2017-012-Laughing Horse Arts-Jazz in the Valley

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Partnered with the Downtown Association to have businesses decorate and display Jazz Saxophones in their windows as part of a promotional.Downtown Businesses ..Every year Fitterer's entire corner window features decorations elaborating a Jazz theme (based on our poster)during the month of July. Businesses with Reader .Display our dates throughout the month of JulyBoards JIV has for many years provided Festival Tickets to local non-profitNon-Profit Organizations organizations to aid in their fundraising efforts We also commit a page of our brochure to events happening in downtown EIIensburg that weekend. 6.Please explain what plans exist to allow this project to become self-sustaining.Include any plans for ticket sales,event sponsors,and other cost-recovery models. Over the past 19 years we have accumulated enough cash reserves that if there was a disaster we could still put on a festival.One of our goals from the beginning of this festival was to bring out-of-towners into our community during the middle of summer when business can be slow.We have worked hard to provide a quality product that is affordable.The festival actively requests support through community donations (in-kind and monetary)and from ticket sales to the general public.Being an all-volunteer organization,we also depend on community members for our work force.We have around 200 volunteers every year who buy their own tickets but provide the manpower to help set up/take down the venues,monitor the venues for ticket holders,train and serve in the beer garden,and sell our merchandise in the Box Office.The only people we pay are the Box office managers during the Festival,the Security officers and those involved with delivering the outstanding music. There are two reasons the governing board of JIV has avoided "branding"the festival with corporate festival sponsors for 19 years: •Believing that the emphasis should be on the community and the music. •Not wanting to depend on corporate whims which have doomed more than one festival of our genre when their support was withdrawn. The last three years we have seen our expenditures exceed our revenues.We will be reevaluating our marketing strategies along with discussions on the impact of increasing our ticket prices. 7.Additional information:Provide any additional information which will assist the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee in evaluating your project and its benefit to tourism.Please limit any additional written information to one page and any other additional attachments to 3 pages.Regardless of how much additional information is included,only 3 pages will be provided to reviewers. The Jazz Board consists of 28 volunteers who donate countless hours of their time throughout the year to develop and promote the festival.Per your request,we asked the Board members to estimate their time commitment during the year.There are about 175-200 other volunteers who contribute their time the week before and during weekend of the festival (see Exhibit C for the estimated $value).The festival has no paid staff other than limited ticket booth staffing during the festival,security officers,and the musicians along with the sound techs. This will be our 20th year offering the festival and every year festival board members have done informal surveys of the restaurants and motels and have received information from them that this is one of the best weekends they have during the year.We hope to do more thorough studies in the future,with the help of the Visitor's Center which (we think)will confirm the anecdotal information. Application Questions Page 6