Visit Marshfield Executive Director Discusses Tourism Grant Program

Tuesday, April 15th, 2025 -- 1:00 PM

Visit Marshfield has announced the opening of applications for the 2025 Tourism Grant Program.

I spoke with Matt McLean, Executive Director of Visit Marshfield, and he explained the organization and the grant in more detail.

Listen to the interview with Matt here!

Again, applications are open now and due by Friday, April 18th. You can find the application on Visit Marshfield’s website.

(AI assisted transcription of the interview by Otter.ai):

Matt: "Visit Marshfield, we are formerly known as Marshall Convention and Visitors Bureau. We kind of needed to change to just be a little easier to understand. We did that about, I think, it's about six or seven years ago now."

"And so our mission is to attract visitors to Marshfield through marketing, development of attractions, and events to create economic impact. So really, we want to bring visitors to community and, when they're here, they can spend money, stay in the hotels, eat at the restaurants, go shopping; really anything to boost the economy."

Riley: " And in case there are people out there that don't know, can you kind of talk about some of the events that you guys put on in order to fulfill that mission?"

Matt: "Yeah, for sure. You know, our main goal is to market events and attractions. The one event that we do manage and run ourselves is called Maple Fall Fest, and that's the second weekend in September every year, and we bring in over 150 handmade arts and crafts vendors."

"And we have a wonderful potato pancake and regular pancake breakfast featuring local made maple syrup. And we have other kinds of fun activities and events around the arts and also maple syrup."

Riley:  "And now another thing that you do is the tourism grant program. Can you talk about that?"

Matt: "Yeah, for sure. So, we're running that right now through the 18th of April. And really we just want to invite community partners that run events that would likely attract visitors from out of the area to come to Marshfield."

"And so we've been doing that for many years and we've given out over $80,000 in grants over the last five years. And really that's everything from events such as Dairy Fest, Hub City Days, and also tournaments."

"Sporting tournaments are a big draw for Marshfield to bring a lot of visitors and they usually stay the weekend in the hotel. So, it's baseball tournaments, hockey tournaments, events such as gymnastics."

"So, those are a few of the events that have received grants in the past. We want to try to foster new new events and activities that would likely draw visitors to the area."

Riley: "And If there's someone out there who is interested in applying for this grant, what's the best way for them to go about doing that?"

Matt: "Yeah, pretty easy. Our website is visitmarshfield.com and, if you scroll to the bottom, there's a link called "grant application" on the bottom of our website and you can click that and it's an online form, probably takes, you know, 10 minutes to fill out."

"We ask for just some information about the event, how you're going to market it, if you want to talk to a hotel to get room blocks to to have rooms available for for the visitors coming to your event. That's always highly encouraged. And, yeah, it's a pretty, pretty simple and easy process."

Riley: "Anything else?"

Matt: "I just wanted to talk a little bit more about the organization. We're a 501(c)3 entity and so we abide by the state laws for tourism marketing and we have a contract with the city and we also have seven wonderful board members."

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.