The Kinkaid Foundation
2885 Golden Gate Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94118

Fed ID # 26-3610139

info@kinkaidfoundation.org

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The Backstory – How It All Started

A while back, a few of us were sitting around holding an informal post-mortem for a notable free concert we had been associated with. As such chats often do, this one turned into a “we could have done it better if we had been in charge” session.

All well and good, of course, and history is littered with “what might have beens.” So we kind of let it go, and started to move on. But an interesting thing happened. As we talked to other people who had been involved with the concert, we discovered that several of them also felt that things could have been better.

And we discovered that we all wanted the chance to prove it.

Now, a live concert (or any live public event, for that matter) staged by a largely volunteer, grassroots staff is a tricky thing to manage. First off, you’re usually constrained by a minimal production budget. Second, working with a large number of volunteers is rather like trying to herd cats, as the saying goes. Third, because of the nature the show, it’s often difficult to determine if you’ve succeeded or not, because the usual criteria (profit or loss) don’t necessarily apply.

How do you deal with those three issues? Step one is to make sure you have enough money to accomplish what you want to with the event. Step two is to make sure that everybody clearly understands the purpose of the event. And third, have a clear goal in mind that underscores the event’s purpose and achieves what you set out to accomplish.

That said, how do you actually pull all this off? You need to be able to attract funding to build and maintain a production organization that can execute these events. That organization in turn provides the management oversight to ensure that everybody knows what they’re doing and understands the overall purpose of the event. Finally, you need a clearly defined end result that everybody involved supports.

So we’ve started The Kinkaid Foundation as our core organization. The Foundation will, among other things, support a production team dedicated to creating and executing public events such as rock concerts, poetry readings, bake sales, street parties and other types of gatherings as fundraisers to support research into these medical problems. These events may be as small as a fundraising dinner, or as large as a stadium concert for 60,000 fans. Pass-the-hat street-corner poetry slams or full multi-national conferences.

Applying Our Expertise

Now, having created the Foundation and established our primary fundraising tactics, what are we raising funds to do? For that part of the story, please see our Mission Statement page.