President’s Message
Hi there! I’m Katie Guernsey. The new Board President/Executive Director at OFF and first female President in its 25 year history. Yay. I’d like to tell you a bit about myself and the upcoming advancements at OFF you may see this year.
I was born in Ojai have a background in nonprofit management and tech. I joined the board to give back to the community where we see demographic shifts, soaring prices and less and less resources for those that live here. My beautiful 3 nieces are not growing up with the amazing extracurricular activities that my sister, brother and I had while enrolled in public school here.
The Festival is mostly a volunteer organization, 25 years strong! But it doesn’t provide free programming to our community and our older attendees (55%) and volunteers are aging out. We need to address this.
My goal is to bring the Film Festival to a new level of stability and community engagement to:
- support the rich community of local film industry professionals through networking events and professional development
- start paying a staff so we can produce an elevated festival that meets the expectations of entertainment professionals and visitors-alike
- create free programming for our community members like film screenings or student media education
- provide more resources and cash prizes to the filmmakers that make OFF a success
Currently I’m volunteering about 15-20 hours/week for this endeavor. My plan to achieve the above is to:
- launch a 25th Anniversary Capital Campaign to raise money from the community
- attract sponsorships by increasing our attendance, demographic data and ROI
- develop events that earn income and create an engaged constituency
- modernize our brand and with a new logo to attract a local, younger demographic
I have been meeting with so many artists, film people and other nonprofit leaders in Ojai and so far they are generally excited to work with me. Wow! We have some amazing volunteers and a steadfast board that is ready to meet these challenges. I hope you come along for this journey. I’m excited.
Please consider making a donation and if you ever want to reach out, feel free to email me at [email protected]
Best,
Katie