pouët.net

A few at least but there are limits of what we can do. We can only donate/support other non-profit organizations with the same kind of „mission“ and even that is complicated over international borders. We do support other parties with our competition hardware and other equipment. We also financed the UNC series of parties and supporter others with things like free coffee but this is quite limited due to personal constraints.

Can you tell which?

can't even afford to make trips abroad these days, so only checked on this years ticket prices last week and yeah they feel quite steep. but then again, music festivals and other commercial events that last same amount of time do tend to cost even more.

unesco cultural heritage status could help some events get some cultural funds in places where there are some of those, but that's always a lottery to apply for those

Besides UNC which we did all financing for, our Compo hardware has been used at one point or another at basically all larger german demoparties (evoke, deadline, Nordlicht, underground conference), Outline, Mountainbytes, rewired, rsync and trsac. We help out scenesat with hardware and donations from time to time and brought free coffee to many parties (when we had leftovers from Revision).
I might forget things but that should be the bulk of it.

Yes these take time and energy and I, personally do not have the nerve and bite to do that at this point in time. I know others are working on that but the outcome is still unclear.

As people start to show theirs, I'll happily show mine as well (since they are mostly public anyway, as we're a charitable organisation). Especially since hard numbers might give people a better idea of how tight we are running our ships, and because accountings is FUN. Right? RIGHT?

MountainBytes 2024 (just think Euros instead of CHF, it's more or less the same):

Admin-Cost: 1.500 CHF
On-Site Cost incl. Rental: 13.000 CHF
Personnel Cost (Location Staff, etc): 5.000 CHF
Total Cost: 19.500 CHF

Cultural Funding and Sponsorships: 10.000 CHF
Donations and Membership Accruals: 3.000 CHF
Tickets, Merch and Bar: 6.500 CHF
Total Revenue: 19.500 CHF

This does not contain: ca. 630 hours of free labour from the orga team, plus all the stuff we tend to shop out of our own pocket. Applying minimum wage(ish), this makes roughly 15k in "imputed value creation" from the orga team - very important figure if you want to apply for public funding.

We are incredibly lucky that we've got quite the decent cultural support where we're at, most demoparties don't have this kind of support from their local governments.

This seems to be the best path forward.

I think a little transparency around this may motivate more supporters. I've bought supporter tickets for Revision a number of times, never really understanding if it made much difference. Still, I was happy to do it, and now I'll be even happier to do it next year :-)

We have been discussing this quite a few times - having kind of an at least pan-European head organisation that can reallocate funds.
However, here is your problem: I would somewhat say that this needs at least one full-time employee (for fundraising, book-keeping, reporting duties, outreach, etc). Makes - if we place them in Germany and would want to pay them a liveable wage - roundabout 100k€ in absorbed personnel cost (so including insurances, pension, travel and expenses, etc). As this would be too expensive, let's look somewhere else - placing them e.g. in Poland would still amount to roundabout 45k€.
So that money would immediately be gone, without any demoparty seeing it (you could have run two to three from that money).
And that's not even talking about the imminent drama when asking who gets what amount of help per year, as well as skewed expectations of what that fund is allowed to do/not do. You'd be walking an extremely fine line between "steer the scene by funding" and "sitting in an ivory tower". One way or the other, it would be a shit show for whomever is picking this up.

Public funding is something we're looking at, but just keep in mind that writing those applications is not exactly the kind of work volunteers just line up down to the street for, and it can get rather volatile depending on political circumstances. I have fun doing it, but I know that this is... a rather rare kink to have.

----

I actually want to applaud madame, styx and d.fox being brave and open about it, and by that also raising awareness to the situation for smaller parties - without naming names, this reflects very well what I've seen from most orgas across Europe; some 1k € in out-of-pocket spending for every core team member per year (plus travel and expenses for the party itself, per orga), and then some 3k here, 5k there in a tough year.

It's not sustainable, and something I'd be more than happy if more people want to lend helping hands in actually browsing applicable public tenders, network with foundations and handing in those applications.
I've spend quite some time building a documentation baseline for this, after applying our party successfully now a few times.

So yeah, reach out to me if you also love 200-page policy documents you need to carefully read before applying! \o/

This pan European initiative is a great idea. I know those things take time and all, but it sounds very promising.

Even if the fund might not be doable, just sharing the workload of party organising could benefits party organisers keep their sanity.

As for the orgas pouring their own money into an event, I wasn't aware of it, but it's obvious in retrospect. It's probably the thing everyone does of their own initiative without mentioning it.

I see it as a hobby and hobbies cost money. No need to make a big deal out of it as long as it is within (personal) reasonable limits. I’d rather spend my money for Revision than going race car driving it what other hobbies people have 🤣

/it/or

Everything has been said, but still:

Don't be reluctant on requesting a subsidized ticket. As someone who has handled this some years ago i can assure you: No one, except a few Organizers, will know about it, and basically no one will care. And "we" are (assuming its still like that :)) generally very generous with them - back then i didn't even know about a budget, or how many i should approve (that might have cost D.Fox some money), and it was generally not a big deal. Just be honest and ask.

And since everyone was posting their expenses: My Budget for Revision (or Breakpoint) in my Orga Days was usually around 500 to 800 bucks, including Train and sleeping on the Floor. More than i should have spent - but money doesn't mean a lot to me. Visiting last X probably cost me about 400 bucks, because i am crazy like that. I am not going to any other expensive events for that matter - or even vacation. What D.Fox said :)

It is still like that. I don’t think we ever rejected a request for a subsidized ticket apart from one person who wanted more money for getting piss drunk 🤣

yeah you need to have someone who has experience on how the system works inside the country or cultural funds, for larger events someone who works as a cultural producer could the kind of person needed for it. some organizations in finland hire a cultural producer to apply for funds which then are partly used to pay the salary for the producer and partly for organizing whatever the organization is doing.

there is also some eu wide cultural funds that i've been about to check out for way too many years, but still havent gotten to do it-.

Stick to the retro scene, we're so poor we can't even afford new computers. :) Entrance fees at parties in Sweden are usually a pittance, thanks to generous and idealist organizers. You might of course suddenly find yourself involved in running a compo, counting votes, carrying tables or vacuuming the party hall, but that's all part of the charm.

I remember ONE case, where the person didn't want to tell anything about himself or his situation, and basically demanded the cheaper ticket as if he had a right to get it. But yeah - no surprises there :)