YAC is changing up the way it does Membership!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
July 16th, 2015

Your Arts Council, Cornwall & the Counties is going through some changes, redefining itself to better serve the community. YAC membership is changing!

Cornwall, ON – Your Arts Council, Cornwall & the Counties (YAC) is redefining the way they do membership. Betty Healey, Chairperson for the board council, explains: “We have struggled with this issue since our very beginning. We wanted to be completely inclusive, offering our services to the community as a whole, but responsible governance dictated we needed to ensure our sustainability through core-funding initiatives like membership fees. We are not happy with how these fees, as modest as they have been for an individual membership, have isolated us from a large portion of our potential membership who either can’t or won’t pay membership fees. So, we’re getting rid of them. As of today, anyone can sign up for a YAC membership and it is absolutely free.”

Betty went on to explain how the new funding model will work. “We’ve always had user fees, and we’ll still have them for individual projects. There will be user fees associated with many of our events, workshops, mentoring, and grant-writing activities, but none of that is new. Basically, if you need an individualized service that uses our personnel or resources, there may be a user fee. We anticipate recovering 10% of our operating budget through user-pay fees, so we’re not talking about big amounts here. Some of our funding will come from project and core-funding grants, and the balance we hope to raise online through crowdfundng.”

“In summary, anyone who wants to become a member of YAC can sign up at any time and at no cost. Pick the ‘Become A YAC Member’ link on the main page of our website, or you can call or write us and we’ll send you a form. Anyone who wants to support us financially can do so independently of membership with payment(s) they set up and control as they wish just by clicking the ‘Donate’ link on our website. We’ll also be looking to corporations and groups who can sponsor us at a variety of tiered sponsorship levels. The higher the tier selected, the more prevalent their brand will be on our communications, website, advertising and event communications materials.“

For more information please contact:

Richard Salem, Facilitator,
Your Arts Council, Cornwall & the Counties,
1-888-405-7922
richard@yourartscouncil.ca
youartscouncil.ca

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Your Arts Council, Cornwall & the Counties, in cooperation with the Seeker Newspaper, is launching a new SD&G Art Calendar of Events.

Cornwall, ON – Your Arts Council, Cornwall & the Counties (YAC) is launching a new initiative to publicize Art Events happening in Cornwall & the Counties and Akwesasne. Richard Salem, Facilitator for YAC, outlined the initiative as this: “We’ve partnered with the wonderful people at the Seeker to publish a once-a-month, full-page, full-colour calendar of art-related events happening anywhere in Cornwall & the Counties and Akwesasne. Anyone with an art event happening that month can advertise it FREE OF CHARGE (for now) in our calendar. We will publish the page in the first Seeker issue of every month, usually the first Friday. Submissions must be received in digital form (we can help if that’s an issue) no later than the Monday before publication, as we’ll need time to assemble the page. The size of the individual ads will depend on the number of submissions received, but the plan is for business-card sized allotments of space to each event. These are ‘teaser’ adds, so a heading, dates and contact are all that is required. Inclusion on the calendar page will be on a first-come, first-served basis, so get your announcement to us as soon as you can. Images can be included, but please keep in mind the size of the final ad and set your images and font heights accordingly. Our first page comes out for August, which means we’ll need your stuff by July 27th.”

For more information please contact:

Richard Salem, Facilitator,
Your Arts Council, Cornwall & the Counties,
1-888-405-7922
richard@yourartscouncil.ca

 

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