Booth Partner Guidelines for DPA Events
Downtown Paris Association

The Downtown Paris Association (DPA) invites profits and non-profits alike to become booth partners for one or more of their annual events, including Downtown SPOOKtacular, North Pole Family Fun Day and Santa’s Last Blast.

Date/time/location:

• Downtown SPOOKtacular takes place the last Saturday before Halloween from noon until 4:00 p.m. in the courthouse lawn. (October 23, 2010.)
• North Pole Family Fun Day takes place from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. on and around the court square. (November 26, 2010)
• Santa’s Last Blast generally takes place the Friday night before Christmas from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m. on and around the court square. (December 17, 2010.)

How it works:
Booth partners (a businesses, non-profit group, politician or church) provide an activity that entertains the children (usually a craft or game) while promoting itself to the children and/or accompanying adults. In addition to contests and crafts offered by booth partners, the events offer the following:

• SPOOKtacular features trick-or-treating, a costume parade and more;
• North Pole Family Fun Day welcomes Santa to town, Christmas stories, face painting and wagon rides and more;
• Santa’s Last Blast offers one of the last opportunities to see Santa before Christmas, plus stories, smores, reindeer goats and more.

Why:
This type of marketing doesn’t require a big commitment of time or money (booth space is FREE) to produce results. These fun events are beneficial on several levels: they are priceless relationship builders, they boost the bottom line and they help the community.

How many children:
Expect a minimum of 300 children plus parents and grandparents for SPOOK-tacular. Expect around 100-150 children for the other two events.

How can being a booth partners help your organization or business:
Recently, Children’s Theater had a bean toss and gave away free children’s performance passes when accompanied by and adult. This provided an activity, increased attendance at their next show at the Krider and provided information on signing children up for classes.

At the Friends of the Refuge booth, children made flying bats, saw a real bat house and took home bat house building plans. This provided a fun/educational activity, gave the children something to take home and gave parents time to find out more about our local wildlife refuge and perhaps join the Friends group.

PARIS! magazine often lets the children crate their own magazine covers out of a variety of materials. They also let children and adults write responses to a specific question, the results of which will be in an upcoming issue. By doing this, the participants are entered in a drawing and the magazine has their email addresses for communication purposes.

Requirements:

• All booth spaces and specific activities must be approved by the DPA and reserved with current DPA President Mike Key at 642-9271 one week prior to the event.
• Booths must be open and stay active throughout the entire event and must include a free children’s activity.
• The only items sold will be concessions provided by non-profit organizations.
• Tents are not required but are suggested.
• For activity ideas online, Google the appropriate holiday plus “children+activities or crafts, or click here for a list of ideas.”