If we host it, we hope you will come
Ruff! Ruff! We are hosting the first Bigfork Beagle Community
Fair on Saturday, May 20 bat the new VFW Hall across from Harvest Foods
. We decided to do this because we enjoy self-inflicted pain and distractions and we want our little newspaper to become a bigger part of the community.
First, let me answer the questions we have so far been asked the most: When and where? The answers are, we don’t yet know for sure. We think the hours will be from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. and we have three venues we hope will host but we haven’t nailed that down yet.
Our first choice would be the new VFW building across Highway 35 from Harvest Foods and VFW Commander Ed Byrne thinks the renovations will be done by then.
There are countless details to work out but so far the community has been very supportive and enthusiastic.
After listening to many local businesses, we got the idea to host a simple career fair where they could recruit long-term trainees or employees for well-paid trade jobs between Missoula and Kalispell right before summer when things go crazy around here.
But as we spoke to businesses, vendors, performers, churches, nonprofits, charities, service organizations and clubs, we decided to expand the fair to be a chance for community members who might not cross paths to enjoy a day together, find jobs, enjoy services and wares, and generally have a nice get together just before the ides of summer descend upon us.
We Still Need Help! The thing we need first are businesses and other entities who want to sponsor a booth. If you are one of these, we will want a small fee so you can setup and try to recruit employees, show off your wares, attract new members, inform the community about your organization, or if you just want to raise your profile, enjoy the fair or make some money!
We hope to attract 30 or so of these agencies and we already have commitments from several. Beagle advertisers and Bigfork Business Professionals co-members will donate very little or nothing for a booth. We want to keep these donations low so we would really love to have a major cash sponsor or two to help with the overhead that comes along with an event like this.
We are signing up performers for our talent stage, which we don’t have and need a co-sponsor for. So far, we’ve booked three 30-minute shows but we need about 12.
We do have some co-sponsors who already jumped in: Kathy at Creative Expressions will provide volunteer staff and collectible T-Shirts. Larry’s Tractors will bring a big, orange Kioti tractor. The fire department will bring some big red shiny trucks. We hope the churches will rotate volunteers through a booth. There are many others who are on the fence but seem to want in.
We still need volunteers who will get a nifty Staff T-Shirt, performers, trash cans, vendors, and most importantly booth sponsors who can help pay for the overhead and provide a great community event we hope becomes an annual celebration for all of us.
If you want to get involved, please contact me at bigforkbeagle@gmail.com and make sure the word “FAIR” is in the subject line.
