TESTIMONIALS

HEAR IT FROM PAST VENUES!

Wild & Scenic On Tour has grown to over 90 locations nationwide since its conception in 2004. 80% of those venues are hosted by environmental organizations who have used the festival as a way to increase membership. See a complete list of all nonprofits in the Wild & Scenic Grassroots Network. They have experienced the value and ease of using Wild & Scenic On Tour’s turnkey format.  Hear what past tour venues have to say about hosting the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival and see why it is such an effective outreach tool.

Friends of Butte Creek – Chico, CA
“Our board realizes the value of the festival as a tremendous draw for members of our community who come for the films and leave as members/supporters of FBC and the environment.”

Friends of Casco Bay – Portland, ME
“The festival is an excellent ‘hook’ for reaching people who may not know about our work and for increasing our visibility in the greater Portland community through targeted outreach, an extensive PR campaign, and invitations to personal acquaintances and colleagues. We have been able to garner new members, volunteers, and supporters through this event. Perhaps more importantly, we have used the event as a membership‐recruiting opportunity simply by acquiring the names and contact information for future cultivation of these guests. Getting contact information of potential members can be the greatest obstacle an organization like ours faces in recruiting new supporters.”

Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance – Jackson, WY
“The Festival is a great membership tool because it attracts a more diverse set of community members than our traditional means of increasing membership like mailings, community forums, and advertising.  We are always looking for ways to engage the large number of twenty-somethings living in Jackson.  When we hosted the festival in 2008 we drew a significant number of attendees from this demographic, allowing us to solicit memberships from this hard-to-reach group in addition to other subsets of our community.”

Access Fund – Boulder, CO
“Driving membership through public events is one of the more successful ways to engage new members because AF staff can have more meaningful connections with non members through face-to-face conversation and interact.”

Vermont Natural Resource Council – Burlington, VT
“Wild & Scenic is becoming an established and well-known event in Burlington. Some of the keys to success? It’s fun! It’s an evening full of great films (and, therefore inspiration and motivation), we offer great good food, a stellar Silent Auction, good tunes and amazing networking opportunities.”

Tennessee River Gorge Trust – Knoxville, TN
“It brings together such a diverse group of individuals; you have a captive audience and a microphone…”

Yellow Dog Watershed partnership – Marquette, MI
“It was interesting that someone said to me that it looked like the same people that usually show up that attended the festival. When I looked at the sign up sheet, 60% were non-members. These were new people. I think finding additional ways to reach people will help us reach our goal of protection.”

Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project – Flagstaff, AZ
“The film festival allows us to specifically target new demographics of people and focus on citizens in our local community whose support is critical for the restoration of wolves in our region.”

Organization of the Assabet River – Maynard, MA
“This is the most amazing event we do! It creates a huge amount of publicity and visibility for our organization and brings the community together in an inspirational atmosphere. People begin to talk
about what they can do locally to help and this is good for our river and for the other special places in our communities.”

Greater Yellowstone Coalition – Pocatello, ID
“The films make environmentalism seem cool.  This is a hard thing to convince people of!  The films go a long way toward demonstrating the breadth of the environmental movement as well: they show fairly “normal” school teachers doing amazing things with kids, phenomenal skiers who care deeply about their sport and receding snow lines, young farmers who just went for it and started their own operations.  When people see this variety, there’s more of a chance that they will identify with one or more of the people and stories presented and think, “you know, I could do something like that too!”

Norwalk Seaport Association – Norwalk, CT
“The Wild & Scenic Film Festival has begun to reposition the image of the Norwalk Seaport Association in the public’s mind.  Once know mostly for our ferry service to Sheffield Island and hosting the Oyster Festival, people are beginning to understand and appreciate our environmental efforts and partnership with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System.  We receive a significant number of gracious     appreciations and thank you’s for not only hosting the Film Festival but for the work we are doing. It’s a fantastic feeling to know we are making a difference.”

Save our Sandhill Cranes – Sacramento, CA
“Wild & Scenic gave us an big, fun and sexy opportunity to attract some local reporters that are interested in coving the environment but had not previously been aware of the important work that we do. Much of the Smart Growth land-use and transportation planning policy work that we do is very complex and plays out over long periods of time—it is not easily consumed or understood, it is definitely not very fun, and does not lend itself to a quick news story…But Wild and Scenic on Tour hooked them. In these weeks after the festival, the media contacts we made have continued to contact me about our other upcoming campaigns and conservation efforts.”

Ventura Hillsides Conservancy – Ventura, CA
“We have held fundraisers but never a “friend”-raiser such as this.  We gained many new members and generated community interest and support for our organization. We can’t wait to do it again next year!”

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