[Accrs] 2018 Fair attendance and donations

[Alameda County Central Railroad Society]

I was out of town all week, so this is my first opportunity to comment 
and I said basically the same thing in the e-mail I just sent.

Gary


On 7/10/2018 8:35 PM, Alameda County Central Railroad Society wrote:
> Message From: Paula Bursley  pbursley at comcast.net
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> 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.
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> Paula
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>> On Jul 10, 2018, at 7:31 PM, Alameda County Central Railroad Society 
>> <accrs at mail.accrs.org <mailto:accrs at mail.accrs.org>> wrote:
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>> Message From: Becky and John Kolberg bjkolberg at aol.com 
>> <mailto: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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