Traverse City’s largest event organizer is taking on a new challenge: running the community’s New Year’s Eve celebration.

The National Cherry Festival Foundation is finalizing legal paperwork this week to take over the CherryT Ball Drop, the annual New Year’s Eve party held in the streets of downtown Traverse City. For the past nine years, the “party with a purpose” – featuring live music and entertainment, fireworks, and a giant descending lit cherry – has been organized by a handful of dedicated volunteers, who formed a nonprofit to accept donations at the event and channel proceeds to local charities and food banks.

“A growing number of people thought this was something the city put on and didn’t realize it was just the six of us,” says Christal Frost, who co-founded the CherryT Ball Drop in 2009 with Dean Rose. “It’s been challenging for those individuals because after nine years of putting on the event, it got to the point where people were tired. But we wanted to make sure it still did what it needed to do, which is raising money for charities locally.”

Since its inception, the CherryT Ball Drop has raised an estimated $110,000 for area nonprofits and has grown to attract between 8,000 and 12,000 attendees annually. The National Cherry Festival lent its support to the event in the past, providing free barricade fencing and assisting with crowd control and volunteer management. That partnership prompted the CherryT Ball Drop board of directors to approach the festival about taking over the event entirely.

“They have the infrastructure to keep it the same with a charitable focus, they have staff, they have a built-in volunteer structure of 2,000-plus volunteers,” says Frost. “It’s a tough decision, but we’re secure in knowing they’re going to continue the mission of it being a charitable event.”

National Cherry Festival Executive Director Kat Paye confirms that to the public, the event “will look very similar – if not identical – to what it’s always looked like.” As part of the management transfer between the two nonprofits, the National Cherry Festival is acquiring all of CherryT Ball Drop’s physical assets (including the iconic lit cherry) as well as the event name, website, and branding. The event will still exercise as a community fundraiser: last year’s featured charitable recipient, the Salvation Army, is expected to also be the featured recipient at this year’s event.

But Frost also believes the National Cherry Festival’s resources and expertise in event management will allow the event to expand and evolve. “An event can get stagnant if you don’t have new blood coming in,” she says. “That’s why I think the National Cherry Festival with all their volunteers can bring in new ideas and new enthusiasm and give it a facelift.”

As part of the transition, the CherryT Ball Drop is donating $2,500 to the National Cherry Festival Foundation in seed money to jump-start this year’s event planning process. The board of directors also voted to take the $16,500 remaining in the CherryT Ball Drop’s coffers and write a check to the Traverse Bay Children’s Advocacy Center. Paye says that while the event won’t be a revenue-generator for the National Cherry Festival – “if anything, it’ll be the opposite,” she notes wryly – as a 92-year-old entity, the festival foundation has the “financial stability” to ensure the New Year’s Eve celebration continues every year in Traverse City.

“For an organization like ours, it’s a little easier to take a financial hit if it’s a bad year,” she says. “It’s a no-brainer for us – it’s literally a cherry in the sky being dropped. It’s fantastic synergy, so why wouldn’t we want to do that? But this is also a community goodwill piece, to ensure the event can continue for Traverse City and continues to fill the food pantries, because that’s a very important need during that time of year.”

Several of CherryT Ball Drop’s long-time volunteer leaders will also continue on as part of the new National Cherry Festival Foundation committee working on the event.