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Local nonprofits warn staffing limits could hamper ability to chase lodging grants
Summary
Representatives of small Poulsbo cultural groups told the lodging‑tax open house they lack full‑time staff and volunteer capacity to create new events solely to qualify for grants, calling the tradeoff a 'chicken and egg' problem.
At the open house, nonprofit representatives described the difficulty of creating new multi‑day events to satisfy lodging‑tax criteria when organizations operate with small staffs and volunteer bases.
"We are an extremely small staff. We don't have anybody who is full time," said a representative of a small nonprofit, describing the challenge of mounting new events primarily to access grant dollars. Attendees said existing programs have scaled up over recent years—one historical society speaker said visitation increased from about 8–10,000 to roughly 32,000 annually—but cautioned that expanding programming requires resources many groups lack.
Staff acknowledged the concern and described opportunities for seed money and proof‑of‑concept funding to help new events demonstrate visitor impact. Heino offered to work with organizations offline to show where on the application they should highlight prior growth, funding diversification and metrics that demonstrate overnight stays.
