And by "Walking the Walk" we mean everything from confirming Jazz Great Rick DellaRatta and other world class artists schedules to perform at this event so that they don't get taken by other commitments or events; taking your preferred date off of our "availability calendar" and onto our "confirmed events calendar" so that your date or a date the day before or the day after that is too far away from your event doesn't get taken by someone else; offering REAL guarantees to venues, sponsors, the Media and other potential supporters that this event is something they can count on to actually take place and be a success; having all of the advance publicity opportunities and synergies of all of the components of our Empowerment Tree(https://jazzforpeace.org/jfptree.htm) able to BEGIN their growth process; the opportunity to contact potential sponsors as far in advance as possible to give them the most advertising opportunity for their sponsorship commitment: along with many many more reasons - to one of the best and most important reasons of all - The Opportunity for the unknown to work in our favor.
For Example: During the summer of 2010 Jazz for Peace had the opportunity to be recognized by Florida Congressman Alcee L. Hastings.
Because at that same time we also had a CONFIRMED event scheduled in May of 2011 in Mr. Hastings district of Ft. Lauderdale we were able seize that moment to get a letter of support from this influential Congressman for this event thereby giving an ENORMOUS boost to an event that was more than nine months away all because it was a confirmed event - not one that only had the guarantees and assurances of being "talked about".
Here's another example: While promoting during the month of June a Sept. 2010 event in NYC for the Gulf Oil Crisis we came across a person from the Rockefeller Foundation who took an interest in our organization and our cause even though it was unfortunately too late to apply to them for funding. However because we ALSO had a confirmed Gulf Oil Relief event for Nov. 4th in New Orleans we were able to seize that moment and apply for a Grant for emergency relief funds to aide the recipient of our Nov. 4th event in New Orleans!
In Summary: While our Board doesn't allow us to promote or in any way put our prestigious reputation on the line for an event that is still in the planning stages, they do give us full authority to build all of the components of our Empowerment Tree at full speed for our confirmed events while at the same time take advantage of every opportunity that comes our way no matter how far in advance they may be of the event date as the examples above so appropriately reflect.