RAISING MONEY for Loopers Delight

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Rick Walker here.

Please forgive me for jumping protocol and starting a new thread
about the subject of donations to keep Loopers Delight alive
but I feel compelled to send a strong message to the community
based on my past experiences raising money for events, festivals and
organizations over the years.

Like lots of relatively anarchic digests (thanks, Kim for your vision 
here), there have been a lot of suggestions made and
everyone has come from the heart (which is very important to acknolwedge)
Unfortunately, there are many contradictory ideas and some are coming 
from a well meaning but somewhat naive place.

There are enough contradictory ideas that it's getting hard to sort 
through or achieve consensus
on this extremely important subject.  

So, from a position of considerable experience on this subject I wanted to
post a few comments and make a suggestion for a good way to proceed (to 
save Loopers Delight, financially).


ABOUT RAISING MONEY:

A few things I've discovered:

1) contrary to popular belief,  benefit CDs , no matter how wonderful 
and heartfelt,
are NOT worth the effort and don't make money (unless you are on the 'We 
Are The World'
scale) Period, Point. Dot.   They also require a lot of energy on the 
part of the people trying to
put these things together.  Ask anyone who has led a CT Collective CD 
project.

2)  Benefit concerts do NOT make money (unless you are on the 'FarmAid' 
scale).

Additionally, though many generous people here for whom I am personally 
grateful,  are willing to commit to paid subscriptions
(I being one of them), 

I STRONGLY URGE THAT WE  DO NOT ADOPT a PAID SUBSCRIPTION policy
because it will have a deleterious effect on newcomers to our community

<okay, so much for the negative critiques, Rick, what's your solution>


I've found it is far more effective to have DONATION DRIVES periodically,
when funds are needed.   

It raises a lot more money than subscriptions do and subscriptions will 
definitely
limit access by newbies to this community..............even 30 day trial 
memberships
are off putting to people who are just trying to lightly discover this 
world.

I've found that when people feel that a beloved institution is in 
danger,  they really do open their
hearts more and they give far greater quantities of money than they 
would normally with
a subscription service.   Additionally,  drives are a lot easier to 
maintain by the people organizing them
and require much less work than ongoing subscriptions services, which , 
again, don't raise nearly
as much money.

The potential for having a deleterious effect on newbies to our 
community is a vital reason
why not to adopt a subscription policy.

I've produced very large live looping festivals for over ten years now 
and I
never would have joined this community had Loopers Delight been a 
subscription
based website.........again,  even a free trial membership website.

I think it is vitally important that we reach out to people who have 
never been here
before.   It is going to be one of the great strengths of our community 
to reach
out to new artists, young and old.      I just think of how quickly 
artists like
Sjaak Overgauw and Ricky Graham, to just mention a couple of notable 
standouts
became very positive and pro-active members of our community as newbies 
in recent years.



The important thing is that we all work with Violet to figure out when a 
donation drive is
necessary and put it on in a timely fashion to meet the needs of the 
website.

This is my strong advice to the list.

respectfully, to all the people who have contributed to the discussion 
so far,

Rick Walker
Y2K Live Looping Festivals