ScotiaBank Buskerfest, Toronto's highly successul street performer festival is coming back to town on August 23rd. For the fifth year running, Cityzen will be one of the event sponsors and we're really happy to be part of this great event which raises funds for Epilepsy Toronto.
We recently spoke to Bonnie Taylor, BuskerFests Festival Director, about the festival's association with Epilespy Toronto and how Cityzen became involved in the event.
How did BuskerFest come to Toronto?
Geoff Bobb, the executive director of Epilepsy Toronto, developed BuskerFest. Thirteen years ago he was out in Halifax where there’s a street performance festival. He really liked it and wanted to start a similar festival here as a fundraising platform.
As of last year, BuskerFest represents one third of Epilepsy Toronto’s operating budget. It’s not always about raising money; it’s also about raising awareness. We had over 40 million media hits last year. The Canadian Epilepsy Alliance made a statement last year saying that Toronto’s BuskerFest organized by Epilepsy Toronto is the biggest epilepsy awareness event on the globe.
What’s the story behind how you approached Cityzen to become a sponsor?
Epilepsy Toronto is a very small charity and although we have Scotiabank on board, we don’t have a lot of money in our budget. When I first took over the festival, we had 250,000 people that came to the event and we raised about $60,000 for epilepsy. Seven years later, a million people have come to event and we raised about $350,000 last year on roughly the same budget.
One of the logistics that we need during the event is a generator, big generators that power all of the performance sites of our vendors. So I just walked into Sam Crignano’s office and I asked him if he could help by going to whomever his supplier was to get the generators donated because that was a $5,000 to $6,000 budget line that we had. Sam absolutely said he could do that, so he’s covered the cost of the generators for the past five years that Cityzen has been with us.
Then he said, “What else can I do to help?” I told him we wanted to try to grow the festival site that year. So now Cityzen helps with the generators and stage sponsorship and for the last three years, we’ve had this really unique partnership for BuskerBall. Sam sends out letters and it’s actually a combination between him and Danny from Fernbook; Joe Cordiano and Paolo. We sent out 1,500 letters to all of the various contractors Cityzen works with. Last year we raised $55,000 from that letter campaign alone. It’s the biggest single fundraiser that we do for BuskerBall.
It seems that you were quite lucky to walk in there and that he was on board immediately.
I think Sam wanted to be involved in a charitable cause within the community because Cityzen is working on a number of projects in the downtown core. Plus, Sam and Maria moved into the condo and they also live in the community now, so they wanted to get involved. It’s a family affair!
As Maria will tell you, it’s Cityzen’s signature event. As a business and a contractor, I’m sure they get asked to participate and show their support for a number of places. We looove Cityzen. They’re a prime example of how a business can make a huge difference. They’ve made a huge difference to our event for sure.
Do you have a personal connection to Epilepsy Toronto?
A good friends’ husband just passed away this year – he had epilepsy. That is one of the reasons I got involved in volunteering with Epilepsy Toronto because she volunteered. I also have a number of friends that have worked with the organization.
There are a lot of health organizations whose fundraising goes specifically into research. What I love about Epilepsy Toronto, is that the money goes to programs that help people with epilepsy. They’re able to reach out to a broad number of people. For example, one of the first things we did when we started BuskerBall was raise money towards a child and youth program.
There are a lot of kids who have severe epilepsy. I’m friends with a family and their son Jack – he’s 6 now – just had major surgery where they removed part of the frontal lobe of his brain. Since he’s had this major surgery, he hasn’t had any seizures at all, whereas before he was having 30 to 40 seizures a day. After spending some time and just seeing what it’s like for the family to deal with that, it gives you a sense of purpose.
If you could have one person on board on BuskerFest, who would it be?
I would love to try and attract Elton John. I have for a number of years now been trying to reach out to a few celebrities that have epilepsy or have had it in the past. Prince was one of them, and Danny Glover was another one. That would be my dream – to find someone to come on board as our honourary spokesperson. That would really put us on the global map.
