By Venus Lee
The UNITY News

This year’s UNITY convention revenue and registration are not expected to significantly change compared with 2004 figures, according to UNITY officials.

UNITY Executive Director Onica Makwakwa, in a press conference Thursday, said the total revenue and attendance figures were still being calculated, but reported UNITY 2008 has pulled in $4.3 million in preliminary revenue, surpassing the organization’s $4.2 million goal. Preliminary revenue is based upon donations and sponsorships, while total revenue includes profit from registration fees.

“We did really well from a fundraising point of view,” she said.

She projected the total revenue, including registration fees, could surpass the $4.5 million in total revenue raised in 2004 from the last UNITY convention in Washington, D.C.

However, revenue was not expected to significantly increase as it did over the past three UNITY conventions. The first UNITY convention reported $300,000 revenue. It increased to $2.5 million in 1999 and to $4.5 million in 2004.

Registration numbers do not point to a significant increase in total attendance either, Makwakwa said.

As of Thursday, UNITY 2008 tallied 6,665 registrants, which was slightly lower than UNITY 2004’s 7,273 total registrants.

Makwakwa said the registration figures were slightly lower than expected, but attributed it to the declining economy and reduced membership in the alliance associations.

Based on the registration figures, she speculated total attendance would approximately match the UNITY 2004 convention that attracted an estimated 8,100 people. UNITY had forecasted 10,000 attendees this year, based upon steady growth over the past three conventions. The 1994 UNITY convention attracted 6,000 people to Atlanta, while 6,800 people came to Seattle in 1999.

Attendance figures include registrants as well as representatives from sponsoring companies and local people who attend convention events.

Makwakwa was not especially worried about the lack of growth in attendance.

“We are more concerned with fulfilling our mission [of advocating fair and accurate news coverage about people of color] as opposed to counting numbers,” she said.

As for the future of UNITY conventions, Makwakwa said it was “too early to tell,” because it would depend more on the changes in the industry.

topic: UNITY Convention
tags: UNITY Convention

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Latest Coverage, Online Multimedia, UNITY Convention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.