FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 10, 2000 

The Banff Centre’s annual Midsummer Ball has doubled its corporate sponsorship in the last year, from $57,000 in 1999 to $125,000 for this year’s event. According to Louise Aspin, development officer, this task was accomplished by virtue of The Centre’s strategic planning and the business savvy of the Development staff and the Calgary-based organizing committee. "This year’s Midsummer Ball is an excellent example of the way The Banff Centre has adapted to the competitive climate of the corporate world to raise funds creatively. With so many not-for-profit organizations competing for corporate dollars, ingenuity in the realm of fundraising is a matter of survival."

Aspin says that she embarked on her endeavour to raise corporate funding for this year’s event with some trepidation. Despite the apparent strength of Canada’s big-business economy, she points out, expenditure cutbacks and the consequent paring down of corporate support for charity and not-for-profit arts organizations is the order of the day.

Toshimi Sembo, CoChair of the Midsummer Ball Committee, has worked extensively with Aspin to secure many past and new corporate and professional sponsors, including Husky Oil Limited, TransCanada PipeLines Ltd., Donahue Ernst and Young and Pengrowth Management. "This event’s committee members understand that to attract donors, they must be pioneers in the domain of fundraising," says Sembo. Among this year’s charity auction items, for example, are a return trip to Banff in a vintage 1900s, luxuriously refurbished CPR railcar, and a number of boxes of clay, silk, metal and wood, hand crafted by such prominent Calgary-area artists as Paul Kuhn, Tony Bloom and Jann Arden. These boxes range from whimsical to exquisite, often reinterpreting the very definition of a box.

The Banff Midsummer Ball is The Banff Centre’s marquis fundraising event, raising approximately $200,000.00 for program development and artists’ scholarships each year.