what's it all about? (in a nutshell) sorry about the knees. me too! for me, getting older really bites!.
getting old really bites, but it beats the alternative, eh?
Our State Tourism Dept. has set aside 1 million dollars to be doled out to touriam entities, consorteums and associations in the form of matching funds grants. Depending on your size and type of organization the categories are 50% matc ot 33% match. The grants are reviewed and graded on set standards, by peers, and the funding an entity is awarded is doled out each quarter upon submission of a form and cancelled checks.
The program does need tweaking, but I am just glad for this recognition by the state, in the form of money, to the folks who actually bring in the tourists and their dollars. We work hard for it, and we deserve it!
Thats in in a very small shell.
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Not to brag - but I must. WV is put down sooo much.
We have a Matching Advertising Partnership Program (MAPP) that is 2 categories. Projects of up to $10,000 (must have a partner) can get reimbursed up to 75% ($7500 max) of the total project. This project must be pre-approved before the start of the project. MABB qualifies as an assoc and we use it to print our Directories. 60% of the output of these grants if brochures must go to the State (and everything has the State Tourism logo in the proscribed place and in the proscribed color) and is distributed to all the Welcome Centers.
Large Projects - anything over $10k - is a 50/50 reimbursement. Also pre-approved but these are by the Tourism Commission, not the Division grants people and can (and do) go into millions of dollars.
There is another fund of up to $5000 (50/50) for Fairs & Festivals.
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gillumhouse said:
Not to brag - but I must. WV is put down sooo much.
Okay I have to ask this, is WV put down now? Where are you seeing that or hearing that? Is that a thing of the past? I never hear anything negative about WV at all, and in fact, I read only good things about it in the WA Post and NY Times etc.
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We are usually #49 or 50 on Lists of Bests and # 1 or 2 on lists of Worsts (smoking, obesity, etc). Abercrombie & Fitch comes out with T-shirts with negative phrases. It happens so often that I do not pay too much attention these days. There was something just a couple weeks ago that was a slam. I do not retain a lot of this because I am old and only have so many brain cells left. We were dissed by a band at a Bowl game a few years ago when we played Virginia - Tech I think - anyway, the offending university will never allow that again. As a small State with a small population and not a lot of wealth in the population (we are rich in natural resources that are mostly owned by out-of-State companies who do little reinvestment in the State and historically even less than now), we are an easy target.
When the Media wants to portray WV, they usually go to the deepest hollow and look for the most pathetic looking shack to interview the bib-overalled, butt-scratchin', gap-toothed, no-limbs-on-ther family-tree BUBBA and his wife, scraggley-haired, pregnant, toothless Witless Wanda.
Was there a lot of publicity about how the people of this State held drives for funds and materials for clean-up for the floods we had a month ago? About how by the time FEMA set up and a disaster area was declared (2 weeks after the event) volunteers from all over the State and the WV National Guard had been there cleaning things up - truck-loads of bottled water, mops, buckets, pallets of bleach, food, etc "flooding in" from all over the State.
Tourism manages to get good articles about us, but the Media in general seem to prefer to keep WV, KY, MS especially as examples of pathetic poor...
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