#215: Eric Gilbert, Co-Founder of Treefort Music Fest, on Building a Multi-Venue Festival with 133,000 Attendees Over 8 Years and Crowdfunding with Wefunder to Get Through the COVID-19 Shutdown

Oct 26, 2020

Eric Gilbert is the Co-Founder of Treefort Music Fest ( https://www.treefortmusicfest.com/ ) an annual 5 day event in Boise, Idaho that's had over 133,000 attendees in 8 years and featured 1000s of bands from around the world.

Treefort Music Fest is a five-day indie music festival, held at numerous venues throughout downtown Boise, Idaho every year in March. Over the first eight years it has expanded to also include Alefort, Artfort, Comedyfort, Dragfort, Filmfort, Foodfort, Hackfort, Kidfort, Skatefort, Storyfort, and Yogafort. Treefort is now a full-fledged multi-disciplinary event with a lot of dynamic collaboration and community engagement. Treefort is very active year round as an important champion for creatives.

Invest in Treefort Music Fest: https://wefunder.com/treefort

About Our Partners

This episode is also brought to you by Hawke Media. Hawke Media is a full-service Outsourced CMO based in Santa Monica, CA, providing guidance, planning, and execution to grow brands of all sizes, industries, and business models.

Hawke Media was recognized by Inc. as the country’s fastest-growing marketing consultancy and is proudly one of Glassdoor’s “Best Places to Work”​, 2019 #893 on the Forbes 5000 list, UpCity Top Los Angeles Digital Marketing Agency. Hawke’s collaborative process, à la carte offering, and month-to-month fee structure give clients the flexibility they need to boost digital revenues and marketing ROI.

Hawke Media The company has serviced over 1500 brands of all sizes, ranging from startups like Tamara Mellon, SiO Beauty and Bottlekeeper to household names like Red Bull, Verizon Wireless and Alibaba.

Listen to our interview with Erik Huberman, Founder and CEO of Hawke Media, in episode 23 of the Just Go Grind Podcast.

Some of the Topics Covered by Eric Gilbert in this Episode

• What Treefort Music Fest is and the different "forts" they have
• How Treefort Music Fest got started
• The planning behind the first Treefort Music Fest and how the first festival did from a business perspective
• The marketing behind the first festival
• Getting sponsors for Treefort Music Fest
• The differences from the first year to the second year
• Becoming a Certified B Corporation vs. becoming a non-profit
• What it takes to run Treefort Music Fest today and the team behind it
• How Eric and his team decided to crowdfund with Wefunder
• How the team behind Treefort Music Fest markets the events with a small budget
• Eric's advice around starting a festival

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