[Ansteorra] RE: Event Income

[C. L. Ward]

Several posts said things along the lines of:
>Also, the loss of income is an issue.  For
>the larger Baronies, it's not such a concern.
>They have events that host several hundred
>people and can fill their group's coffers
>at a single event.  Often, for the smaller
>groups, there is no hugely attended event to
>cover the entire year's expenditures.
>Although not terribly likely, what if a
>small group's event is washed out the day
>before?  What if something unforseen happens
>and the event must be cancelled?  That group
>will now have NO substantial income for
>the entire year.  It my be rare that it happens,
>but, it could, conceivably,
>result in the folding of a local group.

My reply to all of those posts is, "Chicken Little! Chicken Little, the sky
is falling in!"

The reason why I say that is that the SCA, and more especially, individual
groups, including baronies, didn't used to have the astronomical bank
accounts we now have and take for granted.

I recall many years ago in Bjornsborg when we passed the hat at our baronial
meeting in order to raise enough "front money" to do an event, and then we
counted upon the gate receipts to cover the expenses. I also recall when
having $35.00 (not three hundred and fifty, or three and a half thousand)
was what we considered a propsperous bank account.

Amazing as it seems today for groups that are used to just writing
several-hundred-dollar checks for event expenses, it is in fact possible to
go out, really check out your local community, drum up donations for bread
and other food, meeting spaces, event locations and so forth.

I'll certainly agree that having a fat wallet makes all this easier, but it
is not essential.  And, in fact, if you have to go out and canvass local
businesses looking for one or two who will make a donation to write off on
their taxes in order to be able to put on an event, there is a second
positive effect and that is that many people get exposed to the whole idea
of the SCA that would not otherwise have known about it, and this can be
useful in terms of community relations, membership, etc.

Unless we end up with a limitaion of no more than *one* event per weekend in
the kingdom, there are going to be conflicts.  That's the way it is.  I
suspect that small groups are in fact harmed more than helped by having
multiple events each year, because you still have other events sucking off
your attendance no matter how many you put on, but I don't *know* that for
sure.

Whether or not that's the case, when there were fewer groups and fewer
events in the kingdom (back when rocks were soft), I think each event *felt*
more special. We had fewer chances to see our friends and to play the game
that is so obviously special to us.  I can see a couple of ways to get back
to that: limiting events so there are no conflicts at all; splitting up into
two or more smaller kingdoms; and probably many others.

What Ansteorrans as a group need to decide is:  "why do we hold events?"  --
if it's just to make money to so that we can hold more events later, then
we're rats on a treadmill.  If the reason is to create really cool places
and occasions in which we can, if only for a few minutes, enjoy sharing
knowledge and our imaginations, then I would suggest that we need to
investigate how we can get to more quality, if less quantity.

I urge the folks who have a knee-jerk reaction that "less events means I
and/or my group are discriminated against" to really look at the total
attendance at your groups events over the last 5 years.  Are they going up?
Going down?  How about attendance at *all* events for a year, over a 5-year
period?  Before you start trying to fix it, see if it in fact broke.  Next
step is to figure out, if your attendance is down, then *why* exactly is it
down?  Can you prove it was a conflicting event? Or was it that your event
was too lackluster to draw more people?  Or you had a catastrophic disaster
(floods, for example) that prevented attendance?  We *have* to look at all
those factors.  The SCA now *does* have more money per group than we used
to.  If were were for-profit businesses, we'd be stupid not to look at what
our customers wanted, and why business was not growing vs. declining.
Guessing is worthless, and the only vote that counts is how many customers
pay you to attend your event.

::GUNNVOR::