When Jamye Cooper stepped into the role as Folkmoot’s executive director a scant three months before the 2005 festival, she would have soon been buried under a pile of to-do lists if it weren’t for an army of volunteers who seemed to pour out of the woodwork. One by one, they filled in small slices of pre-festival tasks seemingly obscure on the surface but each equally vital to making Folkmoot a first-class extravaganza.

“People who have done one thing for years and years and years, they’ll come by and say, ‘I’m the person that does such and such,’” Cooper said. “One volunteer came in one day and said, ‘I’m the one who does the signs for the parade.’ Another couple came in and said, ‘We are the people who pack the boxes of souvenirs.’

“That tells you what kind of organization this is. That’s why I say it is volunteer-driven. They take it very seriously. They are passionate about it. They are dedicated to it,” Cooper said.

Folkmoot had only an interim executive director for nearly six months — executive board member George Escaravage, who was unpaid — during which time volunteers ran the entire operation, from lobbying U.S. embassies in 11 countries to grant the performers visas to hiring bus drivers to cart around the performers.

The final countdown to the festival has had its share of “little fires,” Cooper said, but she’s already written them off.

“Heck I’m excited! I think this is going to be the best fun we’ve ever had,” Cooper said. “I mean the festival is so much bigger than the fact that I don’t have a sound crew right now. But you know what, I only had to get on the phone and call one person and say ‘I’m from Folkmoot and we need help and can you do X?’ I don’t think I’ve gotten a single ‘no.’ I mean, what a great community.”

One long-time volunteer who was unable to help out physically this year, simply couldn’t keep her mind — or heart — off Folkmoot.

“She’d think of something and come by and tell me where something is that I might need or say, ‘Don’t forget you’ll need this,’ and tell me who has done it in the past,” Cooper said.

Other volunteers have simply prepped Cooper for what to expect when the big week arrives and 250 international dancers and musicians speaking a dozen different languages toting exotic costumes and instruments descend on the Friendship Center.

It’s not that Cooper didn’t brush up on the festival’s ins and outs before taking the job. When she applied, she was working as the chief finance officer for the WNC chapter of Boy Scouts of America. She gave her employers a generous two-month notice before officially leaving for Folkmoot. But during those two months, Cooper spent her evenings and weekends learning everything she could about Folkmoot.

“When I accepted the position, I had a pretty fair idea that I needed to provide myself with as much job knowledge before I got here. Obviously I needed people to hold my hand and still do,” Cooper said.

She went through old programs and scrapbooks and photo albums kept at the Friendship Center. She dug through old newspaper and magazine articles.

“In that time I had a lot of opportunity to talk to members of the board. I was able to kind of measure the pulse of the board of directors and find out what their hopes were and where they would like to go in the future,” Cooper said.

But she took her research one step further. She began nonchalantly bringing up Folkmoot when talking to relatives and friends and neighbors, and even strangers, to find out how the community perceived Folkmoot and how they thought it could be better.

Financial guru

One of Cooper’s fortes — one that was particularly attractive to the hiring committee — was her extensive experience in non-profit financial management.

Five years as the chief financial officer for the WNC Boys Scouts of America was impressive. The chapter is about four times the size of Folkmoot and runs one of the largest Boy Scout camps on the east coast, Camp Daniel Boone in Haywood County. As the head honcho over the organization’s budget, she was more than just a number’s person. Cooper was involved at nearly every level of the day-to-day operations, because as Cooper says, “budgets for non-profits are their life line.”

Prior to her work with the Boy Scouts, Cooper had her own accounting and financial management consultant business in Washington, D.C. Her specialty was small businesses and non-profits.

“It didn’t take very long before 80 percent of my business was non-profit. I became very interested in it as a specialty,” Cooper said. Compared to the for-profit corporate sector, Cooper was making much less, but found it much more rewarding.

“I liked it because the non-profits I focused on had something to do with arts, culture, human services, veteran’s issues, education, things I am interested in,” Cooper said.

As a financial management advisor to non-profits, Cooper saw a cross-section of operational styles, fund-raising approaches, community outreach and mission statements. In a nutshell, she had a bird’s eye view of what works and what doesn’t in the non-profit sector.

“People don’t think about nonprofits as being businesses, but they are,” Cooper said. “You have to deliver a program and you have to deliver it well or there is no reason for your non-profit to exist. It may be feeding the hungry, it may be educating adults with literacy challenges — you have a responsibility to deliver that program.”

Cooper is applying both the success stories and the lessons learned the hard way by some of her old non-profit clients to her role in Folkmoot now.

“You can’t ever stop raising money when you work in a non-profit. That is something you have to do every single day,” Cooper said.

But too often, non-profits stop with the fundraising and don’t carry it through to the next step: financial management skills.

“You have to be able to raise money and manage it once you get it,” Cooper said.

She has also applied management techniques. She’s a master at delegating tasks and doesn’t believe in micromanaging. She believes in worshipping volunteers, but she also believes in clear procedures. She’s implemented everything from an employee handbook to formal training for volunteers.

“You can’t expect somebody to do a good job if you don’t train them. You don’t volunteer until you are trained to do the job you have been asked to do,” Cooper said.

She also is borrowing an organizational model, an operational flow chart of sorts, from the Boy Scouts.

“Boy Scouts has a very efficient volunteer and paid staff organizational model for any non-profit to follow. For example, you never want one person in charge of something.”

Cooper said she was impressed and pleased with how well-heeled and well-supported Folkmoot is for its 22nd year.

“They are on a very firm foundation,” Cooper said. “Now we are ready to go to the next level and fine tune some things and see what we can do to make a great organization.”

Community feel

Cooper, 46, grew up in Canton. Her father worked at Champion paper mill in the electrical department. Her mother was a teacher at North Canton elementary.

When Cooper lived in Washington, D.C., she looked forward to the American Folklife Festival every year at end of June.

“I never missed going to that,” Cooper said. “So to come home to where I’m from and find something like that is so amazing. Even in D.C., I can’t think of anything that is as grandiose as this. You would see an individual performance of a country, but you wouldn’t see 11 countries perform on the same stage in the same night.”

But one thing Cooper discovered through her informal conversations with community members before coming to work with Folkmoot is that people wanted more opportunities to be involved in the festival.

That has become one of her number one goals. While planning the festival is a full-time job — taking 50 weeks to prepare for the two-week performance blitz — Cooper hopes to host international activities and events at different times throughout the year.

“We need to be visible in the community throughout the year, not just in June and July,” Cooper said. “We want people to know we are here, we have this great building, we want them to use it, they are welcome here — that’s why it’s called the Folkmoot Friendship Center.”

Cooper has launched special workshops — such as French lace making and African drumming — that will give the community a chance to interact with the groups outside of performances. And of course, International Festival Day on Main Street is the perfect place to mingle with performers eager to talk to Americans. Coming on board just three months before the festival, there wasn’t time to implement a whole lot of brand new ideas, but she’s constantly brainstorming and soliciting input from the community, because it is the community’s festival after all, Cooper said.

“Our goal is to bring the best Folkmoot we can possibly bring to the community, the region and the state. We are the state’s international folk festival and we have to live up to that,” Cooper said. “We earned it and we have to keep earning it every day.”