[Accrs] 2018 Fair attendance and donations

[Alameda County Central Railroad Society]

Thanks for the great summary John.  I think we should make some assumptions about how many people are coming in through the back door and add those to our numbers.  If donations were 25% of the total, it would seem logical that 25% of the visitors came in through the back unless those entering the back door are more generous than those entering from the front.  So, I think we probably attracted more than 11% of fair attendance.  If we report numbers to the fair, I think we should take this into account and make an estimate of the visitors entering the back and add that on to the number we counted in front.  Next year we could put someone at the back door for an hour on random days and keep track of how many people enter while, at the same time, have another person keep track of those entering in the front for the same hour.  Then we can compare the two and come up with a percentage entering through the back door.  We can estimate total visitors that way.  Just a suggestion.

Paula





> On Jul 10, 2018, at 7:31 PM, Alameda County Central Railroad Society <accrs at mail.accrs.org> wrote:
> 
> Message From: Becky and John Kolberg  bjkolberg at aol.com
> 
> 
> 
> Well, the 2018 Alameda County Fair is in the can. 
>  
> A review of the statistics for donations reveals this year’s performance was second only to that of the year 2000, both in dollars and dollars per visitor.  I’ll give a quantitative report at the next business meeting.  Since the 2000 record, donations began a long period of decline that only began to improve in dollars four years ago and in $/visitor two years ago.  This year’s $/visitor was nineteen percent better than last year—a very significant improvement.  Such a change begs the question—Why? 
>  
> At the welcome desk I have heard speculation regarding this phenomenon of donation improvement, so I will add my opinions here.  This year the donations collected in the box at the back door were almost a quarter of all donations.  In contrast, the amount collected there in past years, when it was counted separately, was less than ten percent.  That in its self would account for about half of the donation improvement.  I believe there are two reasons for that increase: 1. the scavenger hunt, and  2. the big sign there drawing attention to the donation box.  In addition to the above, I believe the strong national economy has added discretionary spending money to the visitors.
>  
> Visitor attendance, on the other hand, was lack luster.  In the last ten years, it was the second lowest at 47,031.  It was only 144 more than last year.  Our busiest day this year had 3,970 visitors.  A few years ago, that many visitors in a single day was not unusual.  I believe the record was 6,258 set in 2015.  I called the Fair office today to get their attendance number.  Their preliminary number is 426,000+.  That puts our attendance at 11.0% of the Fair attendance—not a significant improvement.  I noticed that our percentage dropped two percentage points coincident with the placement of retail booths around our front door in 2016.  The opinion of the Fair personnel a couple years ago that the booths would improve our visibility has proved false.
> 
> John Kolberg
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