I'd rather not give my name, although I am a member of Mudcat. I help run a small monthly coffeehouse venue where we book both local performers and touring musicians. The venue is run by a small group of volunteers who make no monetary profit, and dedicate a lot of time to the coffeehouse. We offer the musicians a percentage of what we take in at the door - most come away with at least a few hundred dollars, some get substantially more, as we have a loyal audience and we work hard to promote our concerts. We do have an "emergency kitty" which we have dipped into when we had a really poor turnout for one reason or another - just to make sure the performer got a reasonable fee. The percentage we keep goes into this kitty, and also towards renting the venue, insurance, etc. On a few occasions in the past we did offer fairly substantial guarantees (over $400) to some touring artists, but we got burned and had to make up the difference out of our own pockets on an occasion when bad weather kept the audience away. There were also a few times when we got pretty nervous when it looked like tickets weren't selling, but it turned out that we did take in enough to make the guarantee. However it was stressful. None of us are in a financial position to be able to afford to subsidize anything out of our own personal funds,and we decided that we would no longer offer offer guarantees - just the percentage of the door.   Recently our booker had a rather strained exchange with a performer who got indignant about the lack of a guarantee. We understand how it is for a performer, they have travel costs, sometimes go long distances to get to a gig, etc. If we had backup funding we'd happily offer guarantees, but as it is each concert needs to be self funding. But it was insinuated that somehow we were trying to exploit musicians - not a pleasant thing to be told when we have put in a lot of time to provide a venue - the only reward to ourselves being that we enjoy the music.

What are the thoughts - among musos and those who run venues, about guarantees? Is it exploitation not to offer one?