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Before It Raises the Roof, Here’s How the JP Music Festival Raises the Money

Running a free community event like the JP Music Festival is great fun — even behind the scenes.

The festival itself brings together the people of JP and Boston (and many Brooklinites sneak over the border) to celebrate great, local, live music. Every year the thousands of people who come discover just how much amazing musical talent lives and works in our ‘hood.

As a group of JP residents (okay, a couple of us have migrated to Dorchester), part of the fun of putting on a free community event is raising the money to pull it all off. The committee is led by Rick Berlin and Shamus Moynihan as co-producers and the festival committee is currently Margie Nicoll, Kellie Cardone, Justin McCarthy, Ferris Mueller, and Charles McEnerney.

This year we have an amazing array of local sponsors supporting us (Galway House, JP Licks, Tres Gatos, JP Seafood, The Midway, Sam Adams, Bukhara Indian Bistro, The Goods, The Haven), in-kind sponsors, and we’re holding some cool house parties with food, friends, and live music. BUT we also always raise more than $5,000 every year through smaller fundraising events that lead up to the festival itself.

You were unaware? Well, have we got an e-mail subscription for you.

Chris Helms of Jamaica Plain News recently asked us how we came up with such inventive ideas — many of which get offered up at our Sunday meetings and coalesce as we all pipe in and brainstorm with ways to make the fundraisers perfect — so we wanted to share some anecdotes and stories about how we’ve come up with the fundraisers that we’ve held over the last four years…before we all forget.

Flip through the gallery above for posters from previous fundraisers and commentary from the organizers.

[Editor’s note: The Music Festival has an online fundraiser in its final weeks. Visit this page at Boston-based fundraise.com to help this year’s festival take place. It’s Sept. 6 at Pinebank Field. And if you have an idea for another inventive fundraiser, please email the Music Festival organizers.]

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