SEVEN DAYS until Zimfest! We are at 71% of our $8,000 goal. Just over $2,300 remaining to bring in. Thank you to those who have contributed so far. If you have not sent in a gift, please consider donating to help towards the cost of transportation, room and board for the group of talented Zimbabwean teachers; implementing the new festival registration system; and purchasing marimbas to augment the supply of instruments at the festival. Any amount is appreciated.
We have another member of the community who has generously pledged to match the next $500 the community raises from July 3rd-10th. 16 of you came through for our successful previous matching challenge. Sharing the message can also help make an impact. Please help us maximize this match towards our goal by making a donation to Zimfest. No donation is too small!! Here are some ways that your donations help.
Prices of Impact
$9.50 – Dinner at Zimfest for 1 Zimbabwean
$24.25 – Meals for a day for 1 Zimbabwean
$640.00 – Housing for 4 Zimbabweans during Zimfest
$1,513.00 – All weekend meal plan for 17 Zimbabwean teachers
End of $1000 match. Thanks to some of you, we brought in $1080 during this week’s challenge. A big thank you to our generous donor for challenging us to this match, for a total of $2080. We are now at 58% of our total goal, more than halfway there! We hope you have some lovely weather and music to enjoy! Thank you!
Thank you so much for your support, we have raised $2,532 towards our fundraising goal! In addition, a member of the community has generously pledged to match the next $1,000 the community raises from May 26th through June 2nd. Please help us maximize this match towards our goal by making a donation to Zimfest. No donation is too small – just $10 from 100 Zimbabwean music fans will help us get there. Let’s watch the conga get colored in! To donate, go to https://zimfest.org/about/support-zimfest/
Zimbabwean Independence Day is April 18th and Zimfest 2018 is only four months away. Help us keep Zimfest and the celebration of Zimbabwean culture strong and active into the future.
Our fundraising goal for this year is $8,000, and we’ve already raised $1,600! The remaining $6,400 could easily be met if each of our 400 participants contributed $16. See the various ways you can donate by visiting https://zimfest.org/about/support-zimfest/.
We hope you have had an excellent start to the year and that you are looking forward to joining us in Monmouth, OR for Zimfest 2018! The Festival Organizing Committee has been hard at work to create a fun and memorable festival experience for attendees, teachers and performers. We can support them and encourage their work by increasing volunteer participation and raising much-needed funds.
Here are a few ways you can help:
Volunteer on the Organizing Committee: The Organizing Committee is still in need of volunteers to fill key roles such as Afternoon Stage Manager and Teacher/Workshop Coordinator Assistant. If you are interested, please contact Zimfest Festival Coordinator Claire Jones at claire (at) zimfest (dot)org / 206 328-4011, and/or Volunteer Coordinator Carla Starck at volunteers (at )zimfest (dot) org.
Contribute to Fundraising Efforts. As a non-profit organization, donations, membership fees, and the funds reserved after each festival are crucial for financing festival expenses.
Donate in the Zimfest 2018 Fundraising Drive. This year, we are aiming to raise $8,000 towards the cost of:
Transportation, room and board for the group of talented Zimbabwean teachers
Implementing the new festival registration system
Purchasing marimbas to augment the supply of instruments at the festival
Leverage Employer Matching programs. Employer matching donation programs are an easy way to maximize the value of your donations.
Host fundraising events in your local community. Some fun ideas of raising funds in support of Zimfest include benefit concerts, dance parties, dinners and silent auctions. Share your events on the Zimfest Facebook Page so that we can see all the exciting events that are being planned to support Zimfest 2018.
Sign up for or renew your Zimfest membership. By becoming a member of Zimfest Association, individuals and families can support the long-term viability of Zimfest. https://zimfest.org/about/membership/
As members of our vibrant Zimbabwean music community, we all must contribute the money and volunteer hours that are needed to keep the Zimfest spirit alive and thriving this year and beyond. Your response to this call will help us gauge our ability to host Zimfest 2019, so please show your support. If you have any suggestions or questions, please feel free to contact us at board (at) zimfest (dot) org.
Mylinda King is putting on her 23rd annual student marimba concert. Every year she and her students use the event to raise money for a good Zimbabwean cause. This year’s recipient is Zimfest!
The concert is free but all proceeds from the raffle and silent auction will benefit Zimfest. But wait, it gets better! We will also be raffling off an exquisite African-inspired quilt lovingly made by the Cama Beach Quilters All quilt proceeds will benefit Tariro, Ancient Ways and the Portland-Mutare Sister City Association.
When: March 3, 2018 Noon -3:00pm
Doors open 11:30am for an informative slideshow about Zimfest and Raffle preview
Where: Portland Foursquare Church, 2830 NE Flanders St. Portland, OR 97232
If you can’t make the concert but would still like to help out Zimfest you can donate a raffle or silent auction item. Gift certificates and other items can be purchased on your behalf and donated to the raffle.
For more info contact MyLinda at marimba[at]teleport[dot]com
Dear Zimfest Association Friends and Members,
We hope you are doing well and have found this year challenging as well as thought-provoking, given the many newsworthy events both in Zimbabwe and the USA! We write to announce the Zimfest Association’s Annual Campaign and Membership Drive. This will be our fifth year running the campaign, and we are hoping that it will be our most successful ever. While the festival itself provides some income to the association, these funds are simply insufficient to help sustain and grow the Association and the Festival. Here are some ways that you can help.
Become a Member of the Zimfest Association
Our goal is to have all Zimfest participants be members of the organization. It is our hope that a healthy dialogue about the festival and Association can emerge from a membership that feels a sense of ownership in the Zimfest Association. Membership covers the calendar year January 1st through December 31st. Membership dues are an essential part of keeping Zimfest alive and vibrant. From as little as $10.00 per year for our Youth/Student membership, there are membership categories to fit any budget and situation! Consider Regular, Family, Couple, Teacher, Lifetime, and Lifetime Family, memberships. Members may choose to have their names published on the website and in the Festival Guide as a public display of support for Zimfest. Membership fees are also 100% tax deductible, for now at least! Please refer to the membership page to renew or initiate a membership. If you renewed or took out a membership early in the year and did not hear from us, it may have been due to a glitch on our website signup form. Please write us at if you want to clarify your membership status.
Provide Charitable Donations to the Zimfest Association
While Membership dues are a great start, Zimfest needs a wider base of support to ensure long-term stability. For this reason, we are asking for everyone who can to make a tax-deductible donation to the Zimfest Association. These donations have been essential for the festival in the past, and your support of Zimfest now will help secure the future of the festival and sustain our financial well-being. If your company supports matching donations or in-kind work, find out from your supervisor or Human Resources department how your company can match your contribution—often dollar for dollar!
If you are a regular attendee of the festival, this is the perfect year to donate. Without a festival this year, we hope that you consider donating even a small fraction of what would normally go towards travel expenses, workshops, meal cards, etc. to help keep the momentum in this gap year. Your contributions really do make a difference and help the Association continue its efforts to put on the best Zimbabwean music festival in North America! To donate, go to the Support Zimfest page.
Other Ways to Contribute
Finally, we’d like to remind you of three completely painless ways you can donate and help Zimfest on an ongoing basis. Go to the Support Zimfest page for information on Giving Assistant, AmazonSmile and eBay Giving.
If you’d like to learn more about this festival and what goes on during the other 360 days a year, please contact us at or review our recent activities on our blog .
Thanks for all you do to help make Zimfest a success. Best wishes for the holidays and new year, and we hope to see you at Zimfest 2018!
Dear Zimfest Association Friends and Members:
We hope that you are enjoying your summer and that you are finding ways to enjoy Zimbabwean music and culture despite the lack of a festival this year. The Zimfest Board is making great progress on our off-year activities including: identification of a more sustainable and easier to maintain registration software system; broadening our approach to Zimfest marketing to reach new participants while ensuring strong attendance at future festivals; reviewing potential changes to festival structure in the interest of Zimfest sustainability; and considering new sources of income for Zimfest. We hope that you have already marked your calendars for August 9-12th, 2018 for next summer’s Zimbabwean Music Festival which will once again be held at Western Oregon University in Monmouth, Oregon. Over the coming months, our Festival Coordinator, Claire Jones, will begin the process of recruiting an organizing committee. We hope that you will consider volunteering! Please reach out to by writing , or directly to Claire at if you are able to help.
As we’ve noted in the past, no organization can survive without financial support, and the Zimfest Association is no different. We need your help to survive! Towards this end, we would like to announce the start of our off-year fundraising campaign which will continue through the end of the calendar year. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help us continue to put on the best Zimbabwean music festival in North America. A strong fundraising campaign will help ensure that we go into our next festival in a strong financial situation. The funds raised will be used to help bring Zimbabwean teachers and guests to the festival, to help grow our endowment, and to raise operating funds for specific needs such as supporting the transition to our new registration software. If your company supports matching donations, please don’t forget to complete the paperwork which would allow your company to match your contribution – often dollar for dollar.
We hope that each of you will consider a donation – no amount is too small (or too big)! We would like to appeal to bands in particular to consider raising funds for Zimfest during your summer performance season. In addition, if each of you can find a willing donor within your extended network it will greatly assist us in strengthening our financial position. Contributions are tax-deductible in the 2017 tax year. Please visit the Support Zimfest page on our website (https://zimfest.org/about/support-zimfest) for instructions on how to donate. You may also wish to initiate or renew a Zimfest Association membership on the Membership page (https://zimfest.org/about/membership).
Thanks for all that you do to make Zimfest a success.
Best wishes from the Zimfest Association Board
We hope you are doing well and have found a good way to cope with Zimfest’s absence from next year’s summer plans! The Holiday season is drawing to a close, but the Zimfest Association’s Annual Campaign and Membership Drive are just getting warmed up! This will be our fourth year running this campaign, and we are hoping that it will be our most successful ever. While the festival itself provides some income to the association, these funds are simply insufficient to help sustain and grow the Association and the Festival itself. Here are some ways that you can help.
Become a Member of the Zimfest Association
Our goal is to have all Zimfest participants be members of the organization. It is our hope that a healthy dialogue about the festival and Association can emerge from a membership that feels a sense of ownership in the Zimfest Association. Membership covers January 1st through December 31st. Membership dues are an essential part of keeping Zimfest alive and vibrant. From as little as $10.00 per year for our Youth/Student membership, there are membership categories to fit any budget and situation! Consider Regular, Family, Couple, Teacher, Lifetime, and Lifetime Family, memberships. Members may choose to have their names published on the website and in the Festival Guide as a public display of support for Zimfest. Membership fees are also 100% tax deductible. Please refer to the membership page to renew or initiate a membership — https://zimfest.org/about/membership/.
Provide Charitable Donations to the Zimfest Association
While Membership dues are a great start, in order to insure long-term stability Zimfest needs a wider base of support. For this reason, we are asking for everyone who is able to make a tax-deductible donation to the Zimfest Association. These donations have been essential for the festival in the past, and your support of Zimfest now will help secure the future of the festival and sustain our financial well being. If your company supports matching donations, find out from your supervisor or Human Resources department how your company can match your contribution– often dollar for dollar!
If you are a regular attendee of the festival, this is the perfect year to make a donation. Without a festival this year, we hope that you consider donating even a small fraction of what would normally go towards travel expenses, workshops, meal cards, etc. to help keep the momentum in this gap year. Your contributions really do make a difference and help the Association continue its efforts to put on the best Zimbabwean music festival in North America! To donate, go to https://zimfest.org/about/support-zimfest/.
Other Ways to Contribute
Finally, we’d like to remind you of two completely painless ways you can donate and help Zimfest on an ongoing basis.
If you’d like to learn more about this festival and what goes on during the other 360 days a year, please contact us at or review our recent activities on our blog which can be found at http://www.zimfest.org/blog/.
Thanks for all you do to help make Zimfest a success. Best wishes for the new year, and we’ll see you at Zimfest 2018!
Have you or your group decided on a fundraising event or idea to help support Zimbabwean teachers expenses? Share what you are planning on Facebook, or add a comment on this blog. We have had 20 Zimbabwean teachers/performers apply and we cannot support all of them unless we have your help. At this point we can probably only support about 8 Zimbabwean teachers.
The Zimfest Board has come up with a few exciting fundraising ideas to help raise some much needed funds for Zimfest 2016, with an emphasis on Zimbabwean teacher expenses. We ask you and your music community to pitch in and help support the heartbeat of our organization. Our Zimbabwean teachers bring the spirit of the music with them to share with us. Year-round this spirit holds our communities together throughout North America.
Organizing committees are hard at work in the winter months preparing for our festival, as are individuals who are applying for visas for our guest teachers. We can support them and encourage their work by helping raise funds. The approximate cost of room, board and (max) travel for each Zimbabwean guest is $760. Our goal is to provide 10 Zimbabwean’s, transportation, room, and board with the help of these fund raising efforts.
We encourage your participation to help make this successful, and let’s have some fun with the following ideas. Share your event on the Zimfest blog (post a comment) and on facebook so that we can see all the exciting events that are being planned to support Zimbabwean teachers at Zimfest. After your fundraiser event, please make checks out to Zimfest Association and mail them to Janis Weeks, 1960 University St., Eugene, OR 97403.
Project Kudzana
Kudzana means to dance! Imagine all the dance, drumming, hosho, marimba, mbira, and singing communities coming together to celebrate Zimbabwean Independence Day for the benefit of Zimbabwean musicians at our festival, an interactive celebration of Shona music. During the month of April we encourage your community to host a benefit concert for Zimfest. You can choose any time in April to host your event, focusing on the April 18 Independence date.
One Million Pennies for Zimfest
Each group could create a donation canister to have at practice and/or performances advertising the ‘One Million Penny’ goal for Zimfest. Drop in change from your wallet to go towards Zimbabwean musicians. Encourage other groups that don’t normally attend Zimfest to participate. Post pictures on the Zimfest Facebook page to show progress/competition between groups or regions.
Bite of Africa Dinner / Zimbabwe Auction
In combination with a benefit dance, offer some auction items:
Dance, Drumming, Hosho, Marimba, Mbira, or Singing Lesson with a Zimbabwean Guest Musician
Sadza dinner with Zimbabwean Guest Artist
Local art, restaurant, and business donations
These are just a few of our ideas. Customize it to your community.
Amazon Smile
The Zimfest Association is registered to receive donations when people shop at AmazonSmile. You can support Zimfest by choosing Zimfest Association as the organization you would like to receive 0.5% of the price of your eligible Amazon purchases. Amazon will make a donation to: Zimfest Association https://smile.amazon.com/ch/91-1951506
Let’s get a jump on what it takes to make a great Zimfest!
The Zimfest Board has come up with a few exciting fundraising ideas to help raise some much needed funds for Zimfest 2016, with an emphasis on Zimbabwean teacher expenses. We ask you and your music community to pitch in and help support the heartbeat of our organization. Our Zimbabwean teachers bring the spirit of the music with them to share with us. Year-round this spirit holds our communities together throughout North America.
Organizing committees are hard at work in the winter months preparing for our festival, as are individuals who are applying for visas for our guest teachers. We can support them and encourage their work by helping raise funds. Make checks out to Zimfest Association and mail them to Janis Weeks, 1960 University St., Eugene, OR 97403. The approximate cost of room, board and (max) travel for each Zimbabwean guest is $760. Our goal is to provide 10 Zimbabwean’s, transportation, room, and board with the help of these fund raising efforts.
We encourage your participation to help make this successful, and let’s have some fun with the following ideas. Share your event on the Zimfest blog (post a comment) and on facebook so that we can see all the exciting events that are being planned to support Zimbabwean teachers at Zimfest.
Project Kudzana
Kudzana means to dance! Imagine all the dance, drumming, hosho, marimba, mbira, and singing communities coming together to celebrate Zimbabwean Independence Day for the benefit of Zimbabwean musicians at our festival, an interactive celebration of Shona music. During the month of April we encourage your community to host a benefit concert for Zimfest. You can choose any time in April to host your event, focusing on the April 18 Independence date.
One Million Pennies for Zimfest
Each group could create a donation canister to have at practice and/or performances advertising the ‘One Million Penny’ goal for Zimfest. Drop in change from your wallet to go towards Zimbabwean musicians. Encourage other groups that don’t normally attend Zimfest to participate. Post pictures on the Zimfest Facebook page to show progress/competition between groups or regions.
Bite of Africa Dinner / Zimbabwe Auction
In combination with a benefit dance, offer some auction items:
Dance, Drumming, Hosho, Marimba, Mbira, or Singing Lesson with a Zimbabwean Guest Musician
Sadza dinner with Zimbabwean Guest Artist
Local art, restaurant, and business donations
These are just a few of our ideas. Customize it to your community.
Amazon Smile
The Zimfest Association is registered to receive donations when people shop at AmazonSmile. You can support Zimfest by choosing Zimfest Association as the organization you would like to receive 0.5% of the price of your eligible Amazon purchases. Amazon will make a donation to: Zimfest Association https://smile.amazon.com/ch/91-1951506
This blog is the main news channel for the Zimbabwean Music Festival (aka Zimfest). The Zimfest organizing committee posts updates on the annual festival, and the Zimfest Association board provides meeting minutes and other info. We hope this blog becomes a mechanism for a rich dialog with Zimfest participants. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email.
SEVEN DAYS until Zimfest! We are at 71% of our $8,000 goal. Just over $2,300 remaining to bring in. Thank you to those who have contributed so far. If you have not sent in a gift, please consider donating to help towards the cost of transportation, room and board for the group of talented Zimbabwean teachers; implementing the new festival registration system; and purchasing marimbas to augment the supply of instruments at the festival. Any amount is appreciated.
Update June 6
Greetings Zimbabwean music fans,
Kudzana means to dance! Imagine all the dance, drumming, hosho, marimba, mbira, and singing communities coming together to celebrate Zimbabwean Independence Day for the benefit of Zimbabwean musicians at our festival, an interactive celebration of Shona music. During the month of April we encourage your community to host a benefit concert for Zimfest. You can choose any time in April to host your event, focusing on the April 18 Independence date.
Each group could create a donation canister to have at practice and/or performances advertising the ‘One Million Penny’ goal for Zimfest. Drop in change from your wallet to go towards Zimbabwean musicians. Encourage other groups that don’t normally attend Zimfest to participate. Post pictures on the 
In combination with a benefit dance, offer some auction items:
