$26K profit from grassroots Soybean Festival to be donated to Martin Fire Department

More than $26,700 in proceeds from Martin’s Grassroots Soybean Festival will be donated to the Martin Fire Department, according to John Sellers, the festival’s lead organizer. 

Sellers and other community members poured thousands of hours of volunteer work into the grassroots version of the traditional festival after the Tennessee Soybean Festival Committee announced in May that the event would not happen this year due to the city’s financial challenges. 

The money is intended to help the department purchase new self-contained breathing apparatus equipment that provides firefighters with clean, breathable air.

After Martin’s former mayor, his daughter and the city’s community development director were indicted in November on charges of official misconduct and the combined theft of more than $450,000 in public funds, the city is under orders from the state comptroller to right its finances.

Martin Fire Chief Jamie Summers said the city’s financial situation means capital funds aren’t available to replace the nearly 11-year-old equipment. The department needs 22 sets — harness, mask and tank — and each set costs around $10,000.

The department applied for a federal Assistance to Firefighters Grant to help purchase the equipment, and the donations from the festival in addition to another community fundraiser would help cover the grant’s 10% local funding contribution. Summers said the department is “very anxiously waiting” for news on whether Martin will receive the grant. Notices will be sent out by Sept. 30, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers the grant.

“Through our sponsors and countless hours invested, our community not only saved the Soybean Festival, it made it profitable, and now $26,727.47 will be donated to the men and women who protect the community,” Sellers wrote in a Sept. 23 Facebook post. 

Combined with $10,665 raised in the Friend of a FireFighter campaign (also led by Sellers and other volunteers) earlier this year, the Martin Fire Department will receive nearly $37,400 in total community contributions.

“It just makes a person’s heart glad to see,” Summers said. 

Sellers had to start a company and insure it in a 90-day timeframe to put on the festival in early September, as the Tennessee Soybean Festival Committee declined to allow the grassroots festival to use its existing nonprofit structure. Sellers said the timeline was too tight to start a nonprofit organization, so he founded a business, making the profit subject to tax. 

Sellers said he is “retiring” from his role as lead director and will restructure the company into an event and consulting business.

The Martin’s Grassroots Soybean Festival collected $92,276 from sponsors, including $30,000 from the city’s tourism fund, according to Sellers. Another $33,750 came in non-cash contributions, like food and labor donated by Tosh Pork and Martin Stockyards to provide free meals to attendees on one of the festival days. The festival’s expenses totaled roughly $65,549.

“This was never about creating a new festival,” Sellers wrote. “The purpose was to adapt and preserve the Tennessee Soybean Festival so that it could survive, become sustainable, and ultimately be given back to the community.”

The grassroots festival also proved the event could be profitable, he wrote. Sellers said he wants the festival to re-center itself on the community and establish a standard of generating a profit that can be reinvested in that community.

“The festival has an opportunity to become more than a celebration,” Sellers wrote. “It can also become a way for the community to show its appreciation for the people who serve it every day.”