Thank you to Joe Hunter, Executive Director-Papillion Community Foundation for the PapillionBusinesses.com interview.

Please tell me a little bit about yourself, how you became executive director, the Foundation and of course Papillion Days.

I started with the Foundation a little over three years ago. I was in corporate, 40 hour a week role in human resources management before this and I wanted to go back to school to finish a degree. So, a 40-hour corporate schedule was not conducive for that. A family friend, who was previous Executive Director of the Foundation, she said, “Hey we are hiring part time office manager, so come on down.  I think this will be great for you, more in the field that you want to study, and you can work 20 hours a week and get some experience while you go to school, and that way it balances out things a little bit better.”

About four weeks into the process, they offered me a full-time job, so I didn’t get away from the 40 hours a week as long as I thought I would. My predecessor left in November of 2021 and then I took over officially February of ’22, but I was interim until that point.

I am with the Foundation now and am really focused on growing our events, growing our fund management program, and getting a few more things up and running. It’s been three years of tremendous growth coming out of COVID, which has been remarkable to see.

People have been hungry for all these sorts of things that they have been deprived and starved of. Interest is just so high for most and any event.

Right, I think we all re-prioritized kind of what we were looking at for in our lives, and not necessarily working 100 percent of the time. Family matters a lot. I think being out in the community matters a lot. People began to realize that after being locked up for two and a half or three years. So we’re just happy we can provide one outlet a couple times a year for families to come together and that’s really what Papillion Days is all about.

We’re celebrating 76th year this year. 1947 was when the event started. The Foundation has been in charge of it for about 26 of those 76 years, so a little piece of the history there, but given the growth for the past 3 years has been tremendous, from attendance to participation.

We’ve had record attendance the past three years; record participation of our vendor fair. Our carnival contract I think the best part of the country. We’ve had a long-standing contract with them for 15 years. We just signed another five years or even last year. So we try and keep things safe and accessible for families. And obviously 76 years of tradition it’s a lot to keep up with. That’s the challenging part of the job, but it’s also the fun part of the job. I get to balance what do you change with how to make the event bigger and better. Or enhance it versus, you know, this has been tradition for 76 years. How do you get to you have to weigh those puzzle pieces.

How do you do that because what is tradition for one family is not necessarily tradition for the other and people are always hungry for something new?

When you’re in the captain’s chair like I am, you really have to take as much feedback as you can get before you make a decision. I think it’s really important to listen to all of your stakeholders. I’m fortunate I have a 15-member board of directors that I kind of use as an outlet, a sounding board before we take things to the public. And then we have a really good relationship with the city of Papillion and a lot of the businesses, the community, and a lot of local leaders. So, when it comes down to making any of those changes, we get feedback from all of those different groups of people to make sure what we’re doing isn’t harmful to the event. Because ultimately, we never want to harm anything. We want to enhance and grow our events. At the same time there are some pieces of tradition that phase out over time. We don’t have to hand out ticket vouchers anymore for you to pick up a wristband anymore. We can scan a QR code and hand you a physical wristband now, so that’s been really nice enhancement that people have really bought into. Putting all of our applications online was a real big shock for folks.

We live in a digital age now. So, try and cut down and be mindful to not using 15-page contracts that have to get mailed back to you and signed. You want to be conscious of our environment, our community, but also keeping things accessible for our small staff as well as the people who want to participate. It’s a balancing act. It’s probably the most stressful part of the job trying to figure out what to add what to take away what to change. But it’s also the most rewarding to sit down and say, “Hey, that worked really well,” or sometimes, “Hey, that didn’t work as well as we thought it was going to. Let’s go back to the drawing board with that.” No two days are the same. That’s the best part of it. I get bored easily. So, it’s a good thing. It keeps me entertained and engaged.

Variety is good. I think the biggest change that we made this year was parade time. It’s been two o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday and as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, in June in Nebraska, two o’clock is about as hot as it gets during the day.

I have noticed this,

[laughter]

So, when it comes down to it for our participants, the attendees that are there to watch, we want to keep it safe for them. We want to be kind of family friendly. Two o’clock in the afternoon, it’s nap time for younger families, [time] to pick up for preschool, or whatever may be going on. So, we elected this year to move into 10 o’clock. Now again, we engaged all of our stakeholders, the business community, our elected officials, and my board. We have a planning committee and we reached out again to the local members of the civic and citizen groups that are in the community to get some feedback and really was overwhelmingly positive. Yes, this is a smart change. If it can be 70 degrees instead of 90 degrees, that’s always better. With that change, we were able to move a few other pieces of the event and spread it out just a little bit better to where it’s a little bit more balanced throughout the five days rather than having a lot of stuff happening over two days a little bit. It’s a little bit more spread out over four or five days.

One of the civic groups that were engaged is the Papillion Junior Women’s Club, and previously they had had their kiddie parade, and their duck paddle Saturday morning prior to the large parade starting. This year instead of opening night at SumTur Amphitheater like we’ve done in the past, on Wednesday night, we elected to do a family fun night and City Park. To really keep everything in the downtown corridor was really the motive there. We approached them and said, “Hey, you don’t want to have this family fun night. These events that you guys host on Saturday are really family focused. And we’d rather give you access to the park without having to close the street down, without having to worry about traffic and everything and give you the space to the park to really do the stuff right. Let families enjoy that.”

We’re not shutting down access to Halleck Park. We’re not shutting down access to Papio Fun Park. It keeps those businesses open and operational. So, it disrupts the community a little bit less and again, it’s in more of a family friendly environment. So here after the Kiddie Parade, if they want to play on the playground equipment, they have access to do that. Additionally, with Family Fun Night we’re having a kids concert, which is a  first time event for us. The String Beans, their band is based out of Lincoln, are coming up.

So, they have kind of a cult following here in Omaha metro area. So, we figured we’d bring them up and they’re going to do a 60-minute performance for us for Family Fun Night. We moved our ice cream social to Wednesday night as well. So again, it just balances things out a little bit better.

Instead of Friday..

Correct. And really keeping that event as free as possible for families to attend was the goal. The market, the carnival, and the vendor fair I kick off Thursday. We have fireworks Friday night again. That really hasn’t changed at all as long as I’ve been around, so yes.

What are you expecting for numbers?

We normally see between 40,000 and 50,000 attendees. It’s hard to gauge exactly. You know there’s no entry gate. We don’t charge an admission. So, there’s not a specific number. But with it being opening weekend for the College World Series, we have a lot of families in town from out of town and every hotel in the metro area, including in Sarpy County is normally booked for the CWS.

So, we draw on an outside crowd and obviously the City of Papillion is only 25,000 strong. So, when you look at our attendance, it’s …  we’re doubling the size of the city for five days.

I know people from other areas that look forward to this event,

Right. Fortunately for us, we’re kind of the signal event Sarpy County now, outside of the Sarpy County Fair. A lot of the other communities, their summer festivals have shrunk in size or have gone away completely. So, we kind of have taken up that that market share as the pinnacle summer event. I know Ralston does their Fourth of July parade; La Vista has their Salute to Summer, but I know they’re there, but they’re single day events. This is a five-day festival. It really is. It’s not just a carnival or parade. We really try and tie it all together.

So that’s the super exciting part of it. We continue to grow. I think – don’t hold me to it – but there’s only one (thing) we change something every year. Whether it’s minor or major, but you never know what next year might bring.

So our calendar is year-round. A lot of folks don’t realize, but I wish I could just say we woke up on Monday and said we’re going to have a party Wednesday night. I wish it were that easy.

I’ve asked this question of the executive directors of the CWS Omaha, Inc., as well, so I am curious if the answer is the same.

So, it takes about six months to plan each of our events. I started this year in November. Right at the end of November, early December starting planning for Papillion Days. All of our applications for everything go live January 1 every year. So obviously, you have to know what you’re capable of by January 1. And then as those applications roll in through the market, in the parade and everything, we start piecing the puzzle pieces together to get the full picture.

Those applications are open from January 1 to May 31. So there’s six more months for folks who apply, and we do a mad dash the first week of June normally to get all that information piled together in a cohesive manner. So folks start planning, whether you’re a business attending the market or if you’re in the parade. Hey, we’ve got to tell our staff they need to be at this location in this time to be in the parade, or this is our booth space and we need to have someone there to check in and set up, it’d be there for these hours to these hours. It’s not just waking up and let people show up. There’s a lot more that goes into it just that.

Normally in the past, we would normally take the month of July just to kind of do a mid-year report, gather our, kind of gather our senses again, and then jump into Winter Wonderland in August. But this year we’re adding a golf tournament in September. So, it’ll be our first, hopefully annual, golf tournament moving forward. So, we’re adding a new event in there for the Foundation, kind of throwing that in the middle of the planning of our two big events. We’re hoping it sort of drives another revenue stream into the Foundation so we can grow our grants program and charitable giving back into the community.

I noticed moving here that golf tournaments are [popular here,

Right. There’s a reason everybody does that.

The trick is putting yours in the right spot.

Right, and that’s the hardest thing, you know. A lot of fundraisers and golf tournaments happened really early in the summer. For us early in the summer is not great because we’re really focused on getting affiliate names ready. So, the calculus there is to try and figure out where in the calendars is it going to work. August is normally really hot. Then you get into back-to-school season and everything. So, we thought in September, it will be close enough to the end of the golf season where the weather’s still going to be great. There will be a little bit more mild temperature-wise, but also not getting to like October temperatures where you can have a 40 degree day.

Until I started with the Foundation, it was done by one person. I have no idea how it was done by one singular person prior to that. And we’re definitely not, hopefully, going back to that anytime soon. But having the support of a dedicated staff, a strong relationship with the city stakeholders and the partners that we’ve had year after year with the Papillion Days is what makes it successful.

As a growing city, you know, the hardest part is keeping that small town tradition alive. A lot of folks will say we’re losing that small town feel. Well, I think you can walk through Papillion Days, and that’s what I love about our events, or Winter Wonderland and there is generally not a frown on anyone’s face. Everyone’s smiling and laughing, having a good time, so you get to really embrace that. That’s the heart of our community right there.

Papillion Community Foundation
B109 N. Washington St.
Papillion, NE 68046
402-268-5312
https://www.papillionfoundation.org