Red River Revel partnered with LSUS to grow stronger, reach new audiences

Red River Revel partnered with LSUS to grow stronger, reach new audiences

This Saturday, Red River Revel, the largest music festival in North Louisiana, kicks off with Jefferson Starship as its opening headliner. Festival Executive Director Logan Lewis says the nine-day celebration of the arts has grown bigger and better over the past year thanks to a capacity-building program offered by LSU Shreveport's Institute for Nonprofit Administration and Research, or INAR, which provides training and research-based support for Louisiana's more than 22,000 nonprofits.

Why did you choose to work with INAR?

As nonprofit leaders with minimal staff, we're usually in a position of constant overload-all the things-and it can be hard to come to grips with some of the challenges we face. So, any opportunity to grow is great. I learned about INAR's program, applied and they accepted me.

What did you do as part of the program?

Through the program, I met some of the best nonprofit leaders in the community. We had weekly sessions, met with our assigned mentors on a regular basis and then worked on individual research projects where we really had to dig into solutions to a particular challenge we were having. At the end, we presented our research to each other, and I learned just as much or more from the others as I did from my own project, which was about finding the best possible software solution to manage our volunteer and donor relationships. Volunteers and donors matter immensely to us since we're a nonprofit with only two staff members. We're almost entirely volunteer run and led.

What did you learn?

We needed to invest in technology. Many of the free side things and cheaper solutions nonprofits go for, just because they don't cost anything, mean you end up doing much more work yourself and spinning your wheels and starting from scratch instead of building capacity over time.

Our fundraising platform and how we used to manage our volunteer database just lived in spreadsheets. We were using software I used back in high school, which was like 25 years ago. But thanks to INAR, we turned in something like a Model T and got a Lamborghini. It has completely changed the game for us.

What do you see as long-lasting impacts on the festival?

Red River Revel has been around since 1976, so it has a lot of great foundational structure, but a lot of people don't realize we're a nonprofit. They think because we're a big festival that we've got all kinds of money, but the reality is that 100 percent of our income goes back into programming. Meanwhile, the festival benefits the community to the tune of $5 million in economic impact over the course of just nine days.

Something INAR helped us with is clearer communication on who we are and what we do. When you enjoy and support our festival, you're also supporting a fourth-grade field trip program, an arts education program. You're funding an opportunity for 100 artists to do what they do for a living and 12 other nonprofit organizations-our food vendors-who use the festival as a fundraiser for themselves. There are so many ways Red River Revel branches out, and we certainly are focused on trying to tell that story better now.

Another big thing for nonprofits is how we structure our boards. I think, roles within the organization and a clear understanding of what everybody's lane is, that's something that's not talked about enough. You want each member of your board to bring something different to the table that you would have to pay for services for otherwise. You need someone who represents wealth, someone who represents the legal system. You need an eager beaver. It's like building an ultimate team, and working with INAR opened my mind to a higher order of thinking about how we do that.

This fall, Red River Revel will be one of 15 nonprofit organizations to pilot a new research-based tool developed by INAR-an economic impact calculator specifically for nonprofits. The tool considers the social return on nonprofit investment and the value of volunteer hours, mission-oriented contributions and more. The capacity-building cohort Lewis was part of last year was funded through a grant from the Carolyn W. and Charles T. Beaird Family Foundation.