The Opportunity to Experience Music
As we roll the Roo Bus into the next chapter, we are excited to introduce the TOTEM Foundation. Standing for The Opportunity to Experience Music, it is our way of handing the baton off to the next generation of Bonnaroovians and entire festival community.
Our Three Main Goals:
Festival Mentorships
Our plan is to match “festival veterans” who have a lot of experience attending festivals and building communities with “rookies” who have little to no experience in this area.
Initially, these relationships would help with support and building communities at festivals, but it could extend to the rest of life eventually as well.
Apply for our Festival Scholarship Now! >>
International Exchange Program
A long term goal of the non-profit is to bring in groups of musicians from disadvantaged countries (such as Haiti) to play traditional music and also be part of a cultural exchange program between their home country and the music festival.
Festival Scholarships
We will seek to provide scholarships to disadvantaged young people who want to attend a festival and help build something for the entire community at the event.
There may be opportunities as well to help provide job shadow experience for disadvantaged young people who would like to find a career in live music event production as well.
Apply to be a Mentor or Mentee Now! >>
How We’re Doing This:
We’ve assembled a Board of Directors to help guide our decisions and offer their expertise from all walks of life.
We’ve also put together an advisory committee that you can join now on our Discord.
As for projected costs, we expect that our mentorship program will basically cost nothing, we hope to raise $500 to $1,000 for each of our festival scholarship awards, and we are looking to raise $10K for our international exchange program, starting as soon as 2025.
How You Can Help:
For now, the best thing you can do is continue to radiate positivity by continuing to get the word out about our new TOTEM Foundation.
Becoming a Patreon of our podcast also helps tremendously, as 100% of proceeds will go to the TOTEM foundation.
We are also looking to host fundraising and mixer events in cities with lots of Bonnaroovians. If you know of a venue that would like to have us, we’d love to hear from you.
The Real Roo Bus 