Westminster Fallfest Bolsters Main Street Businesses, Supports Local Nonprofits

Westminster Fallfest offers lots of fun with rides, food and craft vendors among other things, but the event was started 34 years ago to support the business community, and eventually the nonprofit community, and it continues in that vein today.

When Fallfest originated, the focus was promoting downtown and bringing people to a "struggling business area," Westminster Fallfest Board member Marshall Green previously told Patch. "Charity wasn't originally part of the idea."

Green said that in its early years, FallFest was held between Main Street and Liberty Street in Westminster.

"The event started to expand up Main Street and after 10 years or so we got the idea to just move it to the playground, to stop the traffic congestion, to utilize the parking lot and to expand for our first year with carnival rides on the playground," Green explained.

After several years of successfully promoting the downtown business area with the Fallfest event, the frugal board of directors found that the event had unexpectedly made money.

"We were surprised the first year that we had a dollar left over and we looked at each other and said 'What do we do with this?'," Green said. "From that point on, we maintained a reserve to reinvest in the event and the residue became charitable proceeds."

The charities that will benefit from this year's event are Special Olympics Maryland, The Stacey Davis Breast Cancer Fund and Good News Jail & Prison Ministry. 

So go to Fallfest and have fun while supporting local nonprofits at the same time. The festivities begin Thursday with a parade on Main Street at 7 p.m.

Visit www.westminsterfallfest.com to see the whole list of events.