What about the EPSC 2017 Riga Event Fund-Raising?

 

We learned alot!

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When Amara Graps learned in March 2016 that Riga won a 2017 EPSC bid, she had only 1.5 years to both 1) fund-raise and

2) implement the four-country, Eastern Europe, multi-level engagement with the space workers and Centenary cultural groups in those countries (FI, EE, LV, LT). To her surprise, the 'winning' of the EPSC to Riga included 0 funds from all of the involved local and international organizations for the local financial support of the EPSC 2017 Riga. There were no allocated funds at the European level (Europlanet) even for telecommunication software, email list communication or file sharing with her colleagues in 4 countries. She had to pay that herself. The 'Lessons Learned' part of her Report  explains more.

 

So she did what she knows best as a scientist: wrote proposals to government agencies. That led to the involvement of the government: Latvian Investment Agency (LIAA) for implementing the Latvian space exhibits and their large role in the Space Facilities booklet. LIAA did an excellent job implementing both. But for reasons she still doesn't understand, LIAA could not pay the creator (Graps) of the Latvian space informational materials, which LIAA used to implement their parts. So she went on to a new (to her) fund-raising: event sponsorship and crowd-funding.

 

Event Sponsorship. We had 'in-kind sponsors' implementing their paid parts (nearly 200 people), but we needed to also support the primary person and entity who developed and was managing the fifteen parts, so we built a mini-event sponsorship business.

 

Amara at Baltics in Space priced the conference assets (i.e. columns and walls and roll-ups) in the Radisson Blu Latvija and the cost of providing branding with a variety of advertising means (USB thumb drive, pens, ...) She gathered prices for making those branded items from Riga vendors, and she costed them with an elaborate spreadsheet. Then she wrote a Sponsorship Guide for companies with those calculated prices. She gained one sponsor: Planetary Science Institute (PSI) as a 'Terrestrial Sponsor'. PSI's director and Graps wrote all of the largest aerospace companies they knew, including SpaceX. No luck. After communication with the Baltics' largest bank: Swedbank, they learned that they were too late. For sponsorship, the companies need at least one year in advance. Graps' sponsorship efforts occurred after her government proposals were written and won, leaving her only half a year to engage the local companies. Apologies to those companies which would have liked to have been involved.  We would have liked you to be involved too.

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Crowd-funding. As there was a clear interest amongst Graps' international and local colleagues and friends to support her and the Baltic space workers, she ran two crowd funding campaigns in FundRazr in the Spring of 2017, where 53 international people donated (total about 3K). She made three movies to tell the community the stories of the Baltic space workers. See the list of people Graps thanked at the end of her EPSC Opening speech:  starting @ 1:05:00 The crowdfunding results was the most supportive of Graps' 10-month effort, without it, she would have quit. Thank you to all of you individual Baltic space enthusiasts who provided that important financial and moral support.

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Finally, we'd like to give a special thanks to the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Their management of the conference floor exhibits was superb and their additional 3K donation was a critical one. They understood the (lack of) financial support of the  EPSC 2017 LOC situation more than anyone. A heartfelt thanks to FMI from Amara and Baltics in Space.
 

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