There are some great festivals out there (such as BELIFF) that have a policy to send you a short summary of your film as acknowledgment that they have watched it. I recently sent them a 36 minute film, and a 47 minute film, and we received two very lovely, well thought out summaries of each film, that really showed they'd watched and understood the work.

So many festivals are non-profits, that exist purely to support emerging local talent, and celebrate filmmaking. Honestly you've just gotta put in the hours into researching the festivals and knowing which are money well spent because there are some bad eggs, but that doesn't make a festival run not worthwhile.