For the love of music

From a comment posted about a recent blog about our long, last day at IBMA -
".....sounds like a labor of love."

That reminded me of comments that I heard during the week. During the World of Bluegrass trade conference, I was a presenter in a seminar on how to recruit, train, and retain volunteers for festivals. The other two presenters represented two BIG festivals, both of which I believe are for-profit festivals. NIBGA is a non-profit.

After the session, and for the rest of the week, many, many people came up to me and commented about how much they liked our system of volunteers. They commented that I was the only one on the panel that seemed enthusiastic about the music and festival, and that the others treated it as just another business venture. Their "volunteers" do it because of the perks. For some, that is the only way they could possibly afford to attend the festival. No matter how you look at it, they are volunteering their time, in exchange for a ticket, so that someone else can make a profit.

Everyone from the for-profit festivals were flabbergasted that we could put on a festival of such high caliber 100% by volunteers. Every person there, from the president of the association to the person that fixes the electric circuits, is a volunteer. Oh wait....the lady that cleans the toilets gets paid a small stipend - but would YOU volunteer to clean those toilets??!?! Didn't think so.

Our volunteers do it as a labor of love....for the love of the music. They know that Tri-State is run "by the people, for the people" (hmmmmm....that phrase sounds familiar). If we didn't have so many dedicated, conscientious, enthusiastic volunteers, we couldn't have a $25/weekend ticket price that is affordable to all. It all boils down to this....without our volunteers, we wouldn't have a festival! My hat is off to all of you!