Fort Collins music nonprofit SpokesBuzz shutting down

FORT COLLINS — SpokesBuzz, a nonprofit organization aimed at growing Fort Collins’ music scene through promotion and educational programming, announced Friday that it will shut down Sept. 1, citing a lack of funding.

Founded in 2009 by Dani Grant, who also owns the Mishawaka Amphitheatre, SpokesBuzz has been involved with a variety of programming both in Fort Collins and beyond.

SpokesBuzz’s incubator program provides education, talent development and marketing resources for local musicians and bands.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Business Cares: April 2024

In Colorado, 1 in 3 women, 1 in 3 men and 1 in 2 transgender individuals will experience an attempted or completed sexual assault in their lifetime. During April, we recognize Sexual Assault Awareness Month with the hopes of increasing conversations about this very important issue.

SpokesBuzz’s BandSwap, last run in 2014, paired Fort Collins and Denver bands with bands from other cities out of state that enjoyed similar followings for shows. Those out-of-state bands would then visit Colorado for shows to shed light on their own local music scenes.

SpokesBuzz also organized the Colorado Music Party, a three-day showcase of Colorado bands at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, that last year featured more than 100 bands from Colorado.

Grant said in an interview Friday that a shift away from those national events this year to focus more on SpokesBuzz’s core mission of education and incubation — aspects she felt had gotten diluted by the national events — ultimately led to the downfall of the organization.

While SpokesBuzz had previously operated on an annual budget of $650,000 to $700,000 largely through funding from cities, states and corporate sponsors eager to back the national events such as Colorado Music Party and BandSwap, raising funding solely for the more locally focused incubation piece proved more difficult. Planning to operate on a budget of $330,000 for its current fiscal year, SpokesBuzz couldn’t meet its funding goals.

Grant said the organization had “great support” from the city of Fort Collins for its new focus and had been working on a partnership with Colorado State University to launch some online courses related to the music industry. SpokesBuzz’s major new event this year, called Convergence, brought musicians and others from the music industry together for a three-day business forum in Breckenridge.

“But we weren’t able to turn the local donors and the local foundations into support,” Grant said. “Instead of going down in a bunch of flames, we decided to make the prudent decision to close the doors.

“We feel like we’ve had a great run and kicked off a lot of great stuff. … Now let’s get out of the way and see how some of these things formalize (within the industry).”

While Grant served in a volunteer capacity as executive director of SpokesBuzz, the organization has six paid employees, all of whom Grant said have already lined up new jobs once SpokesBuzz winds down completely.

“It’s very nice,” Grant said. “(The employees’ fate) was one of my greatest worries.”