total Attendees
• Total Roomnights

Now most of your festivals have a fairly detailed registration process, so coming up with total attendees shouldn’t be too much of an issue. DO NOT EMBELLISH.  Just state the facts.  If you have a registration for classes that is separate from actually attendees, try and get an accurate account – and avoid counting people twice.

In regards to total roomnights – You and your team need to may need to do a little extra work to get this information.

DO THIS

• At your festival registration desk have your guests answer these three questions:
  • Did you travel more than 50 miles to attend?
  • Are you using overnight accommodations?
  • How many nights

That’s all the info you need to compile – it doesn’t matter if it was a 5-Star Resort, or “mom and pop” inn.  Your group just needs to know how many people over all stayed overnight.

You may need to create an incentive to get people to complete the brief questionnaire.  A great easy way is to simply enter each response into a raffle and give away an item.

When you are calculating hotel accommodations – remember you are calculating “room nights” and not hotel stays.  For example, let’s say you have a two day festival, and 50 people are staying both nights.

You’ve generated 100 room nights

50 People X 2 Nights = 100 Rooms Nights.

You won’t need to worry about how many people were in the room or what they paid.

At a bare minimum you want to be showing at least 10 room nights, 50 is average, and 200 and above is very good.  At the end of the day, you definitely want to be able to “show your work” and leave no doubt as to the fact that your festival causes people to stay overnight in your town.

Again – It is important not to overstate these facts.  The committee reviewing these applications have a strong sense of what is embellishment, and what is fact – it’s simply not worth the risk to be on the wrong side of honesty.

Remember, your target audience (politicians and lodging professionals) are used to seeing these kinds of numbers, and speaking from experience – if you can show these numbers, and you were diligent about doing your homework, you will greatly enhance your chances of being rewarded money.

STEP 2 – PREPARE A BUDGET

You need to have a good budget that you can submit.  The budget shows the committee two things

• Your organization and festival are legit, and that you aren’t “winging” it.
• What you plan to spend the grant dollars on

As with overnight stays – be truthful with the data you submit.

Make sure it is clear with:

• Any Income your festival generates
  • Membership Dues
  • Registration Dues
  • Vendor Fees
  • Admission Fees
  • Other
  • Lodging Tax Grant*
• Expenses
  • Event Hall Rental
  • Speaker Fees
  • Other
  • Advertising/Marketing
  • Lodging Tax Ask*

*See Step 3

Use your current year’s festival as a guideline.  It is ok if your festival shows a profit – in fact it gives legitimacy to your event.  Don’t fall into the trap thinking that it is better to seem “desperate” for the money.  The committee will want to fund proven events/festival with a high level of success.  Showing you can operate without a loss is one way to do that.

If your association/society is putting together a festival for the first time – that’s fine too, but do you homework and find out what those expenses are going to run, and how you plan to run an event/festival that won’t constantly need assistance.  When you are looking at what your attendance numbers might be, call around other societies, and see what kind of attendance they are generating.  Use the American Gourd Association website as a resource to contact other associations.

STEP 3 – What’s Your “Ask?” and Why

At your next club meeting – ask your group – what do we want to do in 2019 that we aren’t doing now?

• Perhaps you want to bring in a great keynote speaker/teacher?
• Perhaps you want to rent additional space to have a trade show?
• Perhaps you just want to increase your attendance to recoup costs?
• Maybe this is your first year and you need the funding just to get your event up and running?

All of the above are great ideas and all of the above still fall within the guidelines for being awarded lodging tax dollars.

Whatever your “ask” is, you will want to detail how the amount you are requesting for, will pay for it.  Ideally your “ask” should have some sort of cost recovery component built into it.  Or put another way – a return on investment.

For example, – let’s say you want to add Bonnie Gibson as a key note speaker/lecturer and it will cost $5,000 (to be clear I’m just throwing numbers out there I don’t know what fees Ms. Gibson has for travel/lectures/teaching)

So now going back to Step 2 with the budget you can see that you want to have your income from the potential grant offset the “ask” in your expense.

In your narrative (or wherever it makes the most sense in the application) you want to show why whatever you are asking for will be good both for your event, and the good of the city.

Now we can tie Steps 1-3 together and you come up with something like this:

In the past our <Insert State> Gourd Festival has had over 500 visitors over two days.  Based on the data we collected during registration and at the event – we have found that at least 50 attendees stayed two nights of the festival at local hotels generating 100 rooms nights.  With the addition of Bonnie Gibson, who is a national renowned gourd expert and author, we are expecting our attendance to go up to 750 and an extra 30 room nights.  We plan on recouping some of the costs with the increased attendance/registration fees, but also holding an exclusive book signing, wine tasting event with Ms. Gibson the night before.  This will be a ticketed event that will generate $X.00.

Starting with the steps above will equip you with the information you’ll need to complete a successful grant application.  I would encourage you to complete the steps even if you don’t think you’ll be asking for funding, if for no other reason – you may learn more about your festival and your impact than you though you knew.