The Gilroy Downtown Business Association is working to whittle away a $5,000 shortfall in its budget for fiscal year 2012-2013.
“It’s not uncommon for us to move through the year at a deficit,” explained GDBA President James Suner. “It’s routine for things like this to happen.”
The annual operating fund is roughly $70,000 according to the GDBA budget, and comes from income generated by GDBA sponsored events. The $50,000 to pay the winner of the upcoming “Gilroy Shark Tank” competition in June, which aims to get a brand new business into downtown, will come from a totally separate fund, Suner clarified.
The purpose of the GDBA is to create a unique and vibrant downtown that stimulates economic growth via advocacy and marketing, according to its website.
Melanie Corona is GDBA’s coordinator and marketing strategist tasked with getting more people to come to downtown events, which would in turn raise the association’s profits. Corona uses a variety of electronic methods to spread the word about upcoming GDBA events – such as email blasts through the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce, marketing databases and Facebook – but she wants to increase the impact of more traditional communication methods.
“I want to engage more families in attending events,” said Corona, who works 20 hours a week in her part-time job at the GDBA. “I’m reaching out to schools and other organizations.”
At Tuesday night’s GDBA board meeting, other ideas were tossed around for everyone to evaluate. This included the creation of a paid GDBA membership that would entitle members to be premier sponsors for GDBA events, and asking local car dealers to be sponsors for the upcoming Car Show in July.
“We are a creative board,” Suner said. “There are no such things as bad ideas.”
While breaking even this year is looking more than likely, Suner anticipates the board can come up with some new angles to generate additional revenue for GDBA’s coffers. The main goal of GDBA is to plough profits back into events that will ultimately benefit Gilroy’s downtown, he reiterated.
“If there’s a windfall,” Suner promised, “we’ll figure out how to spend it.”
