[Accrs] 2018 Fair attendance and donations

[Alameda County Central Railroad Society]

Another alternative is to put a camera on the back door such that the front
door hotseat person can watch both. Mounting a TV above the door would mean
one person having a field of vision of both doors at once.

I agree the vendors have decreased visibility. The booths are so tightly
packed around the door you just cannot see it. There's a long cable running
from the top of our door out to pavilion canopy structure. Placing a large
long banner on this cable with an arrow pointing back to the door should
allow for much better visibility should the fair allow it.

On Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 9:14 PM Alameda County Central Railroad Society <
accrs at mail.accrs.org> wrote:

> Message From: Paula Bursley  pbursley at comcast.net
>
>
>
> 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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