It’s that time of year again.
The ASUO Fall Street Faire, the ASUO’s largest fundraiser held annually in October and May, starts Wednesday.
The ASUO makes money by charging vendors rent for each day of the street faire, requiring a higher rate for food booths, as they typically make more, and less for not-for-profit booths. This year the ASUO looks to make more than last year by charging for services they previously offered for free.
“Usually it makes about $6,000 per faire,” said events coordinator Amelie Rousseau. “This year, our goal is around $8,000 because we are now charging vendors a parking pass if they need to use parking, whereas the ASUO used to provide that. This is our only fundraising event, currently.”
This year, the ASUO also revamped the system for vendor applications, aiming for a smoother running process.
“(Vendors) used to pay along with their application the full amount, and then if they didn’t get accepted we’d have to give them refunds, but the refund process is just a ton of bureaucratic work,” Rousseau said. “We switched it so that they just pay a $5 application fee, and they send in their payment after they’ve been accepted.”
The goal, Rousseau said, is that the change will alleviate the headache that comes from dealing with a new events coordinator each year. The faire has been an ASUO fundraiser on campus for “at least 30 years,” she said.
“Every year it’s a new coordinator, so that’s a little bit of a struggle for vendors sometimes, but we try to keep really good logs on everything we do, every step, so that we can make the process really smooth.”
Last year’s street faire was marred by threats of a lawsuit from vegan bakery Divine Cupcake. E-mails sent between the bakery and the ASUO suggest that the ASUO offered the company a lower rate but failed to return a check written for a booth at a higher rate, eventually depositing both.
A subsequent letter threatening the lawsuit sent from Divine Cupcake owner Thaddeus Moore to an ASUO adviser indicates that the company then wrote a check to pay for a booth in the spring street faire. However, Moore accused the ASUO of depositing the check despite not granting Divine Cupcake a booth at the fair, something University lawyers subsequently acknowledged was true.
The matter was finally settled when University lawyers reimbursed the company for the $485 its owners said they were owed.
“I don’t know all of the details,” Rousseau said of the Divine Cupcake incident. “They said they hadn’t gotten back their refund. The conflict — neither side knew what was happening.”
Since the incident, Rousseau said she has not encountered any conflicts involving money.
“We have avoided it; we haven’t had any money conflicts whatsoever,” she said.
Joe Peck, manager at Paul’s Bicycle Way of Life, has been coming to the street faire for more than seven years, and said he is generally pleased with the way that the event is run.
“It’s one of those things that we’ve just always done,” he said. “For the most part I think they’re doing a pretty good job. It’s quite an undertaking to organize that many people into a fairly compact area and keep everything running smoothly. Overall, I think it goes about as well as can be expected.”
He said the event is an important one for local businesses.
“We think that it’s really important to stay represented to the University students,” he said. “Because the student population turns over pretty regularly, we think it’s important to be there so that people know that we’re here.”
The new parking fee was not a deterrent for Peck. He said Paul’s simply opted out of using a parking space.
“We’re going to use bicycles to bring the stuff in this year as opposed to our delivery van, which is what we used in the past,” he said.
Also in the works is a fundraising event for the winter so that the ASUO will be able to raise funds in every term of the academic year. Details have yet to be determined.
“We are definitely actively looking for more sources of fundraising,” Rousseau said.
“We’re pretty much gathering a bunch of ideas right now,” said Andrew Moreland, fundraising coordinator, whose sole job is to find new sources of revenue.
The funds produced by the street faire and the potential winter event will not help
relieve the $400,000 deficit that the ASUO faces because of an accounting error in the 2008-09 school year.
“Because the deficit is (student fee)-based, we can’t directly fundraise for the deficit,” Moreland said. “The fundraising is to help offset projects that would be (undertaken using) fee money.”
New to this year’s faire is the popular new local restaurant Off The Waffle, a henna tattoo booth, a furniture store and a tarot card reader.
“I really went based on menus; I really tried to get them to describe in detail what they are selling so we could get a really good diverse number of artisans and services,” Rousseau said. “It’s a balance between making money and also what’s going to benefit the students the most in those three days.”
At a glance
- What: ASUO Street Faire
- Where: East 13th Avenue on campus
- When: Wednesday through Friday
