Volunteer Board of Directors Member

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SKILLS DESIRED

The Hollywood Fringe Festival is actively searching for board candidates that possess depth of experience and perspective in the following skill areas:

• Foundation and Institutional fund-raising
• Employment, Entertainment, and Non-Profit Law
• Organizational Development
• Marketing, brand-building, and public relations
• Corporate Sponsorships

ORGANIZATION INFORMATION

The Hollywood Fringe Festival was founded in 2008 with the mission of lowering the barriers to emerging artists self-producing their work in Los Angeles. Core objectives were to foster a strong community around the performing arts, to train the next generation of performing arts producers, to revitalize the Hollywood neighborhood as an epicenter for the arts, and to build a modern web-based platform to facilitate interactions between producers and venues.

The inaugural festival in 2010 saw nearly 200 productions stage over 800 performances and sell 17,000 tickets, an overwhelming response from the arts community. Over the intervening years, the festival has seen tremendous growth: in 2017, 375 productions staged over 2,000 performances, and sold 65,000 tickets. Over those years the Fringe, which passes along 100% of ticket sales to the artists, has provided over 2.3 million dollars in revenue to artists, many of whom are staging self-produced work for the first time.

Starting in 2016, and supported in part by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fringe Scholarships now provide free registration and performance space to artists who diversify the pool of producers at the festival. Our ten 2017 recipients were selected by a panel of Fringe stakeholders from 151 applications.

Since its inception the organization has produced a series of events in the lead-up to each festival to aid the success of Fringe productions. This season included 3 workshops on the creative process for new works, a panel of Fringe venue representatives covering venue relationships, 3 Town Hall meetings detailing festival procedures, and 3 workshops with past festival success stories sharing tips on marketing, press interaction, theatrical design, and more. In addition, the weekly networking meetups at local businesses which started in late-march will saw attendance by over 1,000 participating artists.

EXPECTATIONS

All board members are expected to serve the best interests of The Hollywood Fringe Festival with a minimum board term of two (2) years. The Board’s primary responsibility is to ensure sound business decisions, fiscal responsibility, and operational success. The board provides guidance in the following areas (directly or by way of committees):

Fundraising and donor cultivation

Organizational leadership and direction

Goal-Setting and evaluation

Approval of annual operating budget

Risk management

Building partnerships and networking

Marketing and public relations

Special event planning

Board members are asked to attend quarterly meetings and participate in at least one committee. Board meetings generally occur during the first week of February, May, September, and December during normal business hours.

Board meetings are held via video conference. Board members are expected to participate in a give/get of $1,000 annually, and the organization's goal is to scale up the give/get over the next few fiscal years.