Sacramento Pride Festival 2023: Massive Growth and Success
Type of Event: Annual Non-profit Pride Parade and Festival
Attendance: 22,000+
Venue: Downtown Sacramento (outdoor)
Affiliations: InterPride Member
Overview:
Sacramento Pride, put on by the Sacramento LGBTQ Community Center and led by Pride and Event Director Collin Lourenco, saw a slower than desired rebound in 2022 after going on hiatus during Covid and with only a 90-day ramp up time ahead of the event. As such, the org had a lofty ambition to greatly expand their festival footprint and fundraising results in 2023. They saw EventHub as a key piece in their technology platform to accomplish this. EventHub’s interactive event mapping, management tool-suite for streamlining parade entries and festival vendors and sponsors, and marketplace did not disappoint, as the SacPride Festival team leveraged it to add nearly 100 vendor booths, and tens of thousands of dollars in partnership revenue, to their 2023 program.
Key Takeaways:
- Doubled their number of vendors, adding nearly 100 booths in 2023, the majority of whom came from EventHub’s sponsorship marketplace. This brought in tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue.
- Streamlined workflows and registration around vendor applications and parade entries with EventHub’s tool-suite, saving a ton of management time.
- Utilized EventHub’s interactive mapping to plan out their festival footprint, assign booths, and provide attendees with a mobile-friendly and accessible digital map.
The Challenge
After a short production cycle and slower than desired rebound in 2022, the SacPride Festival team had an ambitious goal to drastically expand their festival vendor footprint and resulting vendor fees for 2023. They needed to do this with largely the same size of team as their 2022 event, and with minimal budget allocated for additional resources.
EventHub Result and Core Benefits:
Festival Vendor and Sponsor Management Streamlined
EventHub greatly streamlined the process of fielding hundreds of SacPride Festival vendor applications, residual payments, and required documents for the event organizer, and also simplified the application and requirements process for festival vendors. Management tools utilized included online applications with credit card payments, a paperwork packet module with easy review and approvals, built-in eSignature for contracts, and logistics messaging for festival load-in/load-out communcations. It also included being able to easily offer vendors add-ons such as electric, ice, and equipment rental options.
The vendor side of the platform, where they can pay, view and complete required paperwork, and purchase additional add-ons takes the mobile-friendly form of an easy checklist that checks off requirements as they are completed. The group emailing and messaging includes smart tags to pull in vendor-specific logistics info. In addition, vendors from previous years or who have applied to any other event on can autofill most of their application info, which is saved in their free EventHub account profile. Sacramento Pride used these tools to double the size of their vendor population while spending less time managing vendors versus the previous year.
Parade Entry Management Streamlined
Managing parade entries, a central piece of Pride programming, was transformed by EventHub’s parade management tools. Similar to the outlined vendor workflows, interested parade entries are able to easily create an application, complete required paperwork, make payments, and receive the lineup info through EventHub.
Interactive Maps: Built by EventHub, Updated by the Organizer, Enjoyed by Attendees
The introduction of interactive maps was a game-changer for festival production planning and event execution processes. EventHub’s team took a static map of the downtown area and turned it into a to-scale, interactive, and editable floor plan. Once built and delivered, the map was editable by the organizers for both layout changes and space assignments. Vendors were able to submit their top 3 preferred placements within their applications. Closer to the festival fate, assigning booth spaces to 200 vendors was done in a curated and mindful way in less than a few hours. The event was also savvy in how they made the public version of the maps available to attendees. They provided QR codes to attendees, linking to a mobile-friendly public map and vendor directory that could be used to browse and navigate the event. This helped to boost foot traffic across the festival footprint, also promoted vendors digitally versus only their physical onsite presence.
Results and Conclusion
The results of integrating EventHub’s technology were unmistakable. The event saw a major boost in revenue through doubling vendor booths from 100 to 200, while creating a smoother parade entry experience and more accessible resources for attendees. Despite the increased volume of business, the platform saved a large amount of the time spent managing vendors in previous years. The mapping made layout changes and space assignments easily, while the marketplace led to SacPride Festival forming relationships with dozens of new partners, who found them through EventHub’s marketplace.
For more info about EventHub’s capabilities and request a demo CLICK HERE.
For more information about Sacramento Pride visit sacramentopride.org.
Featured Customer
Collin Lourenco, Pride and Event Director
