[Accrs] 2018 Fair attendance and donations

[Alameda County Central Railroad Society]

If we add 10-20% to our head count for what we don't count at the back 
door, our attendance will look better.  I think I did that the last year 
I was president at least for what I reported to them.


Gary


On 7/10/2018 7:31 PM, Alameda County Central Railroad Society wrote:
> Message From: Becky and John Kolberg  bjkolberg at aol.com
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> 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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>
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