Verbier is falling far short of funding target
mainThe Kickstarter for Verbier Summer Music Camp 21 has raised just 11% of its target, a mere $3,916 in 25 days.
There are six days to go and the $35,000 goal seems a distant mirage.
Lessons to be learned?
1 Verbier’s in Switzerland. It’s not Third World. The money’s there for the taking. Nobody believes it’s in need.
2 Kickstarter is for individual human causes, not institutions.
3 Don’t start a summer camp unless you can finance it. The only outcome is a lot of disappointed kids.
A Kickstarter campaign from a big institution just smacks of laziness. Corporate and foundation money is not that hard to raise when you’re pitching youth programs and education. Get out there and pound the pavement, Verbier!
These are the Verbier Festival sponsors. I find it extremely hard to believe that they would have trouble coughing up another $35K in one of the richest countries in the world.
http://www.verbierfestival.com/support-us/sponsors-and-partners/
Why should Verbier pay for these kids, the Verbier festival already rapes all the summer funding??
The guys running the camps make an absolute fortune from running kids camps (Tax free I understand “Education”.)
If you want to send your kid to one of the most expensive places in Switzerland then pay for it, lets be honest these kids don’t come from council housing!!
The problem with the Verbier Festival is that it is perceived, and it actually is, an extremely elitist festival and they project an attitude that they don’t need money. I have heard many say, and I sadly agree, that the Verbier Festival is an outdated festival, from an earlier time and doesn’t really have much relevance in today’s world and is definitely not representative of what is really going on in the arts and music sectors, neither financially, nor artistically. As long as they remain aloof, arrogant and invite the same bling bling artists year after year, the younger generation and others won’t come and they certainly won’t open their pockets and contribute to this sort of pretentious and elitist operation.
If it were only $35k received out of a $350k goal, or that would be a better cause for alarm. A single donor could write a check at least for the roughly $30k that’s still needed and that’s probably what will happen.
Each year The Verbier Festival spends around 2.5 million Swiss Francs on its learning programmes, including the Music Camp. Our Camp offers 56 young musicians coming from all over the world the chance to take part in an advanced level youth orchestra, and to spend an unforgettable month in the Swiss Alps. The project costs 700,000 CHF and the crowdfunding target represents only 5% of the overall amount. The crowdfunding campaign’s aim is threefold: 1- to encourage participants, their friends, families and online communities to get involved and be a part of the adventure; 2 – to give participants the tools to raise funds for their own projects in the future; and 3- to experience a sense of teamwork before arriving In Verbier. In the end, the real value in this exercise is the acquisition of tools and values, which we hope will impact our participants positively and long-term. So what if the Music Camp falls short of its target? Our participants were engaged and pro-active. And of course best of all, they will return home after their Verbier experience with a deep sense of accomplishment and a lifetime of memories.