Two-Year Operating Support Grant

The Northern Lights Music Festival has been highly dependent on two types of funding sources: Project funding from Minnesota State Arts Board and the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council; and Earned Income from tuition and ticket sales. This funding is not dependable from year to year and sometimes requires the organization to strain its administration to accomplish tasks which are not central to its mission. By increasing our budget to allow us to pay for operating expenses, which includes: Increased Staff Hours, and technical/website maintenance costs, we can run a more efficient operation. Our goals are to identify and seek grants from new corporate funding sources; to dedicate more staff time to maintaining our website; and to increase the hours and the pay of our Business Manager. Outcomes should result in increased, broad-based corporate funding; a frequently updated website; better internal scheduling during the festival season; better maintenance and currency of financial information, and better financial reporting to our funding entities. Measurable outcomes of this grant would include: 1. Increases in salary for the Business Manager; 2. Frequency of website updates; 3. improvement in financial reporting to the board and external funders. The salary of the Business Manager is based on hourly wages; this increase would be implemented with the awarding of the grant. The website overseer would be asked to maintain accurate records of website changes and content, and report to the Artistic Director. A more sophisticated financial reporting system that would be more specific in costs for each of our activities would be available to the board and to external funders on a monthly basis. The Business Manager would submit these reports to the Treasurer, President and Artistic Director monthly.