[mch2022-orga] No low income option on ticketing site

[Janneke/Rizoom]

Hi Vesna,

Thanks for your questions and feedback. In Projectleiding we put a lot 
of thought and care into our decisions, and try to be as inclusive as 
possible. But of course, we have our own blindspots, and it's very 
valuable to have others remind us of these.

Yesterday we announced that the number of tickets left is limited, but 
we also announced that we have added new discounted tickets (without a 
hurlde), that are available in a pay-it-forward construction. You can 
read about how that works here: 
https://mch2022.org/#/Blog/scalability-limitations-buy-your-ticket-soon-630-remaining 


The "friends voucher" was a voucher that was sent to people who 
requested a friends ticket. This voucher could then be used to buy a 
discounted ticket. The amount of the discount varied, but was 50% on 
average. As that goes with averages, sometimes more, sometimes less.

We have discontinued the term "friends ticket". We now have a Discounted 
Community Ticket and a Custom Dicount Ticket. The first one costs 
€249,42 at minimal (if someone can afford more, they can adjust the 
price upwards). The other one is custom, after getting in contact with 
us, with the same voucher construction as the discontinued friends 
ticket. We really believe firmly in that everyone should be able to join 
the event, so we hope these new ticket types will bring us closer to that.

I think we might be able to incorporate more of what you say about 
documenting valid reasons, but we would like more input from you for 
that. We want to be careful the 'valid reasons' do not limit people or 
hold people back in a new way.

We will publish the budget. The reason we have not done this yet, is 
because of ongoing negotiations with some suppliers. Everything got VERY 
very expensive, and we do not want the budgeted costs of everything to 
automatically become the actual costs. Negotations are almost over, and 
after that we will publish. We have presented the budget at orga meets, 
so it was never 'secret', but it was hidden a bit due to the above reason.

Just to demistify some things: Every visitor to the event costs us 335 
euros (give or take a few euros), and we won't make any real profit of 
of that. Just enough to keep the IFCAT foundation afloat for the next 
event.  Yes, this price is high, and a lot higher than before. Parking 
is about twice as expensive as for SHA (and we found out the parking 
ticket doesn't cover the actual costs after already selling a lot of 
them), tents are way more expensive, some goods are hard to get, so we 
had to go with the one supplier that was willing to deliver (sellers 
market), drinks are more expensive, volunteer food, transport for during 
build up (gators), diesel for power (we tried very hard to not need 
diesel, but the waitinglists are 1,5 years). And the list doesn't end 
there. We had to negotiate hard, and be creative with the budget in 
order to stay within it.

I hope this gives you a bit more context! Eventhough it's only a little.

Stitch and I would like to have a conversation with you soon to see 
what  things you can help us with and if you see more improvements we 
could make.

We hope the 10 people that said they couldn't afford the ticket can be 
convinced to use one of the two new options. We want everyone there who 
wants to be there, whatever their economic situation may be.


Thanks again!


Janneke

Team Projectleiding

Op 6-6-2022 om 22:04 schreef Vesna Manojlovic:
> Hi Henry,
>
> that'a very sweet of you, to reply in detail.
>
> On Fri, 3 Jun 2022, Henry (hp197) wrote:
>
>> Thank you for concerning about the less fortunate in our community :)
>>
>> We have an active friends ticket request box that is open to everybody.
>> The ticket queue is answered by me and as noted in many tickets I 
>> handled:
>>
>> "I work on a trust base and as long as I don't have a reason to think 
>> otherwise you don't have to prove me anything."
>>
>>
>> To give you some details about the tickets:
>> I have received 50 friend request tickets (not being spam) and 
>> currently I have handed 48 friends voucher to visitors.
>
> What does "friends voucher" mean? How much does a discounted ticket cost?
>
>> If there is anything we can improve in the process i'm very happy to 
>> listen to it (and its arguments).
>
> I'd like us to document what are the valid reasons for asking for 
> "friend ticket" -- WHO do we want to support this way, and why is this 
> "mutual aid" and not charity -- why are thsoe cartegories of people 
> valuable to us, what can they contribute so that we are willing to 
> offer pickets at reduced price...
>
> And how much is it going to cost...
>
>> Though just put cheap(er) tickets in the shop isn't the golden 
>> solution here.
>
> ...
>> are less likely to understand the difference in ticket prices or that 
>> buying the cheapest option would result in somebody else not able to 
>> participate.
>
> I understand...
>
>> We have a group of ~1000 die hard community members who dont mind to 
>> pay the full amount (or even a little extra).
>
> So how come that there are only 50 people who can not afford the full 
> price?!
>
> I have personally heard this from at least 10 people, and NONE of 
> these have requested "friend ticket" (yet).
>
>> I hope these answers help you to lower your concerns :)
>
> The fact that 2/50 requests were refused is reasuring.
>
> But the fact that only 50 requests are made is not reasuring for me: 
> that means that people are reluctant to ask for this :(
>
> I am hoping that we can imrove on this, together.
>
> Vesna
>
> -- 
> community, cooperation, commons, squirrels # https://xs4all.nl/~becha
> nature, anarchy, utopia, un-anthropocene # https://unciv.nl # 
> @Ms_Multicolor
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