More on Activating Live Music Communities

Apropos of my piece about Neil Young, I thought I should announce that I've accepted a volunteer position on the advisory board of HeadCount.

Out of all the new non profits that formed in 2004 to activate live music scenes, HeadCount, which began in the jam-band scene, is the only one left standing. Just a few months ago, MFA was defunded and merged their membership with the League of Young Voters. In early 2007, Punk Voter mothballed into a news organization. Fat Mike is limiting his involvement in politics this year, and Scott Goodstein who ran the day to day operation now runs Barack Obama's text messaging program.

So HeadCount, which in 2004 was the most underfunded of the three, is now the only game in town. This year, they're expanding their work outside the jam-band scene, hiring their first full-time staffers, courting donors, and scaling the entire operation upwards.

It makes me glad to see that live music outreach is going to continue in 2008.

HeadCount has set a goal of registering at least 100,000 voters at 1,000 live music events in 2008. That's a far cry from the 2,400 shows MFA attended in 2004, but HeadCount is a far more efficient organization than MFA ever was. In 2004 and 2006 combined, HeadCount registered a total of 57,000 new voters on a budget of $120,000 - or $2.11/registration. That's at the low-end of the scale in terms of cost/registration, which usually averages around $8/registration.

How they did it was through a mix of artist involvement and a strict organizational culture that stressed accountability and hard work above anything else. About a year ago I interviewed Andy Bernstein, the co-chair of Headcount about this, and the resulting blog post elaborates on how HeadCount acheived such efficiencies while creating a deep bond with their target community. There's also a great discussion from some of the old MFA crew in the comments about what did/did not work at MFA, and I advise you to check it out.

About a week and a half ago I attended the screening of a new documentary about the organization - you can get a sneak peak at it, along with a taste for what live-music organizing is all about, here:

I'll be posting a lot more about HeadCount as they ramp up their 2008 activities.