Nine Easy Actions To Help Save Live Events

While we’d all love to get back to the rush of being on-site delivering indelible experiences, the harsh reality is that it’s going to be awhile before we get back to anything even closely resembling our former normal. And just like us, millions of event professionals are yearning to return to a livelihood they love.

But what many may not realize is just how much of a powerful role our industry plays in the American economy. A few stats from the Live Events Coalition, a national organization advocating and supporting the many voices that make up the live events industry, to prove it: Live events support more than 12-million jobs, deliver more than $1.3 trillion in direct and indirect economic impact in the U.S., and influence more than $1 trillion in direct spending, globally.

That means that protecting our industry is protecting a key contributor to both the economy and the human spirit. We are unique in connecting and bringing together important industries – like the medical, tech, pharmaceutical, and financial sectors – from around the world to share discoveries, research, and look for ways to improve and innovate our society. While we sometimes joke that “we’re not curing cancer,” the reality is that live events literally do help to save lives and make our world a better place. If you’re inclined to assist, here are three national organizations you can support and easy direct actions you can take to ensure the future of this industry is as powerful as it was pre-COVID.

Live Events Coalition
The Live Events Coalition exists to provide advocacy, resources ,and a network that connects and supports all of the businesses, contractors and our workforce – the lifeblood of every event. The notoriously fragmented event industry – which relies on a spectrum of professionals from planners to caterers to entertainers to techs – is coalescing under the umbrella organization the Live Events Coalition. The Washington-based group has two goals: to leverage the event community to support event professionals and to highlight the disastrous impact of COVID on the industry in order to ensure it is included in federal relief packages.

Three Things You Can Do To Support the Effort

1. Contact Congress
2. Share Your Story and participate in the #WishIWasThere social media campaign.
3. Join the Coalition 

Go Live Together
Go LIVE Together has assembled leaders from across the diverse and vibrant live events ecosystem to drive local, state, and federal legislative actions that will not only be critical to our ability to put millions of people back to work, but also for our country’s economic recovery.

Every events industry recovery dollar will lead to incremental spending on travel, hotels, and restaurants, supporting Main Street merchants decimated by COVID-19. Live events industry legislative relief will serve as its own “stimulus package” because funds will be used to rekindle both an important economic sector and many connected companies. Our industry was producing tens of thousands of events per year before COVID-19, and the economic impact of live events cannot be overstated. That’s why they need your help to #GoLIVEtogether, and make sure that the events industry can be a vibrant, important part of our economic and community recovery.

Three Things You Can Do To Support the Effort

1. Help Measure the Economic Impact
2. Donate to Advocacy Efforts
3. Download and Share the Legislative Toolkit 

Hospitality America Relief Fund
Employees 1st is a program of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, which has among the deepest experiences in providing disaster and hardship grants in the country. The Foundation ranks among the largest of more than 800 U.S. community foundations, and they manage more than $650 million in charitable assets. Their first disaster grants were made after Hurricane Katrina. Soon after that, the Foundation established Employees 1st, and built a scalable system to accept thousands of donations per hour and to efficiently deliver emergency assistance grants to people wherever they live.

Three Things You Can Do To Support the Effort

1. Donate to The Hospitality America Relief Fund
2. Create an Employees 1st Emergency Relief Fund for Your Company
3. Apply for an Employee Grant 

While live events will come back to provide that connection we all desperately need, it won’t be without your help – whether you’re a planner yourself, a hotelier, event venue, vendor, or another business in between. Until we meet again, please be smart in doing your part to help us all get back to work: Mask up, wash your hands, socially distance, and take care of each other!