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Matthews Alive board outlines 2025 festival layout, parade route change and new nonprofit donation process
Summary
Matthews Alive presented the 2025 festival plan to the Matthews Board of Commissioners, describing entertainment, vendors, a revised parade route for safety, a new nonprofit donation application and commitments on audits and board recruitment.
Matthews Alive spokesperson Brian Lee told the Matthews Board of Commissioners on June 23 that the volunteer-run festival’s 2025 footprint will look much like past years but will include a new parade route and a formal nonprofit donation process. “This remains unchanged from previous years,” Lee said of the basic layout, then described concert headliners, food vendors and exhibitor locations.
Lee and fellow board members said the group has confirmed returning presenting sponsor Novant Health and several commercial sponsors, and that the festival will host about 23 food vendors and roughly 152 small-shops vendors. “One of the things that I've really pushed for since I joined the board about four years ago is trying to uplift our Matthews area small businesses,” Lee said.
The board described several operational changes. Parade planners, citing recent national guidance, shifted the route to route participants off the footprint into streets that will allow safer disembarking and reentry. “This year … we will turn down John Street … to Christ Covenant Church,” Lee said, adding the change is intended to keep participants off live traffic and create “a more usable spectator area.” Amanda Howard, who said she is part of the Event Safety Alliance, said the decision follows the American National Standard for parade safety and will provide more “arteries” for emergency egress and for stalled vehicles.
Matthews Alive also outlined a new nonprofit donation application that will let organizations not directly providing volunteers at the festival apply for funds; the board said an online form will go live weeks before the festival and that donation recipients will be announced in the organization’s impact summary presented to the town board after the event. The group said they will continue to provide volunteer slots and listed a volunteer contact email: volunteermatthewsalive@gmail.com.
On governance and transparency, Lee said the group has filed required IRS returns and has an ongoing audit for calendar year 2024; he committed the organization to an annual independent audit and to provide results to the town once the audit is complete. The Matthews Alive board also agreed to continue scheduling an annual 5:30 p.m. pre-event meeting with the town board to present plans and answer questions.
Several commissioners pressed Matthews Alive on staffing and board continuity, noting the festival relies heavily on a small number of volunteers. Lee estimated core volunteers each contribute hundreds of hours to the event and said the board is actively recruiting but has rebalanced workloads to operate with fewer members. Commissioners also pressed for clarity on the nonprofit donation scoring process; Lee said the board built a scoring matrix modeled on other North Carolina municipal grant systems and will refine it after the first year.
The commissioners did not take a formal vote on festival funding at the June 23 meeting; they asked staff to follow up on several financial questions and requested the audit results when they are available.
