[Accrs] 2018 Fair attendance and donations

[Alameda County Central Railroad Society]

The two new banners on the eve of the roof were supposed to be on larger 
one.  They didn't do as we asked.  Also took a picture of that area 
during the fair and sent it to Candice to show her how we disappear in 
tent city.  No response to date.

Gary


On 7/10/2018 9:38 PM, Alameda County Central Railroad Society wrote:
> Message From: Joel Clark  clark.joel.a at gmail.com
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> 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 <mailto:accrs at mail.accrs.org>> wrote:
>
>     Message From: Paula Bursley pbursley at comcast.net
>     <mailto:pbursley at comcast.net>
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>
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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.
>
>     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:
>>
>>     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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