How Woodford's $500,000 Profit Goes Straight Back To Woodford

Starting off life humbly as the Maleny Folk Festival way back in 1987, the annual cultural shindig Woodford Folk Festival – which moved to its now spiritual home of Woodfordia in 1994 – has been evolving gradually and at its own pace for nearly 30 years. While the first bash drew just under a thousand punters, last year WFF gathered in excess of 113,000 people to its six days of music, dance, cabaret, comedy, visual art, workshops, children's entertainment and of course their feted New Year's Eve fire spectacular.

One person who's been there from the outset is Festival Director Bill Hauritz, and he's justifiably proud of having overseen WFF grow from its humble beginnings into Australia's largest community-driven cultural event.

“We're non-profit – any surpluses we just bury back into the festival – so nobody owns it in terms of equity,” he explains. “This has caused problems as we've grown, because the only way we can invest in it is to raise funds. We can make profits, but profits from a six-day event held in the middle of the Queensland summer has got rocks in it for a solid business plan, let me tell you! If it's not flooding it's a heatwave.

“So the profits from a six-day event – and we aim to make a profit, don't get me wrong, we aim to make a profit somewhere about $500 000 – but from that we have to build and maintain the infrastructure. We've got our own sewerage treatment plan, we make our own town water, we've built 48 amenity blocks – so the cost of infrastructure has been a real difficulty. In private enterprise we could've sought investors, but when you're a non-profit community you can't get equity – fundraising, getting a government grant or making a profit is the only way you can do it – and we've struggled with infrastructure over the years.”

Of course logistical concerns wouldn't be a problem if crowd numbers reached a plateau, but – against the prevailing market trends – the number of happy punters at WFF keeps climbing each year.

“Growth has been our issue – there's never been a year where we've been disappointed with how many people came. Which is always the nice side of the ledger to be on,” Hauritz chuckles. “We've broadened the festival out [from its pure folk origins], and in 1995 we made a really positive step to connect to contemporary musicians when we had Midnight Oil and Powderfinger – that was really something."

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