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Pride: An open reply
Written by Gavin McGuren & Daniel Smith
Tuesday, 19 January 2010 06:52
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Pride Treasurer Andrew Baietta’s open letter in the January edition of Out in Perth raised concerns about the effect that events staged by GAYinWA have on the performance of Pride events. We understand that we are not alone in being blamed by Mr Baietta for Pride’s financial woes – in a comment left on one of our blogs, he blames his fellow committee members as well. That said, we can only answer for ourselves and given that Out in Perth does not have a letters page or a forum for community members to discuss issues, our reply takes the form of this post. Given that Out in Perth did not give us the opportunity to include a response to Mr Baietta’s letter, which was disappointing (but not surprising), given the highly targeted comments in the letter and the questions Mr Baietta raises about our motives and integrity, we provide the following as a response. Interestingly, nobody from the Pride committee has ever raised concern over our events with us, nor have they ever knocked back the cheques we have handed them for funds raised at our events, which they have even been known to attend and request free drinks at from time to time.
That said, we understand that we might be an easy target if committee members are seeking someone else to blame for the more than $70,000 turnaround in Pride’s financial performance in 2009, with the organisation set to record a loss of approximately $35,000 (subject to audit). We understand that we are not popular in some sections of the community for questioning the relevance and future of the Pride Parade, but we don’t shy away from leading a debate that has to be had. If Mr Baietta read our discussion paper closely, he will have noted that we believe that the Parade needs to continue because of the important role it plays for young people in our community. However, we believe that a change of format is necessary if the long-term decline in participant and spectator numbers is to be arrested. Interestingly enough, the options we ourselves raised for the future of the parade were clearly discussed at the recent Pride forum, and reported as "news" in Out in Perth. In his letter, Mr Baietta refers to our observations that Parade spectator and participant numbers have declined over time. He uses his own observation that Parade participant numbers increased slightly in 2009 (on the back of free entry in the Parade’s 20th year) and dismisses our views, and the views of many within the community, that the Parade needs to change. In addition, his comments potentially lead readers to conclude that by expressing these views about the Parade, we are seeking to undermine Pride events to the benefit of events that we stage. In effect, Mr Baietta is seeking to discredit the discussion we are leading about the Parade by discrediting us. Mr Baietta raises questions about whether life members of Pride WA should be permitted to stage events that he contends compete with Pride events and make it harder for Pride to make ends meet. This is consistent with a comment he left on one of our blogs a few days ago, in which he says that it is “appalling” that we stage events. We would be interested in the views of our readers on this topic. But first, we would like to give you a little bit of background on GAYinWA, because we feel that we are sometimes unfairly misrepresented. GAYinWA was started in September 2006 as a news web site. At the time, there was no regularly published LGBT newspaper in Perth, with Out in Perth not having been published for months. GAYinWA was incorporated as a small business with five individual shareholders including: Gavin McGuren, who was a co-founder of Pride, Gay & Lesbian Equality and WA's first gay newspaper, the Westside Observer (forerunner to Out in Perth), which he edited for 13 years; Daniel Smith, a former long time committee member and co-president of Pride WA, Fiona Wong, a former long-time Pride WA committee member and volunteer and Nigel Etherington, a long time community photo-journalist. Both Gavin and Daniel are Pride life members. None of us is employed by GAYinWA and we effectively work as volunteers within our own business. Throughout 2007, we focused on developing our web site and we realised some revenue through online advertising. Heading into 2008, we decided to stage events and made a conscious decision to stage all of our events well clear of the Pride Festival, so as to offer our community opportunities to be entertained and to socialise throughout the year and so as not to compete with Pride events. We also made a conscious decision that we would contribute part proceeds from all of our events to local community groups.
In March 2008, we launched Love All at Loton Park Tennis Club, which was an outdoor food and music event. In its debut year, this event did not make a profit, but GAYinWA donated $1,000 to Loton Park. In April 2008, we launched the GlamFest Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in partnership with Melbourne Queer Film Festival. In its debut year, GlamFest performed well and we were able to donate $1,265 to Gay & Lesbian Community Services (GLCS). In October 2008, we staged the Great Gay & Lesbian Debate as a part of the Pride Festival and were able to donate $700 to the GLBTI Retirement Association (GRAI). In December 2008, we staged Christmas deLuxe at Luxe Bar and we donated $900 to Pride WA. In January 2009, we sponsored the play Vincent and we donated a further $700 to Pride WA. In February 2009, we again staged Love All at Loton Park and, despite attendances increasing, the event again did not make a profit. However, given Loton Park’s precarious financial position at the time, we donated $3,000 to Loton Park. In April 2009, we again staged GlamFest and we again raised more than $1,200 for GLCS. In July, we launched the Cocktails & Girls cocktails night for lesbians and their friends, with Laura Foster (initially as a one-off event) and we have raised more than $1,500 for cancer research, as well as donating a further $300 to Pride WA. In October, we again staged the Great Gay & Lesbian Debate, with GRAI raising about $1,000. And, in December 2009, we staged Christmas deluxe again, raising $500 for GLCS. In December 2008, we launched WAX Magazine in partnership with Evolution Publishing. Unfortunately, it was the wrong time to launch a magazine and, given all the work we were putting into our events, we over-committed ourselves and we had to make the difficult decision to discontinue this venture. Going forward, we have a summertime debate scheduled for 21st February, which will also raise funds for a local community group, GlamFest scheduled for April and we are soon to make some announcements regarding Love All. Because we are a business and not a community group, we understand that it is easy for people to point the finger at us and question our motives. (Interestingly the motives of other business, gay and straight, that target the community are not questioned.) Given we are spending a lot of time talking about Pride’s financial performance, we are quite happy to share ours with the community as well. Since our establishment in 2006, we have made a loss of approximately $10,000 and the donations we have given to community groups, including Pride WA, have come out of our own pockets. Unlike Pride, we are a business and, as such, we are not eligible to receive the more than $65,000 in local and State Government funding that Pride receives to underwrite its core events. We have to earn every dollar we spend and we have to watch our expenses. This is the first time that we have shared this information with the community because we haven’t viewed it as being important – it is our way of making a contribution to the community. However, given that we are now accused by Pride’s Treasurer of staging events that damage the performance of Pride’s events and of doing this for “self gain” we feel the discussion needs to be balanced with this information. It is also worth noting that we have never received a thankyou letter from Pride for the contributions we have made. We have also received negligible coverage of our numerous donations to local community groups in Out in Perth, with this perhaps contributing to the fact that the reality of GAYinWA is somewhat different to the perception of some.
So... Pride suffered a turnaround in its financial performance of $70,000 in 2009 and recorded a loss of about $35,000. Given Pride achieved new sponsorship of $4,000 from Heathway in 2009 and achieved savings of $6,000 by changing the way it performed its book-keeping and administrative functions, the deterioration in the financial performance of Pride’s events in 2009 is more like $80,000. Given the amount of space Mr Baietta dedicated in his open letter to the impact of Pride life members staging events, you would think that this was the main factor behind Pride’s problems. While the claim is not supported by the comments of either Pride co-president, we can understand the logic behind Mr Baietta thinking that Cocktails & Girls may impact on Pride’s monthly Women’s Sundowner. However, we think it patronising and ludicrous if Mr Baietta thinks that Perth lesbians, numbering apparently just a few hundred, only leave the house once a month or that all lesbians like hanging out with only other lesbians and attending the same venue. Plus, given Pride’s women’s sundowner historically only raises about $600 a month, we find it difficult to believe that the total impact of Cocktails & Girls, or the three times the Pride committee changed the sundowner's venue in 2009, could amount to much more than $1,000 – a tiny fraction of Pride’s financial deterioration. It is similarly ludicrous if Mr Baietta thinks that GAYinWA staging Love All in February damages Fairday in September, or GAYinWA staging GlamFest in April damages the Pride film festival in October. In fact, in his comments on our blogs, Mr Baietta has not yet acknowledged that, in the year that GlamFest debuted at Astor Cinemas, Pride staged its most successful and well attended film festival ever, just six months later, at Cinema Paradiso, with Kieran Bycroft putting together an amazing programme. In a comment on one of our recent blogs, Mr Baietta refers to our donations to Pride as “token.” It might be true that our total cash donation of $1,900 in 2009 might be small when compared with the $70,000 deterioration in Pride’s net revenue in 2009 or its $35,000 loss. However, we think our contribution significant, particularly when you consider we also made a loss during that time and when you consider that the only business to donate more cash to Pride WA during the same period was Connections Nightclub. In fact, V-Energy’s sponsorship in 2008, the loss of which Pride attributed much of its ills to in the recent Sunday Times article, amounted to only $3,000. Token indeed. In his open letter, Mr Baietta implies that GAYinWA should not stage the events we currently stage and that this will help Pride with its financial problems. Absolute nonsense. Should the WA AIDS Council cancel StyleAID because Pride now stages a Ball, or Sunset Coasters discontinue, because Pride has resurrected Fruits in Suits? Of course they shouldn’t – and nor should we stop doing what we are doing simply because Pride has had a bad year and made poor decisions. In the upcoming community forum and Pride Annual General Meeting, we will be happy to address GAYinWA’s role in the community. However, we hope this discussion isn’t used as a distraction from the real questions, such as why 1,000 people abandoned Fairday last year, why 500 people less people attended the party, why Pride realised a $70,000 deterioration in net revenue in just one year and what format the Parade should take in the future. We will also assume that, if GAYinWA, as a business that is a net contributor to Pride WA, is to be subject to such scrutiny, then we will also have an open and frank discussion about those businesses that are net beneficiaries of Pride WA and the events it stages. Our experience, both during the time we served on Pride committees and sub-committees, and during the time that others have done the heavy lifting, is that Pride is at its best when it focuses on its core events. Historically, in the years that Pride returns a profit, the committee of the day has prioritised working hard to ensure Fairday, the Parade and the Party are all successes. In the years that it has returned losses, it has often been because committees have become overambitious, often with good intentions, and committed to new events and expenditure. Our view is that Pride has a bright future if it listens to the community, reshapes its core events to make them more reflective of contemporary community needs and then focuses on those events, without getting distracted. With Pride rarely having a committee that is more than half full, it is ridiculous for anyone to claim the answer to its problems is for other organisations to stop staging events and for Pride to become the only organiser of events for LGBT Western Australians. People and organisations with the resources, passion, ideas and energy to stage new events for our community should be welcomed and supported, not criticised - particularly if they are willing to take on the financial risk themselves and especially when they are willing to donate their profits to local community groups. Have we got it wrong?
Comments (23)
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And when such articles are written, who wants to volunteer to run Pride?
I think it's a justifiable question to ask who should benefit if Pride does go under...
You've both been on the Pride committee, and both made mistakes during your tenures (as have I).
So why don't we all try to make it a less personal and bitchy and focus on the point raised in the final paragraph of your last blog (if anyone was still reading...)
That the current Pride model of volunteers and values is not working, and the members need to discuss the possibilities for a new one.