Covid-19 Relief for Costume-Con 40

Hellos to all the costumers, cosplayers, and awesome members of the Costume-Con

community,

After a two-year hiatus, this past April The Greater Columbia Fantasy Costumers’ Guild, Inc.

was pleased to be able to host Costume-Con 40 in Bethesda, Maryland. It was good to see

many faces, both veterans and newcomers to Costume-Con. When we had started planning

CC40 back in 2018 we were all looking forward to celebrating 40 years of costuming and

community. No one had any idea that we were on the eve of a global pandemic that would

shut down so many events for so long. This has caused headaches, especially financial ones,

for many fan-run cons, and Costume-Con 40 was no exception. Because of the sudden

cancellation of Costume-Con 38 and the rescheduling of Costume-Con 39, we lost any

potential advertising and seed money that might have been generated by those events. So

far, we have been able to cover all our expenses except one, the venue cost.

Many of our attendees, especially our international members, were unable to attend due to

Covid travel restrictions were levied right before the convention. Because of this, over a

fourth of our registered members (100+ people) were not able to attend. This led to our not

meeting the room night obligations in our contract, and so we must pay a hefty “attrition”

penalty. We have been negotiating since April with the hotel to resolve this outstanding

balance and continue to do so.

This is where we need your help. As a small, volunteer-run non-profit, we are turning to our

community and putting out a request for monetary donations to help defray this debt. Any

amount will be a help to us. And we intend, should we exceed our goal of retiring this

particular debt, to “pay it forward” to next year’s Costume-Con and thus further ease the

financial strain caused by the pandemic. Remember, we are a 501(c)3 non-profit and would be happy to issue a receipt for tax purposes.

Thank you,

Sarah Richardson

Con-Chair

Costume-Con 40