Lighting the fires is a year-round effort

BEHIND THE SCENES: WaterFire volunteers assemble luminaria candle lanterns in preparation for a downtown lighting, which on average draws about 65,000 people to Providence. / COURTESY  DREW CHRISTHILF
BEHIND THE SCENES: WaterFire volunteers assemble luminaria candle lanterns in preparation for a downtown lighting, which on average draws about 65,000 people to Providence. / COURTESY DREW CHRISTHILF

Hundreds of thousands of people have already discovered one of Rhode Island’s well-known gems: WaterFire.

The Providence nonprofit’s celebration of art, culture and community lights up the downtown several evenings throughout the year and has become synonymous with the capital city’s image. Less known, however, is what the nonprofit does in the months between its last lighting of the year and its first lighting of the next.

“One of the general misconceptions that people have after the last fire of the previous season is that we’re going to get all of this time off. But the end of the year is really when we’re trying to build for the upcoming season,” said Bronwyn A. Dannenfelser, director of resource development.

For some WaterFire staff the offseason is spent trying to find both volunteers and corporate sponsors for the upcoming season – without which the events wouldn’t be possible.

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“In December, we’re getting things put away so we can find them come the next season and by January we’re moving full-steam ahead with our offseason,” said Gary M. St. Laurent, volunteer coordinator at WaterFire.

St. Laurent and co-worker Chantal Roche, community relations and volunteer engagement manager, oversee the 150-300 people who volunteer during each WaterFire lighting. The volunteers, who typically are spread out across three shifts throughout the day, work behind the scenes to ensure the boats are in the water, the fires are burning brightly, the venues are set up for participants and visitors are moving smoothly throughout the event.

Unfortunately for St. Laurent and Roche, however, volunteers don’t just appear out of thin air. The painstaking effort to find, and sometimes persuade, so many people to participate is a full-time job and the duo spend the offseason contacting past volunteers, holding volunteer-appreciation parties and trying to keep volunteers engaged through social media and newsletters.

The volunteers themselves range from other nonprofit groups, including the Fogarty Center, The Providence Center and Young Voices, to corporate groups who come out through sponsorship or to do team-building exercises. It’s also becoming more commonplace for visitors who travel from throughout the region and country to participate as volunteers, according to St. Laurent.

Volunteers mostly come from Greater Providence, but St. Laurent estimates 40 percent drive in from South County and some from Massachusetts and Connecticut. Last year, a group from Maryland volunteered and St. Laurent says there’s one man who comes regularly from Maine.

“WaterFire is for the community, by the community, and that community just grows and grows,” St. Laurent said. “The reach goes beyond Providence and Rhode Island, which is something we’re really proud of.”

But the volunteer effort is only one part of the offseason puzzle. Dannenfelser also works to secure corporate sponsorship. The latter isn’t as simple as trying to match previous sponsors with the corresponding days in the following year, as the schedule can change drastically from season to season. Indeed, WaterFire events are subject to the gravitational pull of the moon, which dictates ocean tides and subsequently how much water will be in the city’s canals.

If the water level is too low, a lighting isn’t possible.

“My whole scheme starts with looking at the tides. Then I go back to all of my sponsors who’ve given generously in the past,” Dannenfelser said. “There is an incredible mix of people that want to be part of the community-building that is WaterFire and what happens each year is different.”

Indeed, despite the reputation of WaterFire and its proven ability to draw thousands of people into the city, Dannenfelser says it’s never easy to secure sponsors each year, though it always works out.

“There hasn’t been a year that made me say, ‘Oh, geez, we’re not going to make it,’ which I always look at as a blessing,” Dannenfelser said.

Some companies are fairly consistent with their contributions, but one issue is the timing of WaterFire’s season. It ends just before a lot of companies have put together budgets for the following year, preventing Dannenfelser from getting ahead of the curve. This staggered delay prevents the nonprofit from announcing its next schedule, which prevents visitors from planning too far in the future. Dannenfelser would like to see this improve somehow in the future.

The offseason effort, however, is well worth the struggle because once the season starts the effort pays off.

“There [are] different reasons why companies sponsor, but I think the main reason is because they want to do something so great for the community at large,” she said. •

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